1) “So Appalled”—Kanye West: I had practiced in my head so many times. I was ready to reenact...until he pulled me close and drooled on my chin.
2) “Lights”—Ellie Goulding: The song came on and we both got really excited and were talking about how much we both liked Ellie Goulding. Then he kissed me. Then another girl dumped her entire drink on us.
3) Any sad song: Because I have never kissed anybody.
(This song is an editors' choice).
4) “The Alphabet Song”: Because when I had my first kiss, I spelled out letters with my tongue thinking that would feel good for him because I read that in Seventeen Magazine. When I had done all 26 letters, we were done, and I sent him back to his shitty motel room (we were on a community service retreat through our temple).
5) “Like A Virgin”—Madonna: Because I kissed her eight years ago and that’s the closest I’ve ever come to inhaling another person’s exhales since.
6) “Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number”—Aaliyah: He thought I was 16, he was 18. I was 14.
7) “Blame It”—Jamie Foxx: Made out with her, held her hair as she puked, then made out again? The details are fuzzy at this point.
8) “Someone Like You”—Adele: I was in third grade walking the attendance sheet to the main office with the boy when he stopped me on the stairs. He asked me if I wanted to kiss him. I said yes. He asked me “cheek or lips?” I said lips. We never spoke again and he denies it to this day. I still haven’t moved on.
9) “Home”—Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros: Because I felt at home when I was with him. Later, I realized he was kind of a shitty home. It was like realizing that the mansion you bought is actually a wooden shack. With termites.
10) “I Kissed A Girl”—Katy Perry: Foreshadowing? Definitely didn’t like it.
11) “Mr. Sandman”—The Chordettes: Because my first kiss happened in a sandbox in kindergarten recess. The song is dreamy and timeless and we were so spaced out with each others’ four–year–old selves that we missed the bell to go back to the classroom. The teacher caught us and whooped our asses back to our puzzle–making classmates. My love puked the second we walked back inside.
12) “Bella’s Lullaby”—Twilight Soundtrack: Sophomore year of high school I got my first boyfriend, whose family was very, very Catholic. On our first date he kept revealing romantic (tacky) surprises to me. He brought me to the room in his house that had a piano, which also happened to be the room covered wall to wall in photos and statues of Jesus. He sat down at the piano and revealed surprise number one: he had learned Bella’s Lullaby from Twilight and wanted to play it for me. I tried very hard to look sincerely touched and awed by this, because Jesus was watching. With the song finished, it was time for the next surprise, for which it was apparently necessary to be hidden from the eyes of Jesus and my boyfriend’s disapproving parents. So he escorted me into the forest behind his house. I briefly wondered if the surprise was going to be him murdering me, but it turned out to be my first kiss. And because Bella’s Lullaby reminds me of that day and that first, awkward and sloppy kiss, I have another reason to add to the long list of reasons I won’t watch Twilight.
13) “White Teeth Teens”—Lorde: His smile may have been nice, but what weren’t nice were his teeth biting into my tongue.
14) “I’m On A Boat”—The Lonely Island: I was on a boat.
