Song of the Day: Plowed (Sponge)

This is the only song by Sponge I can remember ever hearing.

It's in a painful place for me, though. The first time I heard it, I was on the way back from Tallahassee. It was late evening, March 28, 1995. Eleven days later, on April 8th, my little world fell apart when the girl I'd been visiting broke up with me out of the blue (well, it was "out of the blue" for me; she'd apparently been preparing this for several weeks, but didn't have the backbone to discuss it. Her freaking DOG knew, her family, her friends, and so did the guy who sold me gas on the way home. I'm pretty sure my car knew).

I must have known something was happening on the 28th; I knew "he" was back in town. I didn't know enough to think there was anything going on. I'm dumb enough that I tried to be friends with her afterward. For two and a half years.

The rock station in Tallahassee at 101.5 had a competition: they play two songs and people call in to vote for which one's cool and which one sucks. "Plowed" premiered there that night. I don't remember whether it won or not, but every time I hear the intro, I'm back in my ratty monstrous '76 Chevy Impala wagon, steering along the winding access road leading to a rest area about an hour west of Tallahassee. It's pitch-black, dark trees looming in my headlights, and the song sounds as lonely as I felt that night.

There's a wailing guitar in the second half--all the way to the end--that sounds even more painful and really fits the mood of those days.