♪♫ ♪ ♪♫

Chicago
Sufjan Stevens
Illinois
2005

This song played during a lovely driving-in-a-car-at-night scene in the Veronica Mars movie.       I know, I know, it's been done, but there is something about the trope--sleepy-eyed friends in car (usually speeding over a bridge or though a tunnel) windows down, wind blowing hair around the passenger's faces, flashes of light bouncing over the windshield--paired with the perfect, soaring song.

When the first notes of "Chicago" filled the darkened movie theater, my heart lifted.  I recognized the song, but couldn't quite place it--that NBC-chimes-sounding opening and that swell of strings...I knew it, but didn't.

When I figured out it was Sufjan Stevens (thanks, internets!), I thought: of course! and, I totally have that album!  Do you ever think you have something on your hard drive, only to discover that you only have one song?!  That some past version of you deemed the rest of the album uninteresting or unlistenable or boring and so deleted it save for that one song?  This comes back to the sometimes-thought that some songs can only really be heard at precisely the right moment.