At the risk of committing watercooler-suicide, the truth is, I hate football. But that didn’t stop me from joining 97.5 million Super Bowl XLII viewers in feverish anticipation. 

There is, after all, something fascinating about hitching your identity onto the fate of 11 virtual strangers, thereby declaring their actions as somehow an extension of yours. It’s as if by association, for those few hours, you too are “super.”

And allegiance is everything. Giants? Patriots? Either way, you’re making a “super” statement. “I don’t know” is not an option.

So when asked the obligatory: “who are you rooting for?”  My answer was easy: Tom Petty.

Dude.

IT WAS SO FREAKING AWESOME!!!

Undeterred by the slew of on-screen nubiles who’d stormed the stage, I too had my rock horns up and out for the entire, truly super 12+ minutes. Right there in the living room. I’m not kidding.

The spectacularly gianormous, neon heart/flying v logo… the Guitar Hero-esque lighted backdrop… the Free Fallin’ fireworks… Tom’s schoolboy grins… Jesus.

“Runnin’ Down a Dream” blew the freaking roof off.

Mike Campbell was on fire! 

Post-show, delirious music-high still pumping, I went straight to the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers website. I wasn’t alone… the site was so jammed with hits, you couldn’t get on.

They connected.

Now that’s shared experience for you.  Supersized.

And then, on the eve of Super Tuesday, like so many others, I was torn between two candidates. Somehow, “I don’t know” became a perfectly viable option. Until I saw this. 

At first, I merely read the subject line and dismissed it as yet another thing to fuel my indecision. It sat in my inbox for days. The Black Eyed Peas? Oy. That wasn’t helping.

Finally, I opened it. And it hit me.  Shared experience. Politics aside, it was truly a magical thing to witness the power of contagious emotion communicated by music — in action. The choice was clear: yes we can.

Suddenly, I felt super-connected.

Which brings us to the holiday at hand.

Someone once quipped that Valentine’s Day is sort of like the Super Bowl for women, what with all the hype, the anticipation, etc. Maybe. But whether you are pro or con, the desire to feel connected, to feel loved, to feel, essentially, “super” is universal. And while chocolate and flowers can’t hurt, nothing conveys emotion quite like music.

Hence, my valentine to you is a Bowie cover I’ve recently fallen in love with: “Modern Love” by The Last Town Chorus. Not exactly a love song in the romantic sense but nonetheless, stunningly superb.

xo

© Outlandos MusicTM2008