This is the first of a new feature called MVP (Most Valuable Play), created to better personalize the tastes of our Portals contributors and fellow music lovers. Below read up on verb/re/verb‘s most beloved album and tell us yours in the comments underneath.

Through CD skips and shuffling of playlists, my childhood mild case of insomnia brought me to what is now my most valuable album—thank you restlessness. In remedy of my sleep troubles, my childhood lullaby became Aimee Mann‘s “I’ve Had It,” and from then sleepless nights became Aimee Mann nights. And fortunately, Aimee Mann days and nights still exist in my life—no longer as a childhood sleeping pill, but as a constituent of what prevails as my most memorable and beloved album (if you could call it that). Now, I’m not sure whether it’s entirely accurate to call this an album, but I will. My most beloved album is a compilation of 11 songs that, for the most part, can be found on Nick Hornby’s Songbook.

Nick Hornby (born in 1957) is an English author, and unknowingly the architect of this favorite album I speak of. Hornby is best known for his novels High Fidelity and About a Boy, but most personally impactful for his collection of 26 essays known as Nick Hornby’s Songbook. The book is composed most simply of stories about songs and the resonance the songs hold with him.

When published, Nick Hornby’s Songbook included a CD of all 26 tracks as to be listened to while reading the essays. The burned version of the CD that was played for me as a child had about half as many songs. The burned and burned again version that sits in my car with a white CD face that reads in Sharpie, “I’ve Had It & …” has even fewer.

Nick Hornby’s Songbook Tracklist:

1. Teenage Fanclub — “Your Love Is the Place Where I Come From”
2. Bruce Springsteen — “Thunder Road”
3. Nelly Furtado — “I’m Like a Bird”
4. Led Zeppelin — “Heartbreaker”
5. Rufus Wainwright — “One Man Guy”
6. Santana — “Samba Pa Ti”
7. Rod Stewart — “Mama, You Been on My Mind”
8. Bob Dylan — “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” / The Beatles - “Rain”
9. Ani DiFranco — “You Had Time” / Aimee Mann - “I’ve Had It”
10. Paul Westerberg — “Born for Me”
11. Suicide — “Frankie Teardrop” /  Teenage Fanclub - “Ain’t That Enough”
12. The J. Geils Band — “First I Look at the Purse”
13. Ben Folds Five — “Smoke”
14. Badly Drawn Boy — “A Minor Incident” (from the About a Boy movie soundtrack)
15. The Bible — “Glorybound”
16. Van Morrison — “Caravan”
17. Butch Hancock and Marce LaCouture — “So I’ll Run”
18. Gregory Isaacs — “Puff, the Magic Dragon”
19. Ian Dury and the Blockheads — “Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3″ /  Richard and Linda Thompson - “Calvary Cross”
20. Jackson Browne — “Late for the Sky”
21. Mark Mulcahy — “Hey Self-Defeater”
22. The Velvelettes — “Needle in a Haystack”
23. O.V. Wright — “Let’s Straighten It Out”
24. Röyksopp — “Röyksopp’s Night Out”
25. The Avalanches — “Frontier Psychiatrist” / Soulwax - “No Fun” / “Push It”
26. Patti Smith Group — “Pissing in a River”

I’ve Had It &… Tracklist:

1. Aimee Mann — “I’ve Had It”
2. Bob Dylan — “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?”
3. Patti Smith Group — “Pissing in a River”
4. Paul Westerberg — “Born for Me”
5. Mark Mulcahy — “Hey Self-Defeater”
6. Teenage Fanclub — “Your Love Is the Place Where I Come From”
7. Rod Stewart — ”Mama, You Been on My Mind”
8. Badly Drawn Boy — ”A Minor Incident”
9. Rufus Wainwright — “One Man Guy”
10. Ani DiFranco — “You Had Time”
11. Teenage Fanclub — “Ain’t That Enough”

When I call I’ve Had It &… my favorite album, I’m referring more truthfully to a collection of skipping and scratching nostalgia that will forever be played, rewound, and remembered, as are all favorites. Favorites are reminders, prompts, and the interminable etchings in our lives. To listen to Nick Hornby’s Songbook in full would be to exaggerate a story, but to listen to I’ve Had It & … with the sand paper scratching hiss when the best Teenage Fanclub track skips the bridge is to preserve my favorite album. Below is the beginning of an unending essay holding my I’ve Had It & … affection.

It began with the far too few nights spent with “I’ve Had It” lulling me to an uninterrupted sleep, followed by the muted underwater listens through decaying outdoor pool speakers, and has continued as the recurring background to my new-found adoration for never-ending un-smooth city streets. I’ve never listened to “I’ve Had It” loud, but quietly and with the subtlety of familiarity, it’s been there. It’s the song I know all the words to, but never care to know what they mean. Mann’s unbinding, mild watered tone leaves me the distance to wander through my own meaning as that changes with me. The whispering percussion, the guitar flourishes that gently suggest a blue after deep blue out the window view, the elevated notes that cause the deeper tones in Mann’s voice to take to the wind, and salty piano that grounds the wandering – the individual sounds themselves, I believe, are unidentifiable memories. It isn’t the mentioned memories tied in tight connection to the song that compose its distinct meaning, but the knowledge that with these sounds as constants, my wandering through this song will feel familiar. The distinction that separates this song from others is just that; that I can wander at a just familiar enough distance.

Sometimes, I play and replay again and again the first seven seconds of this song. To hear the calloused fingers step down each worn string with a hand that I always imagine to be scuffed with utmost experience makes those seven seconds feel more tangible than I’ve ever been able to believe. That sense of palpable travel married with the homely, unscathed, and dependable vocals makes “A Minor Incident” unbinding. It says that neither here nor there is the right place, but at both there will be an extent of safety. And then comes the bit I’ll only play once, the relief I wait for throughout the album, and relish in once it’s too quickly through—the harmonica. The midway sigh, that finishes in nearly danceable rhythm. The passing conversation between the inhale and the exhale at some never forgettable junction, and the relief that comes by passing. As followed by the bottomless guitar plucks that mark the passage, and the exultation that comes like a never before felt wind as the harmonica gusts fervently once more. This is the only song on my CD of the album that doesn’t ever skip, it’s the unswerving, unfailing security that makes all feel like a travel.

I’ll never cease to be intrigued by the sparse, barren, interim space between the thump of the piano. For just over two minutes, the piano remains an unaccompanied commemoration – not a commemoration to anything in particular but applicable to everything. Strung together closely, piggybacking on one another, and then insecurely, waiting for inclusion, these two minutes of unaided pressing of the keys are the only minutes of I’ve Had It & …  that I can’t predict. It’s the view out the same window you’ve looked through countless times, but the view that is unpredictable because of time. And then the fingers slide down neck of the falsetto guitar and the unexpected becomes an embraced unforeseen. Until DiFranco’s vocals come in, and her hushed, soar, rugged voice tells a story you’ve seen before. Somehow, just then, time becomes a shared memory, and the isolation of the uninhabited piano keys becomes communal. The individual isn’t any more an individual but one of many, time is collective, and the unforeseen feels common. The harmony brings “You Had Time” to a united seclusion marked again by the same sparse thumps of the keys that feel more familiar than they did before, and less protruding than the first. The unexpectedness that time ensues is more mutual than it’d ever felt.

‘California independence’ is what I’d call this. “Ain’t That Enough” is the persistent, even if infinitesimal, sunny relief behind smothering California city fog, smog, and mixture of the two. Relative to other songs on this album, “Ain’t That Enough” has gained significance with me as I’ve aged. The song sounds like the sun that makes my steering wheel a black drought stricken desert, the same sun that can never seem to be blocked by those useless panels that narrow street view more than they do conceal abrasive orange light, and the same sun that is likely responsible for the unforgettable skip of the song’s bridge that interrupts the consistency of the hazy guitars with a grin. As Nick Hornby wrote:

“It is important that we are occasionally, perhaps even frequently, depressed by books, challenged by films, shocked by paintings, maybe even disturbed by music. But do they have to do all these things all the time? Can’t we let them console,  uplift, inspire, move, cheer? … I need somewhere to run to, now more than ever, and songs like “Ain’t That Enough” is where I run.”

As a changing, relatively confused, slightly too ambitious teenager, it’s important that this song exists.

These are just 4 of 11 songs that together compose my most valuable play. Individually, I wouldn’t say that these 11 songs are my favorite songs, nor could I call the 11 artists my favorite artists, but as a whole they are valuable. They’re cherished in that they are a comprehensive portrayal of the time I’ve spent with them. They’ve become individualized not because of the memories I’ve connected them with but because they’ve existed through those memories. They aren’t impermanent, passing, or momentary because they’ve accompanied too many moments to be. I haven’t seen even one of the 11 artists in concert, nor do I own a shirt of theirs, or follow them online, and I wouldn’t want to. They are valued because they are individualized, without the association to a persona or character; they are my own character, my individual experiences, and permanent for that internal reason.