I remember these two very snarky men who wrote an occasional (weekly? monthly? semi-regular?) column for Rolling Stone's website around that time. I do not remember their names or the name of the column. But I read that shit religiously and probably let their personalities inform my opinions much more than I should have (see above w/r/t becoming a Music Writer for the rest of my life). The two very snarky men had a kind of stream-of-consciousness way of rambling their way through each column, dunking on or rhapsodizing over various artists apropos of nothing, lacking transitions, just saying whatever they wanted to all of the time. Pretty good work if you can get it. I remember the two very snarky men referred to him as Pete Yawn once, and I thought that was pretty good, even if I thought his music was also pretty good.

I remember a very close friend from college, perhaps my best friend in the world at that time in my life, calling Bruce Springsteen a "candy-ass." Or maybe it was her dad who always called him that, hard to say now. Springsteen and Yorn are both from New Jersey. The very close friend grew up there, still had a lot of family there. She—or maybe her dad, hard to say now—didn't care for The Boss, clearly, but she liked Yorn. I remember listening to musicforthemorningafter with her during some very tender moments during college. Do you remember being young and sitting in a room with a very close friend and crying to a song? I do.

I remember telling a particularly opinionated friend, a big fan of Pete Yorn, that the two very snarky men referred to him as Pete Yawn. I remember seeing on his face in that moment that this hurt his feelings. Or maybe just bummed him out? He took it personally. He was always so Big and Loud and Confident and Funny and all sorts of other things I didn't think I could ever be. I remember feeling good in that moment. I didn't feel good that he felt bad, exactly—I felt good knowing he wasn't immune to those other, lesser feelings.

I remember interviewing Yorn for the school newspaper. I remember taking a copy of that newspaper to the show and getting Yorn to autograph it. Why did I do this? Great question. I remember showing up to shows hours in advance and sitting in the alley outside the venue so I could be all the way up front and take lots of pictures with a disposable camera that I would later develop at Walmart. (There are piles of Ziploc bags of these photos at my parents' house in central Illinois, including, no doubt, photos of this particular Pete Yorn show in Columbia, Missouri.) Getting artists to autograph things—liner notes, newspapers, ticket stubs—was part of this particularly intense superfandom, I guess? But I also remember not being a Pete Yorn superfan. Nevertheless: alley, autograph, photos. College is a time for feelings.

[Pete Yorn is not dead, by the way. All of this "remembering" kinda makes it sound like he's six feet under, but that's not the case at all. In fact, he put out an album this year called Pete Yorn Sings the Classics, going so far as to perform one of said classics on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in January, so there you go.]

I remember putting on musicforthemorningafter for the first time in what must have been, good lord, maybe 10 years or more, last night. I listened to it all the way through and then hit play and listened to it again and then hit play and listened to it again again. As the kids say, it "just hits different" when you're 38 years old instead of 19 years old. And seriously, that dude wrote some hooks. Also? He looks, like, really annoyingly good looking on the cover of the album. Great job all around, Pete Yorn.

I remember tweeting "oh man y'all remember pete yorn" around 7:30pm last night and goofing around with all the folks in my menchies while writing this essay. Thanks, as always, for reading it.