Only Success Can Fail Me Now

When I was in middle school, my family got satellite Internet. It was a big deal: we lived on unincorporated land without access to public water or sewage. Having dial-up was exciting enough, but I was ready to explore the Internet within our new 200-megabyte-per-24-hours threshold.

Typing that now, I want to laugh.

By far, the most exciting prospect of having "high-speed" Internet was the ability to find new music. LimeWire was finally within my reach! There were about a hundred different bands I wanted to listen to, so I got to downloading. I could queue up two, maybe even three songs for download, and they'd be on my computer in an evening.

I felt like royalty.

Because these early (and admittedly, illegal and ethically-questionable) downloads were so scarce, I listened to those few songs constantly. I can still remember most of them: "Messes of Men" by mewithoutYou, "Saltwater" by Beach House, and lots of other indie pop that I was so proud of.

I still love those songs. To be honest, I'm probably more "hip" and self-righteous today than I was as a thirteen-year-old, but more on this later.

One of the most memorable songs I found was called "Only Success Can Fail Me Now," by Quasi. (Interestingly, the band was formed by ex-husband and -wife Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss, later of Sleater-Kinney fame, who had decided they were better off as musical partners.) This song was one of their few I could find on LimeWire, and I snatched it up before listening obsessively. For months, I burned that song onto many mix CDs, because it was "cool" to listen to obscure bands from the Pacific Northwest.

At the same time, it was—and still is—a genuinely good song. Not the best song ever written, and maybe not even the best song on its album, but one that has stayed with me. Even now, a decade later, I find small surprises in the melody; the instrumentation. Who knows whether I'd feel the same appreciation if I listened to this song for the first time today? That's part of the beauty of truly loving a piece of music: it grows with you, through time and circumstance.

- "Only Success Can Fail Me Now" by Quasi, from Featuring "Birds" (1998)