The six songs Justin Vernon couldn’t live without
As the frontman and primary songwriter of Bon Iver, Justin Vernon has soundtracked some of modern music’s most introspective works.
His emotional resonance bears the weight of someone deeply in tune with his inner thoughts, the good and the bad, and channels such through music as a way to communicate what there are often no words for. Though rooted in folk music, Bon Iver’s output spans into electronic, rock, pop and more. Regardless of which sonic vision Vernon chooses to veer into, his music has proven timeless, all harnessing a familiar comfort. It is fitting, then, that the music Vernon says has saved his life all captures a similar quality.
Curating a list for BBC’s Radio 1: Songs That Saved Me, Vernon begins with a track that, while new to him, came about at the ideal time in his life: Ry Cooder’s ‘Drive Like I Never Been Hurt’. Vernon explains that he has been a fan of the famed musician his whole life, introduced to his virtuosity by his friend and “musical teacher”, Phil Cook, but only heard of this particular track about two years ago.
“I was kind of going through a rough patch and coming off of 15 years of overexposure and exhaustion from touring, and just not doing that well,” Vernon explains. “It wasn’t exactly rock bottom, but… I was having a tough time seeing how I could get back up and get back into life again. I just wasn’t feeling very strong. And this song… once I went on and I heard it, and the knob in the car went up, it didn’t get turned off for a few days, a few weeks.”
‘Drive Like I Never Been Hurt’, released in 2008, was written by Cooder and his son, Joachim. The title, alone, struck a chord with Vernon, who felt inspired by its message of perseverance. “It’s like, you kind of have to fake it ‘till you make it,” he says. “If you’re in a tough period of time or you’re at the end of a long race, a long test, in your life, you have to push and you gotta drive like you’ve never been hurt. And it says it in the title: you have been hurt, but you have to drive like you’ve never been hurt.”
The lyrics are assembled with metaphors for piecing together parts of a car, an image that Vernon has often invoked to compare to the life of a musician, spent largely on the road, performing, but waning in the energy to do so. “You talk to plenty of touring musicians who get burnt out,” he reflects, “And I’ve always said, when you’re up there and you’re singing, [and] you don’t really have the strength to be doing what you’re doing, it’s like running a car with no oil. So, this song just got me lit up, got me on my feet again.”
Vernon’s second pick is an Aretha Franklin classic, ‘You Send Me’, released in 1968. Originally written and performed by Sam Cooke in 1957, the song eventually found its way to Franklin and has since become a defining soul record, covered numerous times, though Franklin’s is one of the most essential. Vernon discovered Sam Cooke’s music, once again, through his friend, Phil Cook, and the two studied his recordings and production work with Black gospel groups of the early 1960s.
He says, “We became obsessed with Sam and all his music, and then, of course, that brought us to young Aretha Franklin. When she was doing not secular music but gospel music as a 19-year-old person, we just gobbled it all up. But as Aretha found her voice was too powerful to just stay in the gospel space, she started making secular music.”
Both Cooke and Franklin would begin in the gospel music realm, but grow from it and hone their voices in the process. ‘You Send Me’ was Cooke’s departure, but it would become a massive success and earn him his sole number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Though Vernon warns of Franklin’s version, “If you listen to this song in your car, you might drive too fast.”
Rickie Lee Jones’ ‘The Horses’ is the song that Vernon deems his “number two favourite song of all time”. Though released on Jones’ 1989 album, Flying Cowboys, the song’s inclusion in the 1996 film Jerry Maguire would be Vernon’s proper introduction.
“Over the next year,” Vernon says, “I went deeply into Rickie Lee Jones’ music, and I find her to be one of the true visionaries—and I don’t use that word lightly—of American music. And this is just my favourite personal track of hers.”
For Vernon, ‘The Horses’ evokes memories of being in high school, captain of the American football team, driving home after a winning game. “I would have been exhausted, and it would be like 15 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and the windows would be down, and I would be so cold, but I would have this song just the loudest it could go, and I would play it over and over and over again,” he remembers.
“The song just made me feel so thankful that there was that much beauty,” he adds. “You know, I loved my team, I loved playing that game, I love being under the Friday Night Lights of it all, and it just felt like nothing could touch me, and that song is the soundtrack to that.”
Vernon follows with a Nina Simone song that he sees as somewhat underrated, having not been popular when he was growing up, but one that introduced him to a new side to the musician: 1969’s ‘Seems I’m Never Tired Lovin’ You’. “Nina had her straight-ahead jazz period and whatnot, but I never really understood her piano playing as to be a centrific part of her sound until I heard this record,” he reflects. ‘Seems I’m Never Tired Lovin’ You’ is the opening song on Nina Simone and Piano!, originally written by Caroyln Franklin.
“I don’t think husbands walk down the aisle, but if I do walk down the aisle, it’s going to be to this song,” Vernon declares. “It’s just such a beautiful sentiment. Her piano playing is unlike anything else, and when you have a piano player that has their own unique voice on the piano, and as deep as her knowledge of music goes, on top of having the most gifted and haunting voice in human history, when she sings a song like this, I am transported and it’s proof of love.”
Vernon was on tour with Mk.gee and Dijon when, after one night’s show, Dijon pulled him aside to listen to a song: Little Feat’s ‘Long Distance Love’. As Vernon recalls, “It was one of those things where I was like, ‘How is this real? How have I never heard this song?’ It’s a perfect song.” Reverberating in Vernon’s mind, ‘Long Distance Love’ followed him when he moved to Los Angeles for a time, playing it on a loop as he settled into his home.
“From when I woke up, loud as hell, all the way to when I went to bed, for three days in a row,” he said. “I didn’t change the song. It’s one of those rare songs that’s a perfect loop; you wanna hear it again, every single time, for me.” Vernon describes Little Feat’s intriguing roots in, as he explains, “This kind of Mississippi cross-pollination, cross-racial line soul thing going on”.
“It’s just a song that was the right place, the right time, and spoke to me,” he reflects, “And really did save me from careening.”
On a similar, sentimental note, Ogi’s ‘IKYK’ is a recent song that was a true saviour of Vernon’s in the aftermath of touring. The song appears on the singer-songwriter’s debut EP, Monologues, and found Vernon at home, where he was left to reconcile with the mounting tensions of heartache, confusion, isolation and anxiety. He quite literally did not know what to do with himself.
“We have this pull barn, this kind of shed, that’s just full of stuff that has accumulated over the years. Quite a metaphor,” he explains. “And… I’m not exaggerating: I heard this song, I don’t even know how I heard it, by Ogi, and I put it on and I didn’t turn it off for a week. Every morning, I would wake up, exercise, have a little decaf, and I would head to the barn and organise the barn for a whole week.”
At a time when Vernon’s anxiety had reached an unbearable peak, leaving him feeling stagnant, Ogi’s tune was a reminder of light in the darkness. “It was at this moment in life where… when you have anxiety so bad, you don’t know what to do with yourself, you just feel like any moment now, you could just burst into flames or, you know, disappear from the Earth,” Vernon admits.
Adding, “And this song brought joy to a place I thought there was no way light could make it to anymore. I really thought it was over; not that I was going to die or that I had ideations, or anything like that. I was just like, well, there’s no life left… Where is there going to be green to come from with this sullied soil, you know? And this song quite literally became my friend for this week, and all I did was clean the garage.”
See the full list of Vernon’s picks below.
The songs Justin Vernon couldn’t live without:
- Ry Cooder – ‘Drive Like I Never Been Hurt’
- Aretha Franklin – ‘You Send Me’
- Rickie Lee Jones – ‘The Horses’
- Nina Simone – ‘Seems I’m Never Tired Lovin’ You’
- Little Feat – ‘Long Distance Love’
- Ogi – ‘IKYK’
