Love and Memories

This song was inspired by the movie The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, co-starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as a doomed couple who go through a scientific process designed to erase memories of their lives with each other. O.A.R. frontman Marc Roberge says, "I thought about how frustrating that is, if someone's trying to intentionally erase you from their memory, how painful that could be. But in the end, it's really impossible. And that's the lesson of the movie, obviously it's impossible to get rid of something that changes you. So 'Love and Memories' was about this couple, this woman was trying to get rid of this guy from her life, and in reverse he was trying to do the same thing. I just thought that was very interesting. I wanted to play off it a little bit."

In a move that was slightly calculated, Marc explains that this song was designed to get radio play. "That was a very interesting time, because we were finding ourselves under a lot of pressure to make the new record that was gonna pop it over a little bit. It was the first time in our careers we were kind of worried about that. We wanted to get on the radio for once. We were frustrated. So we started writing songs that were a little more rock mood. That was the mood that we were in at the time, anyway. It wasn't like we were changing everything for the sake of changing, but we were in that world. But when we wrote 'Love and Memories,' we just said, Okay, here was a song that we really love that also happens to sound good for the radio. You should have heard some of the other ones, they were terrible," he laughs. "This one was good. It worked, and we went for it. 'Love and Memories' is like a utility. I love the song, I get the story, I was totally into it. But it worked to get us where we are now. We're like the luckiest guys in the world."

In the beginning, O.A.R.'s songs were lyrically dense and rather long (see "That Was A Crazy Game of Poker"). Then Marc entered a phase where he began to really study and appreciate the art of lyric writing. This song was one of the first to emerge from that time. "I really got inspired by working on this record, and writing 'Love and Memories' and things like that. It was a tough thing to have to do, but in the end I really learned to appreciate the art of songwriting. And then over the next two or three years I really got into it. I mean, I was really into dissecting people's songs and melody. Like the Beatles, I mean, they've got 2-minute songs, 3-minute songs, and they are melodically perfect with all these cool parts. But they're very simple in a way, too. I thought that was really cool, so for a couple of years that's really all I was doing. And then toward the end of the songwriting process for the All Sides record, I said, Okay, I'm ready to expand." (Check out our full interview with Marc Roberge.)