#97, "I Still Love You Julie," Against Me! (2001)

150 Favorite Songs: #97, "I Still Love You Julie," Against Me! (2001)

I’m old enough to remember when Against Me! was a weird little folk-punk band from Florida, releasing records on a small indie label out of Indiana, playing basement shows and anarchist bookstores and captivating people by being one of the first bands to really successfully make punk rock played on acoustic instruments that still really sounded and felt like punk rock.

You can hear that on “I Still Love You Julie,” even though the guitars are plugged in here. I liked the band, but I wasn’t as deeply attached to them as some of my friends were, so I didn’t have strong feelings about it when they metamorphosed from a band that made songs that sounded like “I Still Love You Julie” to the kind of band they became when they signed to a major label—a sort of epic, Springsteen-by-way-of-Crass thing—but this song always meant a lot to me.

That opening line—"last night, a room full of drunks / sang along to the songs I never had the courage to write"—it's something I've always related to. Another one: "We're not going to call everyone on their shit tonight / even though half of you won't even smile / the next time we pass on the street." I've never really felt comfortable in the punk rock scenes I've found myself a part of. It always felt like at least half of what I was doing there was anthropology, and the scene politics and constant one-upping that occurs among certain members of those communities are just exhausting. And so I liked that there was a punk rock song by a band that was very much a part of those sort of insular scenes, but that sang about it honestly. Because a part of me, sure, wanted to be the one whose songs everyone was singing along to. And a part of me knew that even some of the people I'd had some really positive one-on-one conversations with would treat me like an asshole if their friends were around because, like Laura Jane Grace, I also liked Bruce Springsteen as much as I liked Crass.

This song came out when I was twenty-one. I was just about past trying to find a home for myself in anyone's punk rock scene at that point, but the thing I really love about it is that it acknowledges all of the things I felt—but it doesn't define those communities by the petty hypocrisies or frustrating demand that everyone constantly prove themselves as punk enough to fit in. Because despite all of the rampant problems with punk rock scenes, and the parts of it that can be really harmful to the young people who end up on the wrong side of the politics and various cults of personality inherent to them, it's also a thing that changes, and saves, a lot of lives. A lot of outcast kids who need some sort of community find it there—and so we're not gonna call everyone on their shit tonight. Yeah, it's probably a scam. We can admit it. But: "Maybe somehow this scam will still save us all," Laura Jane Grace sings, and for a lot of people I knew—not me, and not everyone—it did. Keeping your eyes open about a thing's flaws without dismissing it is, I think, one of the keys to learning how to conscientiously enjoy a lot of things in life. And maybe it's a way to try to make those things better, too.