Yesterday, I was alphabetizing thousands of dusty 45s. Some had gorgeous, shiny picture sleeves - a young and dashing Johnny Cash, Heart in their big-haired, shoulder-padded 80's splendor. Most looked like they were well-loved in their heyday. They had been slotted into jukeboxes, stacked next to stereos, crammed in bookshelves or crates, occasionally used as coasters or Frisbees. And yet, here they were decades later, getting organized, alphabetized.

When dealing with that volume, there are, of course, a few stand-outs.

I was caught off-guard by my reaction to finding Sting's Fortress Around Your Heart in the pile. I read the label, went to file it under 'S', and felt that surge of emotional memory. I was ten years old, inconsolably sad, and that song was on the radio.

Fortress Around Your Heart was released in 1985. My parents divorced that year. I was, in fact, ten.

Later, I was thinking about this musical trigger. Why do certain songs become linked to very specific emotional experiences? I never particularly liked Sting. As a ten year old, I think I was a little confused by this image of building a castle around someone's heart. I pictured Legos. Why this song and not Phil Collins' 1985 release Sussudio, which I also filed yesterday, under 'C'?

I told my husband about my unexpected emotional reaction to a Sting 45, and he shared a similar story. For him, it's Journey's Open Arms, and it also involves divorce.

I followed up with one more, also from 1985: Stevie Wonder's Part Time Lover always reminds me of Children of the Corn. I think I heard it while riding in the backseat of the gold Crown Victoria, returning the video rental, which I turned off midway through, because Malachai was far too scary for a ten year old.

That song still makes me feel scared and a little fragile.

Not a trivia question. Merely an observation that a good song can be interpreted by remixers, rappers, mandolinists, and, apparently, at least eight others.

I have no less than five version of this song on my iPod. I'm a tad obsessed with it. The sample is just hot - so catchy. In the Britney version, there's the iconic ping-pongy surf guitar, the bouncing chromatics in the background, the beat, those heavily processed soaring vocals. But no line detracts from any other; it's neither too chaotic nor too flabby. This song is layered so tightly it feels like abs of steel.

Over the holidays, I borrowed some Kanye West songs from my cousin, which he had borrowed from someone on the shared network in his dorm. (An assortment of songs, not full albums, with no regard for fidelity. The kids don't care.)

I kinda missed the Kanye bandwagon. My main exposure was hearing Gold Digger on the radio - the clean version, in which she ain't messing with no broke *broke*. Listening to the album version lifted from my cousin's iTunes library, in which it's more obvious with whom she ain't messing, caused me to appreciate the subtlety and clever wordplay that can emerge from the chokehold of FCC regulations.

When Kanye refrained from rhyming digger with the obvious, my pop-addled brain had to take that tiny fraction of a second to make the connection on its own. Ahh, I getchya, Kanye. The clean version is a wink. By winking, it's engaging.

Similar example: The first time I heard Hollaback Girl was on MTV on a Jet Blue flight from New York to New Orleans. This my shh... is sly, sexy. It's lingerie, not full-frontal nudity.

So, though I find the FCC's delineations between obscene, indecent and profane vague, verging on puritanical, and easy to misinterpret to suit one's (all too often evangelical) motives, and though I remain a fervent supporter of the First Amendment, I have to say.... the limitations have spurred creative manipulation of language by metaphor, meme and/or omission.