Personal time machine.

*shuffle songs*

A couple chords, the all too familiar "oh, her eyes, her eyes" and it's junior year all over again, from the front seat of a blue Mazda listening to the boy you like talk about hockey and tease you about failing AP Biology on our way to another hockey game.

*skip*

"Some songs will always be better live," you think as What if You Don't comes on and you and your best friend are hearing it for played live for the first time and you get the same goosebumps you did then.

*skip*

It's the one you played on repeat the night he broke your heart.

*skip*

It's the middle of August, but Jay Z and JT will always feel like the Fourth of July and pulling into Huntsville with Nan and Hillary after Holy Grail played on the radio for the first time.

*skip*

Jon Mclaughlin sings "You're in my arms, and all the world is calm" and that same boy is dancing you around the parking lot in the rain and those three minutes and 52 seconds are the sweetest thing your 17-year-old self has ever seen and six years later you hope he's happy.

*skip*

"Tonight! Tonight! There's a party on the rooftop, top of the world" and you crack a smile that's partially a wince because this one feels like running 11 miles and you'd like to get it over with.

*skip*

A foreign rhythm starts playing and now it's 3 am on the Devil's Backbone and you and your best friends have your Pussycat Dolls parts down cold and can perform them on demand months later even though you still don't really know what "Jai ho" or "Baila baila" mean.

*skip*

You laugh out loud when Enrique tells you he can be your hero because you remember the boy who sang this one to you over the phone when you were in ninth grade.

*skip*

It's the one you played the night you broke his heart.

*skip*

Your hidden love for Avril Lavigne doesn't hide very well while you yell about how you still think you would have been a better girlfriend, despite the fact that you were in 8th grade then and being his girlfriend probably would have made it hard for him to still be your friend after almost 15 years.

*skip*

You catch your breath as the Dirty Guv'nahs sing about meeting her halfway to Birmingham because those words feel like leaving what you love, and when Spotify put it on your Year in Review as a "You ventured into the unknown with this track," you couldn't help but think that's exactly what it had felt like when you met the boy who showed it to you.

*skip*

A new favorite comes on, with lyrics you can't sing all the way yet and key changes you don't quite know and you let this one play through, because right now, it's just a song, not yet a part of the time machine.