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In Love With That SongWestbergesque

The thing about I Will Dare

By 10.Sep.072 Comments

tattoed love girl
This is one of my tattoos. I got it on the fifth anniversary of my Web site iwilldare.com. It’s the Chinese characters for the words I and Dare.

You really gotta love a song to get its title (apparently the Chinese have no character for the word will) permanently etched into your body. And I really love this song.

I think it was sometime in 1999 when I decided “I Will Dare” was my song. I had decided that I was going to start one of them new-fangled blogs and was in search of a domain name. This was back before the days of blogspot or typepad or livejournal or you get the idea.

I spent weeks brainstorming domain names with my friend Orange Tim. My first choice, jodi.com was taken. So I came up with all kinds of stupid names and to each one, he would reply, “Really, is that it?”

And I would say, no. Because it wasn’t. Then while sitting at work answering phones for my crappy customer service job, I e-mailed him three words.

I Will Dare.

That’s it! He replied, and he was right. It was absolutely perfect. The song is absolutely perfect.

From the moment you hear that opening jangly bit of I Will Dare, it’s hard to repress a smile. The song is so light, so happy, and so unWesterbergian in its optimism.

I wish I could put into words the way my heart beats differently every single time I hear this song. Every time. Even after hearing this song roughly 93,191 times (it’s the ring on my phone), I still smile and bob my head.

What I love is how in the beginning it’s so tentative, “if you will dare, I might dare.” But by the end, it’s all fuck it, “if you will dare, I will dare.” It’s just hopeful, and I think that’s what I love the most.

Jodi

I am the queen of the underground, a bad ungrateful bunny.

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