'High Fidelity': Top five moments, and the desert-island songs that represent them, in chronological order
The article contains major spoilers for the Hulu series 'High Fidelity' (2020)
'High Fidelity' is coming to Hulu and this time it stars Zoe Kravitz as Robin 'Rob' Brooks who owns a record store in Brooklyn and is a failure at love, relationships and self-reflection.
Book, movie, musical, TV show. It’s the natural order of things, the way the world progresses. So now that we’re back here, and Rob is back to counting down the top-five most memorable heartbreaks, let’s get a top-five list of our own going.
Without further ado, the desert island, all-time, top-five most memorable moments from 'High Fidelity' and the songs that represent them, in chronological order, are as follows.
The Break-Up
If you thought this was going to start out easy, you were wrong.
The number one spot, the one that is reserved for the kind of humiliation and heartbreak that only a few are capable of delivering, needs that one song that really combines all the emotions of a painful gut-wrenching heartbreak with a baseball-bat-to-an-ex's-car kind of fury. Something that ebbs and flows with your emotions from slow contemplation to a cacophony of rage.
Something that’s the perfect start to a Monday morning playlist. On Tuesday. You know, after you've taken some time to fall apart first.
Let’s Take a Walk.
How do you figure out what’s messing you up, why you keep getting left hanging? How do you stop yourself from falling back into that destructive spiral that ends in self-loathing and confusion?
Problem, meet solution. It's a literal walk down memory lane. Because somewhere, amid all the past heartbreak, lies the answer to avoiding all future ones.
You're a genius, Rob.
This was a terrible idea. I messed up. Help me!
“Cause tonight is not about the future, it’s an homage to the past.” Okay, no, this was a terrible idea. Why would you do this to us, Rob? Who on earth said it would be cathartic to revisit the past? Because we’re here now. And it's horrible.
Why would anyone choose to do this to themselves?!
Now that we’re sufficiently self-hating and pining for everything and everyone we’ve lost as we scrape the bottom of a whole tub of ice cream: here’s a bonus.
The Complete and Unabridged Soundtrack of my Previous Life.
Have we gone over how this was a terrible, TERRIBLE idea? Now we're down several bottles of cheap wine crying over photos of us as younguns wondering how we turned out to be such a huge disappointment to that sweet kid who was so full of hope for the future. Mostly though, we're just wondering where it all went so darn wrong.
“Look no further, for I am the ballad of the lonesome loser.” Thank you for that perfect summary of this moment, Simon.
The Other Side of the Rock
If you ever get lost, if you find yourself stuck in a loop that you can’t get out of, remind yourself to get back to the other side of the rock. The good side. The happy side. The side where you’re not a screw up who keeps sabotaging a good thing before they get better.
“Now that it’s over, I can finally see / All things must change and remain / Like I know you do.” Okay, maybe we can admit that this wasn't the worst idea.
In conclusion: Sometimes the answer to what comes next lies in what has already passed. In patterns that we keep repeating until we can no longer take it anymore.
You know those "artists who reinvented themselves...in order to become themselves"? Well, now it's time for all of us including Simon, Cherise, Rob - especially Cherise (we're waiting on that mixtape) - to reinvent ourselves and slay.
'High Fidelity' premiered on February 14, 2020, and all episodes are now streaming on Hulu.
