When there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire
The same concert twice, 20 years apart
In high school, a dusty, paint-smeared CD player perched on a cabinet in the art room. It moved around sometimes, depending on the listeners’ proximity to the still-life setups, tangled extension cords sprawled in its wake. Piles of burned albums and mixes surrounded this CD player—some unmarked and anonymous, some with full track lists scrawled concentrically. Like offerings at an altar, like large coins shimmering at the bottom of a fountain, they were objects both anointed and abandoned.
For those of us who spent many hours in the art room layering colors on never-ending oil paintings, blending charcoal drawings into tonal submission, and succumbing to the fumes of turpentine and fixative, the CD player was company in solitude and a collective vibe-maker during class. It looked ready to fall apart at any moment, yet I imagine most sacred things are gilded in purpose but humble in appearance. When it started skipping, we blew into it, applying the same ritual for birthday wishes, for CPR.
It was through this CD player where I first listened to the indie darlings of the aughts—notably Room on Fire by The Strokes, Give Up by The Postal Service, and Final Straw by Snow Patrol. But not just indie rock—I played my dad-gifted copy of Jay-Z’s The Black Album on this machine for the first time. I was both surprised and delighted when my art teacher popped in Mary J. Blige’s No More Drama from her own collection. Mixes would appear and disappear, a roulette of teenage tastes all spun into the greater community soundtrack, but largely experienced alone.
We “burned” CDs when we transferred MP3s onto discs. I think of how permanent and smoldering the language is, and how it’s all the more fitting for it. Those albums branded me. Those songs seared into the memories of brushstrokes and their weeping residue.
I remember finding one such CD labeled “Stars - Set Yourself on Fire.” It was fairly common for me to encounter an unknown album in this pile of CDs. I had no context for this band, just the foreign intimacy of a stranger’s handwriting.
The album’s opening line is a fiery declaration:
“When there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.”
When I listened to music as a kid, I often felt the gaps between my own life experience and the stories of lyrics. For example, the first time I heard “Too Close” by Next, I was clutching the edges of a roller rink at my friend’s 10th birthday party. I decided I liked the song. I had no idea what any of it meant. In a recent conversation with a friend, we both broke down in laughter realizing we thought the lyric was, “baby when we’re crying” instead of “baby when we’re grinding.” We had no idea what “grinding” meant until we got older, and then the song from the roller rink became a song for a hormonal dance floor. (A canon elder millennial event.) At 17, I didn’t know what it meant to have nothing left to burn, nor why anyone would opt for self-conflagration, only that it sounded desperate and profound. I imagined one day, after I had lived more of my life I would understand, like that spark of recognition when crying morphed into grinding, when something I perceived as sad would be uncloaked as pleasure all along.
Thematically, Set Yourself on Fire is about a breakup. The album displays swelling strings and sighing lyrics that range the spectrum of getting over someone, from sexy-spiteful to grateful-acceptance. The lead singers duet, adding dual perspectives to their collapse of love. The twee-ness that characterized a lot of indie music from that time sticks to the sound like a mouthful of caramel, cloying but rich. Its sentimentality sometimes makes me squirm, yet, I feel a softness towards it, like a past-self I used to judge but now afford more grace.
It was a breakup that gave me the opportunity to see Stars in concert nearly 20 years ago. Winter of college freshman year, my friend planned to see Stars with her new boyfriend and some friends from their dorm. When the relationship ended a few days before the show, she offered me her ticket and suggested I go with said friends. The question around her ex’s plans remained a mystery until he appeared at the venue, silent and downcast.
Despite my own (veiled) excitement—my first show in Chicago!—the mood of the group was understandably subdued. I’m sure I served as much of a reminder of a broken heart as the barrage of breakup songs performed before us. At the time, I had never experienced a breakup. My understanding of what my friend and her ex were going through felt like the words I sang with the rest of the crowd—a story I knew well but not mine to tell. I could only repeat the lyrics about love, I had yet to earn the right to pen them. And as I cringe-watched a couple near the stage making out with open mouths and eyes closed, I longed not for love, but for the experience of its loss.
I swung between two opposing feelings that night: alone and connected to a glorious, greater whole. Alone—because it felt more joyful to shed the awkwardness of the situation, to pretend it was just me and the music. Connected—because it was the first time I found myself in a crowd for a band I thought only existed to me. Only existed in the art room’s CD player. Later in college, I would learn Durkheim’s concept of “collective effervescence” and pinpoint that concert as perhaps the first time I truly felt it. I would spend the rest of my life as a moth to the flame of that all-consuming feeling. Set yourself on fire. That night was the first of many ways I learned to strike the match.
When I saw Stars’ tour announcement for the 20th anniversary of Set Yourself on Fire a few months ago, I did a double-take. What would it be like to see the same concert twice, 20 years apart? I’ve carried many songs through different stages of my life, layers of associations slathered on like thick paint with a palette knife. Some layers can bury others, mix colors, and affect memories. My only hesitation going to this show was the small fear that my initial, glowing memory would change. Would this next layer saturate the previous one?
My curiosity won. I bought my ticket and it felt like I was holding the other bookend to my early adulthood.
Going into the experience, I promised myself that I would not compare these concerts. How could I? But also, how could I not? It wouldn’t be fair, like trying to measure your small hometown against the great cities of the world. Or to weigh the start of the journey up to every adventure that occurred along the way. And yet, with each concert, I relive every concert. I have never felt this more acutely than at this show.
In my memory (of questionable accuracy), Stars opened its 2005 concert with the title track “Set Yourself on Fire,” or as I knew then, “track 2.” The upbeat bars cut through the crowd’s impatience after we waited nearly two hours for the band to appear. The ache of anticipation ebbed, and was quickly replaced by a surge of joy. The details I remember most are the teal and red lights. They cast out and lit the crowd before ensconcing the band in illuminated pyramids, fog machine in full, angelic effect. The glow and sound from the stage swallowed me whole with the rest of the swaying crowd. In 2024, the same teal and red lights during “Set Yourself on Fire” beamed into us, and I felt awed by the mirrored experiences. I wondered why that image still appeared in my mind so vividly, and why it felt so meaningful to live it again.
My nostalgia manifests in the pursuit of this rare symmetry. I fold the timeline of my life aligning these two points, adding to the existing creases. The memories stack like a contracting accordion. At this most recent show, my mind meanders through the past two decades. The breakups I lacked then are stories I’ve earned now, but I think less about love and more about other kinds of desire. The ways to burn that do not destroy. The spark that creates momentum, igniting greater ideas. The urge to start over that kindles the forest fire, purging decay for new growth. The fever of shame, finally broken by self-acceptance.
My sentimentality makes me squirm because I’m all too aware of the reasons I feed off of it. Too much and I start harvesting the softest parts of myself I want to protect. But in the final song of the set, I feast on it wholeheartedly. “This is a sing-a-long!” one of the lead singers shouts, as the band lines up at the front of the stage, performing a quiet, acoustic rendition of the album’s last track, “Calendar Girl.” We sing the culminating line of the song louder each time, and I choke back unexpected tears.
“I’m alive!”
“I’m alive!”
“I’m alive!”
I look down at the plastic bracelet the bouncer clasped to my wrist and reach back to the ink-stained, venue-stamped hand of my teenage self.
She’s back at it, folks! Wonderful! Was just talking about this perspective on art over time with Mary Gwen. You put it perfectly.
Exceptionally written!
One time in HS after track practice I found a burned CD on the grass, no cover or anything, and I stuck it in my car to see if it played. It ended up being my first time hearing jam bands that I would later find out were OAR and Dispatch, and I fell into a years-long rabbit hole. Love the YouTube algorithm now, but nothing like a bunch of teenagers bombarding each other with mixtapes.