Aaliyah, “Are You That Somebody”

A flashbulb memory is a detailed and vivid memory that is stored on one occasion and retained for a lifetime. Usually, such memories are associated with important historical or autobiographical events.

I still remember how I found out that Aaliyah had died. My dad picked me up from a slumber party at my best friend’s house (read: only friend) and when I sat in the front seat and clicked the seat belt he asked if I knew who Aaliyah was, and when I said yes he told me he had heard on the radio she had died in a plane crash. He always seemed surprised when I knew about pop culture, but I was his only conduit to that big, scary world of ~teens~. Sometimes he would ask me to explain the music playing on the radio stations I preferred; I don’t think he would’ve been able to identify an Aaliyah song without my help, or would have even known that I had her Tommy Hilfiger ads ripped out of magazines and posted on my bedroom wall, but he’d heard her age and correctly identified her as a singer I would have listened to from the cassette tapes I used to record of the radio playing for hours until I felt like I had enough material and would play it back while pasting those pages on my wall instead of doing my homework. We drove home and all my preferred radio stations were playing Aaliyah. That’s the memory I think of when this sad anniversary comes around, and I probably always will; I wonder if he remembers it too, and if today he would be able to identify an Aaliyah song without my help.