i close my eyes and count to ten

Can you sum up 10 years of your life in one CD?
The topic came up tonight at dinner with La Lasher. Seems she's recently reconnected with a friend she hasn't seen since high school, which led to the promise to make a mixed CD to capture the last, oh, decade they've missed.
I decided I'd break my CD down by year: 10 songs for 10 years. On the subway home, a few possiblities fell into place:

1995 "In Between Days," The Cure, in honor of my old roommate, Mark, who introduced me to the group

1997 "They Can't Take That Away From Me," Ella Fitzgerald, which is a song about being further down the "bumpy road of love" but knowing you've traveled through something meaningful

1999 "Believe," Cher, which I realize makes me a Big Fag ©, but the song perfectly sums up the summer I spent just about every Saturday night at the Armory, dancing like one

2002 "My Imagination," Ceevox, perhaps my favorite club song ever

2003 "Babylon," David Gray, a song that makes me think of late nights in my bedroom on 7th Street

Revisiting those years turns out to be deceptively difficult, to trigger the Wayback Machine of your mind and try to tune into the one track that somehow captures the weight of a full year.
Of course, this isn't the final list, but it's small start.