Much ado’s been made about Norwegian darling Ane Brun for the past few years, though I’ll admit I first stumbled upon her two months ago when I randomized my playlist and she queued up after Australia’s The Go-Betweens.

When The Go-Betweens released Oceans Apart last year I didn’t particularly care for much of it. Oh sure, I danced to “Here Comes a City” along with the rest of the indie world, pumped my fist at the “hey hey hey’s!” as though Robert Forster and Grant McLennan were oi-punk rockers instead of what they really were—a pair of guys who won that year’s ARIA for Best Adult Contemporary Album.

Still, within that fairly innocuous album lay a song titled “Finding You.” Its opening lyrics, “What would you do if you turned around and saw me beside you / Not in a dream, but in a song / Would you float like a phantom or would you sing along” stopped me in my tracks. In those forty seconds they’d voiced something I’d often wondered about.

Like so many music enthusiasts, it’s impossible for me to become close with people without somehow imparting components of my music collection. Usually this is well-received and the songs (and experiences associated with them) become something that binds us to one another.

So imagine my surprise when my best friend and I went to separate colleges and she said she probably wouldn’t keep many of the songs I’d given her. Back then, those were most of the songs on her hard drive, and for me this was the auditory equivalent of throwing away a photograph. It was a terrible moment—to think my association with it had killed music someone else had grown to love. In my embarrassing teenage angst, I glowered and asked myself whether this was what happened when people moved away or apart.

Enter Ane Brun.

“Humming One of Your Songs” is the first track on 2003’s Spending Time with Morgan. It opens with the lyrics, “I am walking / I am walking along / And I am humming / I am humming one of your songs.” I didn’t need much more. It was the answer I’d yearned for. Whether the two songs shared more than the question/answer relationship my shuffle key and I had foisted upon them was irrelevant. Ane Brun had seemingly quelled a fear of mine. I’d wanted to know that, when faced with a chance encounter, the people no longer close to me wouldn’t close their ears at a song we’d shared. I don’t assume this applies to everyone, but even if I never meet her, it’s nice to know there’s someone who chooses to hum along.

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