25 Songs, 25 Days - Day 16: A Song That Has Made You Cry

I'm a fan of the golden oldies and am convinced this is why I tend to be able to connect with that generation better in my professional career. I grew up listening to bubblegum pop, classic rock, and rockabilly music. I've always enjoyed this era of music, especially the 70's, but really discovered a love of soul music before I even knew what it was. I later learned what it was during my internship for music therapy and it opened up a world of great music for me.

For this post I've chosen the soul song "Stand By Me," which I first heard in the movie of the same name, adapted from the Stephen King novella, The Body. I first saw this movie when I was probably no more than eleven, and it was on broadcast tv, so of course all the swearing was cut out, making it seem like a poorly edited movie to me at the time. When I actually saw the real version about ten years later, so much more made sense.

This song has always made me cry and I'm really not sure why. I could name many other songs that make me cry for different reasons, such as reminding me of lost loved ones or of a hard time in my life, but this one is one of the few songs that is just so beautiful that the melody itself makes me tear up every time. This makes it hard to use this song in my music therapy sessions as I have to be very cautious not to get too emotional and remain professional. I think it also speaks volumes that this is literally the only song (as of 2018) that has charted in the top 10 almost twenty-five years apart, with no modifications made to the recording whatsoever. What people heard on their radios in 1961 is the same as what we heard in 1986. Absolutely timeless.

25 Songs, 25 Days - Day 15: A Song You Love Singing Along To

When I was in college I spent a lot of time in my dorm hanging out with my neighbors, forming some close friendships. We would often spend time relaxing, just listening to music, sitting in the hallways talking. On one of these occasions I was in my across the hall neighbor's dorm and she was playing a song I didn't really recognize. She restarted the song, claiming, "You've got to hear the whole thing, from the beginning, this song is pretty awesome!" What I listened to ended up being eight and a half minutes of pure rock opera called "Paradise By the Dashboard Lights." I love singing along to this song, but seldom sing it at karaoke, as it really is meant to be a duet. When it's playing on the radio though, I belt it out, both parts, with no holding back.

25 Songs, 25 Days - Day 14: A Song That Reminds You of Your Boyfriend

I almost thought of skipping this day, or just making up a different topic for this day, but decided in the end that maybe it was a good thing to think of another song that reminds me of my boyfriend (husband). The reason being is that this topic and day 8 (first love) are the same person for me. As I stated in previous blogs, I never really fell in love until I met my husband, so he was my "first love" and would also be considered my "boyfriend." There are actually quite a few songs that remind me of him, so I will pick something a little different for this one. 

We both are huge fans of Earth, Wind, and Fire and it was actually one of the only bands that we had in common on our ipods/iphones when we started dating. This is one of their hits titled "Got To Get You Into My Life," which I actually included on the soundtrack when I put our digital wedding album together. It has such a fun, bouncy tune that is infectious from the start. The words really really describe what both of us were feeling before we met: 

I was alone, I took a ride
I didn't know what I would find there
Another road where maybe I
Could see another kind of mind there
Ooh, then I suddenly see you
Ooh, did I tell you I need you
Every single day of my life

We both had no idea what we were in for, but here we are four years later continuing this journey that we started back then. I think often we meet the love of our life at the exact moment we need them. My husband and I have talked about this at length, that if we had met at any other time previous in our lives, we would have never lasted. It was all about being in the right place at the right time.

25 Songs, 25 Days - Day 13: A Song That Reminds You of a Former Friend

"You have so many relationships in this life, only one or two will last, you go through all that pain and strife, then you turn your back and they're gone so fast"

I never knew the profoundness of these lyrics until recently when a lot of my friends just stopped wanting to be friends. No reason really, they just deleted me off of their account, told me to have a nice life, but otherwise no explanation. These were deep friendships too, as in a lot of them knew my deepest, darkest secrets. I've learned that you can't trust anyone to be there forever, you can only rely on yourself.

There is one that sticks out for me, mainly because I bonded with this person over a shared love of music. I'm not going to drop names, as I don't like giving real names on here, it's more of a privacy thing, but I will go so far as to say that this friendship was forged through hanging out with my brother when I got back from college. I've always had trouble making friendships and my brother invited me to hang out with some of "his" friends. Over time I started hanging out with one of them even when my brother wasn't, and we started to hang out on a regular basis. It got so that when him and his girlfriend knew I was coming over they would leave the door unlocked and I never knocked to enter his house. The few times I did, they both acted like I was crazy, I didn't need to knock. They called me family.

This one hurt more than a lot of my other friendships because I still to this day have no idea why they decided to stop being friends. One day I noticed that I had been unfriended by both of them with no explanation and no response on their cell phones. It hurt as bad as a breakup. This was a friendship that had lasted about six years, a friendship that had us hanging out almost every weekend, laughing together, crying together. We had a general understanding that we would do anything for each other. The first time I heard the artist Yelawolf was when my friend had bought the cd during a breakup with his gf and we spent all night trying to cheer him up, including an all nighter at Mystic. I immediately fell in love with the cd, especially this song.

25 Songs, 25 Days - Day 12: The Last Song You Heard

I was going to do this post the other night, and then I realized that I couldn't remember the last song that I heard. Right now I'm actually listening to music, so I'll post the song that's playing which is Breaking Benjamin's "I Will Not Bow."

This is actually my favorite band from the past, by that I mean that the current line-up is different than this one. They have a similar sound, as the singer is still the same, but the older stuff is still my favorite. My husband had actually never heard of them until I showed him some of their songs last week. This is one of the songs I showed him to introduce them, which he ended up liking and saying that it reminded him of Nirvana. While I don't agree that they sound like Nirvana, this was a step up from the usual response that all rock bands sound the same. This is also the band that I listen to at work when I'm having a bad day. For some reason this music helps me clear my head and makes me feel better. 

25 Songs, 25 Days - Day 11: A Song On the Soundtrack of Your Favorite Movie

I've always been a fan of musicals, so my favorite movie is a musical of course. I have several favorites, but one that never seems like it gets old is Moulin Rouge. It is almost 20 years old, and I still love every minute of it. I could pick so many different songs from this movie, but the one original song from this movie, Come What May, really resonates with me. I've had a lot of ups and down in this first year and half of marriage, as anyone will tell you always happens. In our marriage counseling, our pastor explained that something changes after marriage, you would think it stays the same, but something changes in the way you relate to each other. He was absolutely right, even though we sat there and said that we wouldn't be like that, we would always communicate if things started to get hard and things wouldn't get out of hand. That's worked so far, but I think it might not have to do with marriage even, but just time. Over time you get more comfortable with someone and marriage is saying that you commit to that relationship, come hell or high water, so you shouldn't have to work as hard to keep each other's interest anymore. This is the exact opposite in my experience. People will get on your nerves and next thing you find yourselves arguing about what color white paint looks best in the garage.

This song is a reminder to say no matter what happens, you will have love. I know that this doesn't always solve things, but it does say a lot when things seem so bad that you don't know how you are going to make it. As I said in an earlier post, we had a lot of hardships with buying a house. We actually almost lost our house when our sewer broke last winter. We started researching food shelters and doing anything we could to save a buck or two to make it to next paycheck. We took out an extra loan. In our darkest time, when we weren't sure if we were going to make it, I told my husband that even if we lost the house, which would be devastating, we would find a cheap apartment, sell off extra possessions that we didn't need, and would still have our love for each other. We are still working it out every day because, let's face it, the economy is in the toilet, but we always make sure to say "I love you" to each other at least once a day. No matter what.

25 Songs, 25 Days - Day 10: A Song By Your Favorite Band

You can tell a lot about a person from the kind of music they listen to. As soon as you start to share your musical tastes, interests, and dislikes, people almost immediately start to judge you and question why you choose to listen to certain music. In the modern age of a song a minute, people are constantly trying to be hipsters, the more obscure the better. If your favorite band/artist is someone on the Top 40 you are immediately seen as someone that just follows the crowd. Some people will just choose obscure bands so that they can appear cool, while listening to Maroon 5 and Britney Spears on repeat behind closed doors.

For me it's hard to pick a favorite band. It's like choosing a favorite food, it's impossible to distinguish between different regions, just like with music it's hard to distinguish between genres. Usually my favorite has been hard rock in the past, so I'll go with my favorite band in that genre. Currently one of my favorites is Set it Off, which is a lesser known band, but I first fell in love with their music when I listened to one of their songs and thought I was listening to a new Panic At the Disco song. Since I posted about that group in my last post, you can listen to both and see how similar they sound sometimes. The name of the song is called Duality from the album of the same name, the video showing how often there are two sides to every person, and also serves as a warning to anyone that treats you wrong, you might get the evil side. Sums up how people are often a combination of things and can't be defined by just one characteristic, in other words, don't judge a book by its cover. Just because you listen to Top 40 doesn't make you shallow and listening to obscure bands at the local cafe doesn't make you a hipster. We are a little bit of everything rolled into one.