30 Day Song Challenge

My Favorite Song This Time Last Year

Day Thirty – My Favorite Song This Time Last Year:

Wow. I can’t believe it’s been 30 days of post­ing songs and videos on my blog. Okay … so I’ve inter­spersed a few posts in between the 30-​​Day Song Chal­lenge, but they were for good rea­sons. At least I think they were.

Regard­less, this now means I get to post another NaBloPoMo badge on my “Badges of Honor” page. Woo-frickin’-hoo!

Any­way, I hope you enjoyed fol­low­ing along with my music posts. As you can prob­a­bly gather by now, music has always played a big part in my life. Some­how, I can’t see my life being com­plete with­out hav­ing a song in my head and in my heart.

But today, really is about the last song I need to name. I have a hard time remem­ber­ing what I ate last night, let alone try­ing to remem­ber what song I liked this time last year. I mean, give me a break … I’m get­ting senile in my older years. Espe­cially since I have a birth­day com­ing up this week.

So instead, I’m post­ing my favorite song once again. Except this time, I actu­ally had time to put a video together for myself. So enjoy the slideshow below … as the descrip­tion I added on YouTube says, this video is:

A pho­to­graphic tale of my per­sonal rela­tion­ship with Hubby & with kids … and the fact that we can’t have any of our own. Resolv­ing that part has been hard on us, but now we know … “Apron Strings can be used for other things than what they’re meant for.” But I would like to think that other per­sons (whether they’re kids or not … ) can still be hap­pily “wrapped in my Apron Strings.”

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

 

A Song From My Childhood

Day Twenty-​​Nine – A Song From My Childhood:

I’m not sure why I always think of this song when­ever I reflect back on my child­hood. I could prob­a­bly bring up a ton of songs from my younger years, thanks in part to my par­ents’ own love of music. Or I could bring up some old sto­ry­book songs that my par­ents used to play on our record player.

Yes, oh younger ones, that’s what us older kids had for on-​​demand enter­tain­ment back in the day. No VCR’s back then, and TV pro­gram­ming that was dic­tated by the TV stations.

Which is prob­a­bly where I remem­ber see­ing “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” for the first time.

But really, the rea­son this song has such a firm grasp in the recess of my mind is because of this mem­ory I have of singing this song with my par­ents in var­i­ous loca­tions. I remem­ber singing it at home on the morn­ings or after­noons when Mom would put some Bea­t­les on the record player. And I remem­ber singing this song in our old sta­tion wagon while my Dad played his 8-​​tracks on those road trips to Lon­don, Ontario (or even that famed trip down to Dis­ney­world in the late ‘70’s).

So now every time I hear this song, I remem­ber singing this song at the top of my 5-​​year old lungs and hav­ing such a blast with my parents.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

A Song That Makes Me Feel Guilty

Day Twenty-​​Eight – A Song That Makes Me Feel Guilty:

Once upon a time when Emily was a young lass of twelve, her brother brought home a cas­sette tape by the Vio­lent Femmes. The emerg­ing 80’s alter­ative music lover (thanks in part to her older brother’s taste in music) loved the infec­tious songs recorded on that now-​​classic album.

There was one par­tic­u­lar song that cracked 12-​​yr old Emily up every time she heard it. It was a song that her brother loved to play over and over again, just to get a rise out of his “baby sister.”

One fine day, while blast­ing out the Vio­lent Femmes’ “Add It Up” on the stereo sys­tem, the sib­lings’ mother came rush­ing into the room. She pressed the stop but­ton on the cas­sette tape player and then took it out of the stereo sys­tem. She then pro­ceeded to throw said cas­sette tape down on the ground and smash it with one stomp of her heel.

From that day for­ward, every time Emily hears that song … she can’t help but feel just a tad guilty.

The other part of her looks back at that mem­ory and GRINS. Because really … how smart were those two sib­lings to play such a song in front of their mother?

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

Who knew that one day we’d be delin­quents in our Mom’s eyes?

 

A Song I Wish I Could Play

Day Twenty-​​Seven: A Song I Wish I Could Play:

Sim­ply no other words.

I just wish I could play it.

I wish we could live it.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was the other day’s song?

 

Dr. Bro & Me as Paul McCart­ney & John Lennon :-P

 

A Song I Can Play

Day Twenty-​​Six — A Song I Can Play:

Like most first-​​generation Filipino-​​Americans that spent the major­ity of their for­ma­tive years in the late 70’s and early 80’s, I took years and years of piano lessons. Yet even after all those years of lessons, I still can’t read notes quick enough; nor can I count out the cor­rect melody so read­ily. Unless, of course I already knew  how a par­tic­u­lar song was sup­posed to sound.

Yeah, I seam to have an “ear” for music, but not nec­es­sar­ily the tal­ent to actu­ally play music … at least not in the cal­iber I would need to in order to be that famous musi­cian I had always dreamed of becom­ing in high school.

Dur­ing one of the years I was play­ing a lot on the piano, I was able to fig­ure out how to play the music to Yaz’s “Only You.”

Now ask me if I know how to play the entire song now? Uhm … the answer would be “Nope.”

Which is really too bad, because I would love to start play­ing the piano again.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

A Song That Makes Me Laugh

Day Twenty-​​Five – A Song That Makes Me Laugh:

What more can I say about this song?

Or the Pix­ies, for that matter?

This song always makes me smile … so much that I’ve told Hubby that if we ever throw our­selves a Sil­ver Anniver­sary party, this would be our “entrance song” …

Come on now … who wouldn’t laugh at a song that starts out with telling you to “shake your butt”?

( “But not too hard … ” )

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

 

A Song I Want Played At My Funeral

Day Twenty-​​Four – A Song I Want Played At My Funeral:

It started a few years ago … prob­a­bly even longer. Come to think of it, Hubby &I prob­a­bly started to have dis­cus­sions about what song we’d want to have at our own funer­als shortly after we had seen “Love, Actu­ally” when Liam Neeson’s char­ac­ter plays “Bye Bye, Baby” by the Bay City Rollers at his recently-​​deceased wife’s funeral service.

When Hubby’s grand­mother passed away in Jan­u­ary of 2008, Hubby’s fam­ily had asked him to put together a slide show that they could take with them back to the Philip­pines, where his “Nanay” would finally placed at rest. But when you have a slide show, you must have accom­pa­ny­ing music to go with the slide show, right? So Hubby & I had come up with a hand­ful of songs to place on this DVD slide show: “Because You Loved Me” by Celine Dion was an obvi­ous choice. We also threw in Boyz II Men’s “A Song For Mama” for good mea­sure. (That song gets me every time!)

A few months after that project was com­pleted, Hubby told me about a song that came up on dig­i­tal music library. He had been miss­ing his Nanay when Rob Thomas’ “Now Comes The Night” came on. It was a song, he said, that was per­fect to play at a funeral.

A Hard Day … Last quiet moment together as a family

Of course, I had to lis­ten to the song right away … and when I did, I couldn’t help but think the same thing. Because, as sad as the song sounded, the lyrics were hope­ful and uplifting.

In fact, it’s a song I can lis­ten dur­ing the days when I miss my Dad the most. Because it reminds me that – even though he’s not phys­i­cally here next to me – he’s still with me in spirit.

So this would be the song that I’d like to be played at my own funeral … I want those fam­ily and friends to feel com­forted that I will still be with them, look­ing over them in the best way that I can.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

 

A Song I Played At My Wedding

Day Twenty-​​Three – A Song I Played At My Wedding:

One of the movie dates Hubby & I went on when we were still dat­ing was Aladdin. We had loved the humor of the movie so much (not to men­tion what cute­ness occurred dur­ing our show­ing of the movie) that it quickly became a favorite of ours.

A few months later, in one of my rare dis­plays of cre­ativ­ity … I sur­prised Future-​​Hubby with a nice roman­tic pic­nic on the floor of my dorm room. And since the movie was no longer in the the­aters, I hap­pened to find all the mak­ings of an Aladdin-​​themed pic­nic for a very mod­estly cheap, “I’m a broke col­lege student”-type price. To this day, Hubby & I look back on that “date” with such fond memories.

When it came time to plan our wed­ding, Hubby & I had no inten­tion of hav­ing any­thing but your stan­dard, middle-​​class Filipino-​​American recep­tion. We never thought that we’d asso­ciate a theme with our wed­ding. But in another one of my rare dis­plays of cre­ativ­ity (Hubby’s the one with the Fine Arts Degree … not me!), the thought of doing some­thing around an Aladdin theme came to mind. And luck­ily, Hubby thought the idea was also brilliant.

So … here’s what we did to make our wed­ding unique. First off, Hubby wanted to design our wed­ding invi­ta­tions; which, in 1996 was not a very com­mon thing to pull off. Sec­ond, we decided that our wed­ding favors would be in the shape of Aladdin’s magic lamp and con­tain pieces of candy inside of it. Thirdly … we wanted to use a musi­cal porce­lain fig­urine of Aladdin & Jas­min on the Magic Car­pet as our cake top­per. And finally, the fact that the fig­urine could wind up and play “A Whole New World,” which we decided would be our “First Dance” song … well that was the icing on the cake (both lit­er­ally and figuratively).

And that’s the song (one of many songs played that night) that we had at our wedding.

Here’s a video (seen on the Aladdin DVD) of how the song came to be …

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

A Song That I Listen To When I’m Sad

Day Twenty-​​Two – A Song That I Lis­ten To When I’m Sad:

There’s some­thing about music that can stir up the best and worst of emo­tions. Just like any INXS song can bring a smile to my face, so can another song drive me to tears.

I recently heard an episode of “Fresh Air” on NPR where Stephen Col­bert talked about how he took voice lessons to help train for his one-​​time /​ one-​​performance role in Sondheim’s pro­duc­tion of “The Com­pany.”  Col­bert, who grad­u­ated from North­west­ern Uni­ver­sity with a The­ater degree, said it was like hav­ing to retrain him­self after all these years; exer­cis­ing vocal cords and mus­cles that he hadn’t used in years. And while his vocal coach had taught him all the tech­ni­cal aspects of singing, he still hadn’t known how to sing with any “emotion.”

That is, until the day Colbert’s vocal coach told him to for­get all he learned, to not worry so much about “break­ing the rules” … he was told to sing “silly.”

And that’s when it clicked for Col­bert. From that moment, he was able to use his voice – a voice that was meant for musi­cal the­ater, accord­ing to Sond­heim – and fill it with all the emo­tions that were required for his character.

There are cer­tain recorded songs out there where you can “feel” the emo­tions behind the singer’s voice. Those are the songs that give you the goose bumps when you hear it … whether for the first time or the hun­dredth time.  Those are the songs that can make you cry; whether for joy or for sadness.

Those are the songs that can likely lift you up — even if it’s a sad song — out of the darkness.

James Blunt’s “Beau­ti­ful” does that to me. There’s some­thing about his voice, matched with the lyrics to this song that speak to me … that make me even the slight­est bit hap­pier when­ever I hear it.

Maybe it’s because Blunt talks about a chance encounter with a woman he will never know. Maybe it’s because it’s because he speaks of that moment with such rev­er­ence. But the way that Blunt sings his lyrics has a way of mak­ing me feel as if I could be that “angel” … that I could be that beau­ti­ful per­son who had caught some stranger’s eye and cap­tured this stranger’s imagination.

Now real­is­ti­cally, I know that’s absolutely untrue. (Who would look twice at me?) But I think it’s the pos­si­bil­ity that it could hap­pen that cap­tures my imag­i­na­tion … cap­tures my smile long enough for the wave of sad­ness to dissipate.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

A Song I Listen To When I’m Happy

Day Twenty-​​One – A Song I Lis­ten To When I’m Happy:

I’m not sure where I was when I first heard the Black Eyed Peas’ song, “Where Is The Love?” In fact, I’m pretty sure I liked the song more for its addict­ing beats and catchy cho­rus more than I did for the actual lyrics of the song.

What got me lis­ten­ing to the song over and over (and over) again was on a trip to Lon­don, Ontario for my cousin’s wed­ding back in May of 2004. The only decent tele­vi­sion sta­tion we could man­age to get in our hotel room was Much Music (Canada’s ver­sion of MTV) and that Black Eyed Peas video must have been on high rota­tion for that weekend.

Regard­less, it’s because of that week­end that I got a chance to lis­ten closely to they lyrics for the entire song. And every time I heard it, I could feel the “hip­pie chick” in me grow­ing stronger; the high-​​school and col­lege activist who wanted to make a change. Who thought she could make a change.

Not that I don’t think I could make a change today … Obvi­ously writ­ing and speak­ing up about infer­til­ity and liv­ing child-​​free as a first-​​generation Asian Amer­i­can (where infer­til­ity is a “taboo” topic) is one way that I can make a change  …

But hear­ing the Black Eyed Peas singing exactly what I had always thought in my head (and with a catchy dance beat, at that!)? That was refresh­ing; espe­cially know­ing that there are still peo­ple in the world that are try­ing to affect pos­i­tive change.

So that’s why I lis­ten to this song when I’m happy. It reminds me that there are times where you can feel down in the dumps … but if you at least try to change the sit­u­a­tion you might be, you can take that step for­ward in becom­ing a hap­pier person.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

What is with this 30-​​day song chal­lenge?

What was yes­ter­day’s song?

Next Page →

Admin Shtuff

Other Related Strings

Archives