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?

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