51 to 51
52 to 52
53 to 53
54 to 54
55 to 55
Fiction
50 to 50
Call Me Maybe (Carly Rae Jepsen) - Day 50
November 1, 2015•0 commentsFirst up, to start off, and forgive me that it’s a day late, I begin with Carly Rae Jepsen. It’s a happy song and a catchy tune and don’t tell me you never caught yourself singing along. And it reminds me of a moment in the early nineties, way before CRJ was even born, on a night out when I first laid eyeballs on a particular guy and garnered the cojones to go and say hello and ask for a piece of gum. I slipped him my digits on a napkin and said, “so, call me, if you want...” And he did!So song #50 is Call Me Maybe.
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Wonderful (Gary Go) - Day 49
November 2, 2015•0 commentsPresenting a great song with great lyrics on those days when you feel less than what you really are. It’s a good song to bring you back to the earth, to plant your feet and tighten that upper lip.This is Wonderful by Gary Go from 2009. A tough start to the year, promise found toward the end.If what you’ve lost cannot be foundAnd the weight of the world weighs you downNo longer with the will to flyYou stop to let it pass you byDon’t stop to let it pass you byYou’ve got to look yourself in the eye andSay I am, Say I am, Say I am wonderful‘Cause we are all miracles wrapped up in chemicalsWe are incredible
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Love Is A Battlefield (Pat Benatar) - Day 48
November 3, 2015•0 commentsIn 1983, the year I graduated from PMHS, this song burst onto the video airwaves and all over the radio and I was blown away. I already knew the power of Pat Benatar’s voice, but this was something new, something completely unexpected... to me, at least. It hearkens back to a sense of freedom as well as connection to home. It will always remind me of my dear friend Maria, without whom I couldn’t have made it through those hellish woodsy high school years.We are young, heartache to heartache we standNo promises, no demandsLove is a battlefield
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There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (The Smiths) - Day 47
November 4, 2015•0 commentsTake me out tonightwhere there’s music and there’s peopleand they’re young and aliveIt touched such a personal part of my closeted soul and empowered me to break those doors down. It kind of still does. The helplessness and near hopelessness of Morrissey’s voice, the lullaby of the synths, it all just mixed to become one of my favorite songs in one of the most important eras of my life - coming out.Back in those closet days I had met a man with whom I’d meet up and we would drive around Malverne in his car, just talking as well as sitting in silence. He was in a relationship, and I was young and scared, but somehow on those rare occasions we’d help one another to feel connected to something. This song tells my story.And in the darkened underpass, I thoughtOh God, my chance has come at lastbut then a strange fear gripped me and I just couldn’t askIn my opinion, this is the song that proved to me that #ItGetsBetter.
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Kids In America (Kim Wilde) / No More Words (Berlin) - Day 46
November 5, 2015•0 commentsf you’re old enough to remember bopping around in your shitty car to either of these songs from the early eighties, then maybe you get the same ecstatic feeling I get when I hear them come on the radio. That’s why today’s ‘song’ is a set of songs from two powerhouse females of the eighties, Kim Wilde and Teri Nunn (Berlin).Kids In America is from 1981, so admittedly I wasn’t doing the driving back then, Karen was (“Fuck you, Mrs. Goetz!”), and No More Words is from a little later on. It was still a Karen time, but also a Cristine era.We were the rebel youth (or maybe we thought we were!) hanging out at Dance Parc, a building that looked like a castle. Tons of songs flood the memory from this era, but these 2 crunchy new wave pop monsters rise to the top of the crop. Enjoy!
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Lovesong (The Cure) - Day 45
November 6, 2015•0 commentsThere’s something about the melody of this song that pops. There’s something about the haunting honesty in the voice of Robert Smith. There’s something about the year 1989, which was pivotal for me and my independence. A love song by a band notorious for songs that are basically about jumping to your death? Unheard of. This is Lovesong by the Cure.However far awayI will always love youHowever long I stayI will always love youWhatever words I sayI will always love youI will always love youFly me to the moon…
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Beautiful Day (U2) - Day 44
November 7, 2015•0 commentsThe early 2000’s were a definitive and tumultuous time for us as Americans, but they were also unsettling and scary for me as every day forward was another day further apart from my then-partner. We had shared so much and bonded over the worst thing to ever happen to either of us – the death of our ‘sister’ a few years earlier. It was exhausting trying to figure out a way to leave without ending the relationship. Crazy, right? Most people shut it off like a light switch or pull it off like a band-aid; not me. We’d had too much invested; there were too many common family and friends. Beautiful Day by U2, released at the end of 2000, is a song of celebration and hope for what we can achieve. I was able to relate to the hope, that he and I could salvage all the good parts of what we’d shared and maybe morph it into something else. Looking back, we actually pulled it off. And then the terror attacks of September 11th happened. Our nation was charged with fear, uncertainty and sorrow. And this song, still all over the airwaves, rang through with sounds of hope of what we all can achieve.
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Easy (The Commodores) - Day 43
November 8, 2015•0 commentsThis entry should be really easy. The song, Easy by the Commodores, has all the makings of a pop/R&B classic: Lionel Richie on vocals, a soft seventies groove, and a beautiful, rolling melody.There is a beautiful electric guitar bridge that makes me swoon, and a chord change near the end. It's a song about just being who you are, that it's just so much easier than pretending to be who others want you to be.I used to be able to kick the shit outta some karaoke of this song, including Lionel's "EWW!"PS: This isn't the last you've seen of Lionel on this countdown, but you knew that, didn't you?
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Never Gonna Give You Up (Rick Astley) - Day 42
November 9, 2015•0 commentsYou'll call it getting Rick-rolled, but whatevs. EVERY time this AMAZING song comes on the radio it gets cranked and I don't care how gay that is. That's how Honey Badger I am about loving Never Gonna Give You Up.He was the king of VH1 at the time when VH1 played his kind of music, and I was all about it - a gingery white dude with a baby face and the voice of a soul singer? Done. Then you see that video and you realize you could totally have beaten him up in school. But nope, that infectious song stole my damn heart in 1987 and I was hooked, a fan of that ginger-Brit for good.
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