The Music of My Life – 2005

Welcome back to The Music of My Life, where I feature ten songs from each year of my life. In most cases, the ten songs I choose will be ones I like personally (unless I explain otherwise). The songs will be selected from Billboard’s Year-end Hot 100 Chart, Acclaimed Music, and will all be released in the featured year.

I turned 35 in 2005. There was plenty going on in my personal life at this time. We were doing various therapies for my son, who had been diagnosed as being on the Autism spectrum. I had settled into my position at 94-5 The Moose in Saginaw as their afternoon guy and music director. I was certainly loving that. And at some point during the year, my mother’s cancer returned.

At the time, My Space was pretty popular. I was blogging a lot on there. Somewhere, I have a Word document with every one of those blogs. I had to contact them to get them. I had stopped posting there after joining Facebook, and at some point they moved content. I was thankful to get those blogs as they covered the time leading up to my wedding, the birth of my sons and the death of my mom.

I posted a lot about new songs we were playing on the radio, too. A few of them make this list. Let’s head into 2005:

The legendary Ray Charles passed away in 2004, but before he did, he recorded an amazing duets album. Genius Loves Company was the best selling recording of Charles’ more than 50-year career. It was a collection of duets with Norah Jones, Natalie Cole, Elton John, B.B. King, Gladys Knight, Diana Krall, Michael McDonald, Johnny Mathis, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor.

The album entered the Top 10 on the US album chart more than 40 years after Charles’ previous appearance on that same chart. This broke the record held by another act who also made his comeback with a duets album. In 1993 Frank Sinatra’s Duets reached the Top Ten 25 years after his previous Top 10 album.

Here We Go Again was a song that Ray had recorded in 1967. Then in 2004 he re-recorded this as a duet with Norah Jones for Genius Loves Company. She recalled collaborating with Charles on this song in a 2010 interview with Billboard magazine:

“I got a call from Ray asking if I’d be interested in singing on this duets record. I got on the next plane and I brought my mom. We went to his studio and did it live with the band. I sang it right next to Ray, watching his mouth for the phrasing. He was very sweet and put me at ease, which was great because I was petrified walking in there.”

This song won Grammy Award for Record of the Year and Best Pop Collaboration in 2005 eight months after Charles passed away. In addition Genius Loves Company was awarded Album of the Year among six other awards, as the American music industry paid lavish tribute to him.

Unlike Frank Sinatra and Willie Nelson, Ray Charles’ voice is as strong as ever on this recording. I felt Sinatra’s voice was weak on his duets albums. Willie is still putting out albums and at times he sounds like he’s just speaking the lyrics. Ray, however, sounds fantastic. I love the blending of these two voices.

Here We Go Again

The next song is an example of a song that I first heard in a polka. You read that right – a polka. Weird Al Yankovic has done quite a few polka medleys on his albums. The medley usually contains a verse or chorus from a pop song done as a polka. When I first heard Beverly Hills by Weezer on the radio, I found I liked it.

Weezer lead singer (Rivers Cuomo) explained in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine that this song is about how he could live in Beverly Hills, but he wouldn’t fit in. “I could live in Beverly Hills, sure,” he says, meaning he could afford it easily. “But I couldn’t belong there.'”

Songfacts explains:

The song comes off as satire, but that wasn’t what Rivers Cuomo had in mind when he wrote it. “I was at the opening of the new Hollywood Bowl and I flipped through the program and I saw a picture of Wilson Phillips,” he said. “And for some reason I just thought how nice it would be to marry, like, an ‘established’ celebrity and live in Beverly Hills and be part of that world. And it was a totally sincere desire. And then I wrote that song, ‘Beverly Hills.’ For some reason, by the time it came out and the video came out, it got twisted around into something that seemed sarcastic. But originally it wasn’t meant to be sarcastic at all.”

The music video was shot at the Playboy mansion. It included appearances by Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and some of the Playboy bunnies. Two of those bunnies were Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt.

Beverly Hills

When I was music director at the Moose, I spoke with a lot of record people. One of the industry folks knew I loved music from the Rat Pack. She asked me if I had heard of Michael Buble’. I hadn’t. She sent me some MP3’s of his music and I was hooked.

The song could have been sung by just about any artist who tours. The lyrics sound as if they could be autobiographical. It is sung by someone who spends a lot of time on the road with great success. With that success, there is sacrifice. He is missing his home, particularly the woman he loves.

Despite the fact that Home only reached #72 on the Hot 100 chart, it was a breakthrough song for him. The song hit #1 on the Adult Contemporary survey in July 2005. Three years later Blake Shelton reached #1 on the Country chart with his cover of Bublé’s hit.

Bublé and Blake Shelton teamed up in 2012 to record a holiday version of this song for Shelton’s, Cheers, It’s Christmas album. The collaboration happened after Shelton sent Bublé an email saying he hoped to record a yuletide-themed rendering of the tune. “I had the idea of doing a Christmas version of ‘Home,'” he said.

This was the song that proved to folks that Michael was more than a cover artist. His original songs are just as good as the standards he records. He is also more than just a Christmas artist. It bugs me that people pigeon hole him and label him like that. He’s one of my favorites.

Home

My on air name was “Keith Allen.” As a music director, I got to hear all the new music before it went on the air. I popped Play Something Country by Brooks and Dunn in the CD player and loved it. On my first listen, I thought they said my name – Keith Allen. I suppose, in a way, they did. But the lyrics refer to Toby Keith and Alan Jackson:

Said, I’m a whiskey drinking, cowboy chasing, hell of a time
I like Kenny, Keith, Alan and Patsy Cline.

I have to tell you my favorite story about this song. When my program director and I first heard this, we said, “That’s a number one song!” We told our consultant that we wanted to add it. He said he didn’t feel like it was a hit. We were both shocked. We both told him that we felt it would be number one. He fought us.

He fought us for a few weeks on this one. He finally said that if we really felt it was a hit, we should add it. We wound up making a wager. I told him that if it didn’t go to number one, we’d buy him dinner. He said if it did hit number one, he would buy US dinner. The week it hit number one, he called us for our weekly music call. When we answered we started giving him restaurants we could go to!

His issue with the song? The “wolf-like” howl of the chorus.

Play Something Country

The next song is one that everyone jokes about on October 1st every year. “Someone needs to go wake up the guy from Green Day!”

This song reminds me of Fastball’s The Way. I say that because it starts with a simple acoustic guitar behind lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong. Then the song kicks in with drums and the rest of the instrumentation. I love the sound of that.

Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong wrote this song about his father, who died of cancer on September 1, 1982. At his father’s funeral, Billie cried, ran home and locked himself in his room. When his mother got home she knocked on the door to Billie’s room. Billie simply said, “Wake me up when September ends,” hence the title.

“My father died in September of ’82, and I purposely, up until that point, never went there,” Armstrong said in an interview. “I think really what I was doing was processing that loss that I had with this person that I never really knew. So I wrote that song for my father and about that loss and how 20 years had passed. I remember right after I wrote it, I felt this huge weight off my shoulders.”

Wake Me Up When September Ends

Another country newcomer makes my list this week. I have actually written about him, and the song. Here is that blog:

Tune Tuesday – Must Be Doin’ Something Right

Must Be Doing Something Right

The next song is one of the slowest chart climbers in history. It was on the American Hot 100 chart for 23 weeks before it entered the Top 40. KT Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See” was inspired by another artist, Patti Smith. Tunstall said, “The inspiration for the song was Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph of Patti Smith on the cover of her album Horses. I was staring at it one day thinking it was incredible. It’s everything I love about music – mysterious, inviting, frightening.”

Suddenly I see
This is what I wanna be
Suddenly I see
Why the hell it means so much to me

“The chorus was me thinking, ‘that’s what I want to be,'” Tunstall told The Guardian. “Not a famous pop star with lots of money, but like this woman who’s living her life as an artist. I’d been trying for more than 10 years to be a professional musician. I was just exhausted from trying to persuade other people I was good enough.”

I remember hearing this song shortly after realizing that my first marriage was over. After all I learned and discovered through therapy, the title spoke to me. Suddenly, I saw just what was going on and I realized that I couldn’t do it anymore.

Suddenly I See

There were some really good country songs around this time. There were many new artists and some really distinct sounds that were on the radio. I was impressed with Josh Turner from the first time I heard him. I couldn’t believe the tone of his low voice.

Your Man is a song that I wish I could have written. Here is a guy who has been thinking about his woman all day long. He tells her to lock the door, turn the lights down low, and play some music.

I’ve been thinking about this all day long
Never felt a feeling quite this strong
I can’t believe how much it turns me on
Just to be your man

That’s LOVE right there!!

I love the entire feel of this song. It’s the perfect song to “sway” to.

Your Man

As the “Nostalgic Italian,” I think it is safe to say that I believe in the power of a photograph. The memories that can come from looking at an old picture just amazes me. My Friday Photo Flashback is always fun to do. I think that is because of the stuff that comes to mind with those old pictures.

I know there are plenty of people who hate Nickelback. However, Photograph is a song that I can relate to in so many ways. (From songfacts): This song is about reviewing the memories (missed and forgotten) from the band’s childhood in Hanna, Alberta. The lyrics are a chronicle of real events and personal landmarks lead singer Chad Kroeger recalled as he wrote it.

“It’s just nostalgia, growing up in a small town, and you can’t go back to your childhood. Saying goodbye to friends that you’ve drifted away from, where you grew up, where you went to school, who you hung out with and the dumb stuff you used to do as a kid, the first love – all of those things. Everyone has one or two of those memories that they are fond of, so this song is really just the bridge for all that.”

Someone once said, “If you don’t think photos are important, wait until they are all you have left.” I couldn’t agree more.

The photograph Kroeger is holding in the video is the one that inspired the song: It’s a shot of him and their producer, Joey Moi, at a New Year’s Eve party.

Photograph

We wrap up 2005 with a One Hit Wonder. Defining a “one hit wonder” isn’t really easy. Most feel it is when the artist fails to have their follow up released crack the Top 25. There are certainly many songs that fit into that category.

Daniel Powter’s album was released in America in 2006. Bad Day was released in the UK in 2005. In the fifth season of Americal Idol, the song was played over a video montage of the contestant that was being sent home that week. This helped the song gain popularity.

Powter is from British Columbia who later moved to Los Angeles. “Bad Day” was his first single released on a major label (Warner Bros.), and his only hit. He later described it as “a blessing and a curse.” Powter said:

“I was touring the world and performing for thousands of people, but I felt like the song was starting to define me. I actually found myself getting almost angry about it.”

This was the top-selling digital download of 2006. This was the star of people prefer downloading songs to buying CDs. It was part of a shift toward digital distribution of individual songs. In America, the album sold 500,000, but the single was digitally downloaded over 3 million times!

My mom was doing chemotherapy and radiation for her breast cancer at this time. She found the song to be inspiring. It basically says that even if you have a bad day once in a while, things will get better. My mom always tried to have a positive outlook. She battled cancer for 10 years and by this point she was tired.

My mom had the gift of gab. She was always on the phone. She assigned Bad Day to be the ringtone for her cell phone. I believe it was on there until she passed away. When I hear this song, I am taken back to those final weeks of her life.

Bad Day

What song from 2005 did I miss that was your favorite? Drop it in the comments.

Next week, we’ll focus on 2006. On my list is a song about a steeplechase runner, a song that became a hit because of Grey’s Anatomy, and a song that was a hit on the Adult Contemporary Chart and the Country charts. It also has a great Drifter’s cover song, one that took on a whole new meaning for me when my daughter was born, and a creative way to insinuate profanity without actually using it.

Thanks for reading and for listening! See you next week.

The Music of My Life – 2001

In 2001, I turned 31. It is a year that I will not forget. It was that year that I found out I was going to be a father for the first time. To say that I was freaking out a little was an understatement. My mom continued to get treatment for breast cancer. There was a time where I prayed that she would be around for my wedding. Now I was praying that she’d be around to meet her first grandchild. My first song was inspired by, coincidentally, a mother with cancer.

It was also the year of the 9/11 attacks. I, of course, was around for the Challenger accident. Many folks called that the “JFK assassination” of my generation. As sad as the Challenger accident was, 9/11 was on an entirely different level. I remember sitting alone wondering about the world we were welcoming our baby into. The event caused many of us to think … more on that shortly.

Train’s Drops of Jupiter came from devastating loss for lead singer Pat Monahan. In a VH1 interview, he revealed that he wrote this song about the death of his mother. Train was were touring in 1988 when Monahan’s mom was dying of lung cancer – she was a heavy smoker. Cell phones had not yet become widely used. This found Monahan making many stops to pay phones on the tour to speak with his mom. It was in December of that year, his mother died.

In early 1999 Train was working on their next album when their record company started pressuring them for a hit. Monahan returned to his childhood home in Pennsylvania, and woke one morning with the words “back in the atmosphere” in his head. Beginning a time of healing, he started to compose the song. Pat said: “Loss of the most important person in my life was heavy on my mind, and the thought of ‘what if no one ever really leaves? What if she’s here but different. The idea was, she’s back here in the atmosphere.”

He recorded a demo of the song and played it for the president of their record company at Columbia. The president loved it and told him it was his Grammy song. He was right: It won Grammys for Best Rock Song and Best Instrumental Arrangement With Accompanying Vocalist. The label had Train record the song quickly. That way they could put it on the album and use it as the title track.

Pat Monahan is quoted as saying, ““It was an obvious connection between me and my mother. ‘Drops of Jupiter’ was as much about me being on a voyage and trying to find out who I am. The best thing we can do about loss of love is find ourselves through it.”

That is SO true.

Drops of Jupiter

I mentioned when I did my list in 1999 that I’ll Be by Edwin McCain is hard to listen to. It was the wedding song my ex and I used. In 2000, Edwin released I Could Not Ask For More, which is a more beautiful song, in my opinion.

This song itself is about spending time with your true love. It is about realizing you do not need anything else in life to make you happy. The song was written by Diane Warren, who has written quite a few songs that I have written about. McCain said that he had to speed the song up to suit his voice. He said, “The tempo of the song was actually half of what it is now. At first, I wasn’t into it. Now it’s a popular wedding song; every night on tour people tell me that it was their wedding song.”

It was in 2001 that country singer Sara Evans covered the song. While not too different from McCain’s version, I love her version more. I have always felt that she has one of the best female voices in country music. She is also one of the most beautiful singers I have met. I loved watching her perform this live.

I Could Not Ask For More

This next song is on my list for one reason and one reason only – the video! I can still remember the first time I watched it and was blown away by Christopher Walken. I had no idea he could dance like this!

Weapon of Choice appeared on Fatboy Slim’s third album and featured Bootsy Collins. Bootsy is, of course, known for his work with Parliament-Funkadelic and Bootsy’s Rubber Band. Boosty co-wrote the song and plays bass on it.

According to Songfacts:

The official music video for “Weapon of Choice” reveals a surprising side of Christopher Walken, known for his intense, often villainous roles in films like Pulp Fiction, The Deer Hunter, and True Romance. What most of us didn’t know until this video appeared is that Walken is a great dancer – he trained at the Washington Dance Studio and appeared in musicals such as 1981’s Pennies from Heaven. In a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Walken said he accepted the role before he became “too decrepit to dance.”

He choreographed the video with Michael Rooney, son of Mickey Rooney, and performed stunts, including flying across the mezzanine in a harness. Reflecting on the humor and playfulness of the video, Fatboy Slim told Higher Frequency in 2006: “I think it’s full of irony, and to see an actor that I really admire but who’s famous for playing psychopaths, to see him do that silly un-psychopathic dancing made me smile and made everyone else smile.”

The “Weapon of Choice” music video was a huge hit! It won six MTV Video Music Awards in 2001. It won for Breakthrough Video, Best Direction, Best Choreography, Best Art Direction, Best Editing, and Best Cinematography. It also went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Music Video. To top it all off, it was named the greatest music video of all time by VH1 in 2002.

Weapon of Choice

I recently saw where Brian Cranston, Jane Kaczmarek, and Frankie Muniz announced that they will reunite for a reboot of Malcolm in the Middle. The show debuted in 2000 and did very well. I always watched it because I could relate to the constant fighting between the brothers. I also loved the humor of the show.

They Might Be Giants recorded this song specifically for Malcolm in the Middle, and can be found on the show’s soundtrack. The show used other songs from the band throughout the run of the show.

The rumor is that the song is about guitar player John Flansburgh’s brother. I can totally see this. We may not have used the exact phrase growing up, but I know my brother and I often said that the other couldn’t boss the other around. It hits home in that way for me.

Boss of Me

The next song was a triumphant return for Weezer. Their fans were a little worried about the band in the late ’90s. After touring for their 1996 album Pinkerton, they took some time off and went through some lineup changes. It was during this time that Rivers Cuomo was taking classes at Harvard. He enrolled there in 1995 and attended sporadically when it suited his schedule. “Island In The Sun” was welcome relief for fans, showing that the band was back and in a good place. (Cuomo did eventually graduate Harvard, earning a degree in English in 2006.)

Songfacts says, “Unlike many Weezer songs, there’s no trace of pathos and no deeper meaning, making it an easy song to enjoy even if you’re not a big fan of the band. It became one of their most popular songs, although it was never a bit hit, reaching a chart peak of just #111 in the US.”

This is another one of those songs that I remember hearing a lot on the radio. I find it hard to believe that it only reached #111 on the charts. It was obviously good enough for them to play on TV. Weezer played it along with “Hash Pipe,” when they were musical guests on Saturday Night Live, May 19, 2001. It was their only guest appearance on the show.

Sing along…. “Hip. Hip.”

Island in the Sun

What do Neil Diamond, The Monkees and Smash Mouth have in common? One MONSTER hit!

Neil Diamond wrote I’m a Believer in 1966. Don Kirshner was looking for material for the Monkees to record and liked it. Neil was allowed to record it as well as part of their deal and did so in 1967. The Monkees version went to #1in ’66.

Jump ahead 35 years to 2001. Smash Mouth recorded a version of the song for the Dreamworks animated movie, Shrek. The song was picked because it fit the movie’s theme, as it was a sort of fairy tale. The opening line of the song is “I thought love was only true in fairy tales.”

Smash Mouth’s version is a great modern take on the song and still fun to sing along with. When I hear it, I am taken back to watching this movie with my oldest son. He loved Shrek and we watched it MANY times.

I’m a Believer

The next song was one that I often used as a first song at parties and weddings. It was a good one because it was the “kick off” song and literally got the party started.

Songfacts.com says: Get the Party Started was written by Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes. After the group broke up in the early ’90s, Perry released two solo albums and started writing for other artists. She learned that hits of the ’00s were made digitally. She bought Akai MPC and Korg Triton digital workstations and started experimenting with them. As she was learning how to use them, she came up with the track by adding layer after layer, then she quickly banged out a lyric with every party cliché she could think of, arriving at lines like:

I’m your operator, you can call anytime
I’ll be your connection to the party line

It worked: “Get The Party Started” was a huge hit for Pink and launched Perry’s songwriting career. Her next hit was “Beautiful” for Christina Aguilera.

The song is synonymous with Pink, but it was almost offered to another singer. Thankfully, a phone call changed that. Perry initially thought this could be a hit for Madonna. However, Pink happened to call her the week after she wrote the song. Pink was a huge 4 Non Blondes fan. She sought out Perry, who was very surprised to get a call from a pop star. When they met, Perry gave Pink an MP3 copy of the “Get The Party Started.” Pink’s management loved the song and arranged for them to work together on her second album.

Get The Party Started

When an artist’s first single is a ballad, it is usually because the ballad is amazing. Most record labels want uptempo songs. (Honestly, most radio stations want uptempo stuff, too!) There are no shortage of ballads waiting to get airplay!

When it came time to release his first single, Enrique Iglesias fought to get “Hero” released. “Everybody thought first singles at the time had to be uptempo,” he told People. “But I knew that it was one of those songs that when I wrote it it just felt special.” It was, and he was right. Iglesias attributes the success of this song to a combination of good lyrics, melody, and excellent production. He feels those three qualities need to work together to make a timeless hit.

The song took on a whole new meaning shortly after it was released. This song was released on August 14, 2001, just a month before the September 11 attacks on the US. The song doesn’t describe the type first-responder heroes, but the theme of standing by a loved one resonated at this time. The song became quite popular because of that, reaching a chart peak of #3.

One pastor taught a message on husbands and wives. He stated that what a husband wants is to be his wife’s hero. That’s the guy who will take away her pain and be there through thick and thin.

Hero

MercyMe is a contemporary Christian group. They had an Adult Contemporary crossover hit with a song that was written by their lead singer Bart Millard. I Can Only Imagine is simply about imagining what it will be like meeting Jesus for the first time.

In a Songfacts interview, Bart said that he that he wrote the song in about 10 minutes. He said that it was one of just three songs he wrote where he felt like he was “a spectator watching the song being written.”

Regarding the song’s meaning, Millard stated: “When my father died of cancer in 1991, he left me with the assurance that he was headed to a better place. For several years following his death, I would find myself writing the phrase ‘I can only imagine’ on anything I could find. That simple phrase would give me a peace thinking about what my dad was finally experiencing. Years later, in 1999, MercyMe was writing songs for an independent project. I remember coming home from a show and being wide awake on our bus at 2 o’clock in the morning. I was trying to write lyrics in an old notebook of mine, when all of a sudden, I stumbled across that phrase. About ten minutes later, the song was written. Some people say it’s amazing that it was written in ten minutes, when really it had been on my heart for almost ten years.”

This one means a lot to me personally. I am so grateful for my faith and my Savior. It is an amazing thing to imagine….

I Can Only Imagine

I can still vividly remember the morning of 9/11. I was in a meeting with my boss at the radio station when the morning gal came in and told us that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We went into the newsroom and were shaken to the core when we watched the second plane it the Twin Towers. That would be one of the longest and most emotional days in my radio career.

I worked at a country station at the time. We saw a lot of patriotism come out of those attacks. Songwriters wrote songs about being an American and such, but none of the equaled the contribution made by Alan Jackson.

The 9/11 attacks made a lot of us stop and think about life. We were left with so many questions. We were left shocked and scarred by the images we watched on TV. It was constantly on our minds. Alan Jackson seemed to be on the same page as everyone else, and conveyed it all perfectly in the song Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)

He wrote the song alone, with the idea coming to him at 4am in the morning. He explained to The Boot that the lyrics really “came out of nowhere.” “It was just a gift,” he said. “I got up and scribbled it down and put the melody down so I wouldn’t forget it, and the next day I started piecing all those verses together, thoughts I had or visuals I had.”

The song made its debut on the Country Music Association’s annual awards show on November 7, 2001. I still cannot believe that he was able to sing the song without breaking down. Alan considers this to be one of his biggest (if not the biggest) accomplishment. He said in an interview: “I [recently] did a radio interview, and the guy was talking about being at the [CMA] Awards the night I sang ‘Where Were You,'” he explained. “Even though that was a hard performance for me and an emotional time, I still get so many comments about that. Of all the awards, and all that kind of stuff, the music is still what I like. To be able to create a song that really affects people and makes a mark in the music industry, I would have to say that would be a highlight.”

To this day, the song still gives me chills. I’m sure you will never forget where you were when the events of that day unfolded either.

Where Were You

Sorry to wrap up the year on a somber note, but that wraps up my list. How about you? What song from 2001 did I miss that was your favorite. Mention it in the comments.

Next week, we’ll head to 2002. My list features movie music, an in your face patriotic song, a song full of 70’s and 80’s nostalgia, a cover song, an appearance by the Muppets, and the return of the King! I hope you’ll check it out.

Until next week, thanks for listening and for reading!