Tag: The Music of My Life

The Music of My Life – 2016 & 2017

Welcome back to The Music of My Life. I began this feature last May on my birthday. Over the past 11 months, I have featured 10 songs from every year of my life. The songs featured were released in that week’s particular year. It may have been a bigger hit the following year, but I decided to stick with the rules I had put in place.

This week, I guess I am breaking on of the rules. The rule was that I’d feature 10 songs per year. Last week (2015) I was able to get 10 songs, but from here on out I doubt I will be able to. Whether lyrics were just to raunchy, or some other reason, I found myself looking at songs I disliked or had never heard of. Every once in a while, I’d come across a song or two, but it has become very difficult.

So today, let’s tackle two years 2016 & 2017. It was during these two years that I was going through a very difficult time. These were the last days of my marriage and the beginning (and end) of the divorce. I was only occasionally doing a DJ gig here or there, so I became unfamiliar with many new songs.

Let’s start in 2016 first,

2016

My first pick for ’16 is an amazing song by Tim McGraw. Humble and Kind was written by Lori McKenna. She wrote the song at her home when her kids were at school. She set out to write down what she and her husband would want the children to know, fully aware that kids are bombarded with advice and most of it goes right through them.

“Honestly, it’s a very simple song,” she told The Boot. “It’s really just this list of things that I wanted to make sure we told them, in this rhyme form. I was lucky that the chorus made as much sense as it did. I did write it in that one sitting; it took me a few hours, but it was a lucky day.“

Tim McGraw says, “I guess I had it for a year and a half or so, and it was just her and an acoustic guitar playing it. The night that she wrote it, she sent it to me, and I listened to it over and over, and I just fell in love with the song and her version of it.”

“I knew I wanted to record it, but I just couldn’t quite get my head around how I wanted to do it,” he continued. “I couldn’t get past her demo of her singing it. It was just so beautiful and so touching. If anybody’s ever heard Lori just sit and sing with a guitar, she could sing anything to you and sell it to you. It’s so beautiful what she does.”

It is a fantastic song with a universal truth.

Humble and Kind

My wife and I don’t really have a “song” that we claim for ourselves. We’ve talked about it before and we have songs that were “possible” songs, but never came up with one. One of those possible songs was From The Ground Up.

While we were just beginning our life together, the fact that the song was written about a couple that had been together a long time didn’t matter. Because all relationships have to start from scratch and move forward.

This song finds Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney singing of a love between an elderly couple that’s rooted in commitment and grows deeper with every passing year. “‘From the Ground Up’ is a song that started with a conversation about our grandparents and the love that they shared for the 65-plus years that they were married,” Smyers said. “It tells the story of the life that they built through their power and dedication to each other, and the perseverance to endure whatever would come their way.” (from songfacts.com)

From The Ground Up

Next is a song that Time magazine hated. Justin Timberlake’s Can’t Stop the Feeling. They voted it the worst song of 2016. They said, “The insipid earworm – which was ostensibly recorded for an animated movie about trolls – became essentially unavoidable at any social gathering where someone in attendance was likely to use the phrase ‘cut loose.’ Forget the feeling – just please, please stop this song.”

This song was huge at the few DJ gigs I did do in 2016 & 2017. From songfacts:

Justin Timberlake told People he would never have written the song if it wasn’t for Trolls. “Listening to [producer] Gina Shay and [directors] Mike Mitchell and Walt Dohrn talk about the movie and how it was really inspired by the ’70s, I started bringing up the soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever, movies where the soundtrack was released before the movie and got people equally excited,” he explained. “The movie seems like an unabashed pop song to me, so I was like, ‘Let’s just write an unabashed pop song.'”

“Our task was to write a song that encapsulated the message of the movie, and by the way, we want people to be able to dance to it,” Timberlake said on the red carpet leading up to the Oscars. “When I was watching the movie it reminded me of disco, so that’s where I got the idea for a modern disco song.”

Can’t Stop The Feeling

Next is a powerful song from Alessia Cara – Scars To Your Beautiful. Cara said to her fans before premiering the song. “The standards that we have to kind of face as young women in everyday life just to feel, or look a certain way, or act a certain way, because there’s a lot of pressure being a young girl, and just girls and women in general,” she said. “So I wanted to make a reminder to just love yourself and appreciate yourself no matter what.”

Many of her fans, as well as people hearing it for the first time, have said how much this song meant to them. I can agree with them.

Scars To Your Beautiful

Play That Song by Train was a song that was playing in the background while I was doing something. I was able to pick out the familiar melody, which made me wonder “What is this? Is this a current song? Who is this?”

(Songfacts) The song is built around the melody of the much covered classic “Heart and Soul” written by Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser in 1938. American band leader Larry Clinton recorded the most successful version in 1939, reaching #1 on the chart. Modern listeners probably best known it as the song that Robert Loggia and Tom Hanks play and dance to on a giant foot-operated electronic keyboard in the 1988 movie Big.

The video shows Train singer Pat Monahan dancing around a sunny Los Angeles as he listens to the song. There is a nod to Big as we see him at one point moving back and forth on a giant keyboard. It’s kind of hard not to feel good when you hear that melody.

Play That Song

2017

If the melody of Feel It Still by Portugal The Man sounds familiar, there is a reason. Songfacts explains:

The melody on this track kicks it like it’s 1961, interpolating the Marvelettes hit “Please, Mr. Postman.”

Ooh woo, I’m a rebel just for kicks, now…

Oh yes, wait a minute Mister Postman…

“That ‘Please Mr. Postman’ melody is every bit of the way we grew up,” John Gourley said in his Songfacts interview. “I grew up with dog-mushing parents – which I know is a bizarre thing for anybody outside of Alaska. And even within Alaska, it’s such a small community within the state. So I grew up around really long drives. We were off the grid our whole lives until I left. Like, an hour drive to town. Sometimes a two-hour drive to town. That’s four hours, both ways. So we would just listen to oldies radio, and ‘Please Mr. Postman’ is a staple.

I always wanted to sing something to that melody. It’s a totally different song, and that to me is what music is about. What songwriting is about is paying homage and creating something new. It’s no longer ‘Please Mr. Postman.’ Now, it’s ‘Feel It Still.'”

Feel It Still

I didn’t know much about Imagine Dragons until I started working at the Adult Contemporary station. I played quite a few of their songs there, including Thunder. What struck me about this song is that he is a boy with dreams of being on stage. His classmates make fun of him for dreaming about being a star.  The tables turn in the second verse, as the Dragons frontman (Dan Reynolds) flips the script on those who mocked him.

Now I’m smiling from the stage
While you were clapping in the nose bleeds

Karma strikes back. Reynolds says, “‘Thunder’ is: ‘I’m so happy for a really (crappy) middle school and high school existence and getting kicked out of college. It’s reflecting on all those things and saying, ‘Good, I’m happy for all that because that brought me to this place of being. It created angst inside of me that bred art.'”

Thunder

Speaking of Karma, Taylor Swift sings about it and a bit of revenge in Look What You Made Me Do. This is another song that interpolates another as it follows the rhythm of Right Said Fred’s I’m Too Sexy.

Right Said Fred frontman Richard Fairbrass explained how Swift interpolated their tune:

“The title of ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ is based upon the verse of ‘…Sexy.’ That’s basically it. What’s weird about ‘Sexy’ is that when people sing it, they sing the verse, not the chorus – nobody sings that. Everybody sings: ‘I’m too sexy’ – it’s the verse that people have latched onto, not the chorus.”

In Taylor’s song they adapt that rhythm and attitude of the ‘Sexy’ verse as a chorus – so they’ve just interpolated it differently, that’s all it is. I’d be an idiot to complain about it. We’ve been really lucky to have been picked by somebody like Taylor, who is obviously very cool and very successful and open-minded and relaxed about it. She’s not like some people.”

Fun Fact: Taylor Swift’s bathtub in the music video is filled with $10 million worth of Neil Lane diamonds.

Look What You Made Me Do

Ed Sheeran’s Perfect was a song that I suggested as a possibility for “our song” to my wife. It is a truly beautiful love song.

Ed Sheeran wrote this waltz-time love song for his girlfriend Cherry Seaborn, who is an old school friend. After writing it he had no idea whether or not she really likes the track. “I just recorded it and sent it because she was living in New York at the time so I didn’t see her reaction,” he told BBC Radio 2. “I think she liked it.”

Ed calls the song a bit “cheesy,” but I truly like it. 

Perfect

The final pick for this week is a song I played at both stations I was working at. I was doing part time work at the country station and part time work on the adult contemporary station. Meant to Be played on both stations. It felt weird to say Florida Georgia Line on the AC station and even weirder to say Bebe Rexha on the country station.

Bebe Rexah said the song was one that helped her get through some personal issues:

“I’ve recently been going through heartbreak, and I listen to the song, and it makes me feel better and like there’s some type of destiny and if something doesn’t work out then, there’s something better waiting for you,” she said. “I think that’s something we need more than ever with all the events going on in the world. People want to feel safe and like everything’s going to be OK.”

Just how did FGL and Rexha get together for this song? FGL’s Tyler Hubbard says,

“Man, it was pretty organic. We ended up, last-minute, kinda out of the blue, getting together with her in LA when we were [there] writing, and wrote it kind of on a whim, late-night. The next thing you know, we just kinda hit gold, if you will. A really special song kinda fell out of the sky, as we call it. It doesn’t happen like that every time we get in a room to write.”

The song really has the life lesson of “It will happen if it’s meant to be” in it.

Meant To Be

Well, that wraps up 2016 and 2017. I had trouble finding my songs, did I miss one of your favorites? Tell me which ones in the comments. Next week, we’ll combine 2018 and 2019. On my list a song that has one of the weirdest videos I have ever seen. Also on the list some movie music, a country ear worm, and a touching song about grandparents. See you then.

Thanks for listening and for reading!

The Music of My Life – 2015

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. Much of the information presented with the help of Songfacts.com.

I would turn 45 in 2015. I was still DJing school dances and proms, which helped me become familiar with some of the new music. I was still getting music sent to me monthly via a service. I would just download everything and play songs that were requested (if it was clean) or songs I was playing on the Adult Contemporary Station.

Maroon 5’s Sugar was one I played on the radio. When I first heard it, I thought of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” I thought I was weird, but apparantly I wasn’t the only one. Songfacts even said “both songs have a similar chorus structure with an almost-identical syllable count.”

The song always got folks on the dance floor. The kids loved it, probably because of the amount of sexual innuendo in the lyrics.

The music video was directed by filmmaker David Dobkin and shot in Los Angeles during December 2014. The clip follows the plot story of Dobkin’s 2005 romantic comedy film Wedding Crashers as we witness the band drive across Los Angeles, surprising a handful of newlyweds on their big day. “Adam and I are old friends and have been talking about doing something together for over a decade,” said Dobkin. “Plus, it’s very meaningful because the band was in New York ten years ago and attended the original Wedding Crashers première.”

Sugar

I first heard Ellie Goulding’s Love Me Like You Do when it played on my radio show. Whether it was the instrumentation of the song, or her unique voice, something stuck out to me. I really liked this song. Honestly, I had no idea she recorded it for that 50 Shades of Grey movie.

Songfacts says:

This song was the first time that Ellie Goulding worked with producer Max Martin. She subsequently teamed up with the Swedish hitmaker for several Delirium tracks. Goulding explained to Billboard magazine how he unlocked her voice. “He directed me on a couple of songs and he’d be like, ‘Can you do this? And I’d be like, ‘Do you mean this?'” she said. “and he’d be like, “Where did that come from? Never heard that before. Never heard you sing low on any of your records before.” And yeah, it was great. It just came out of nowhere. He was good at bringing that confidence out of me.”

That confidence is evident in the song and its powerful chorus.

Love Me Like You Do

In 2015, there were many things happening in my life which I couldn’t control. I became a “yes man” and began to let people walk over me. I seemed to cave every time there was conflict. I just tried to make everyone, but me, happy.

I can still remember hearing the line, “I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me” In Rachel Platten’s Fight Song. It slapped me in the face. It was instrumental in me trying to take back things in my life. Unfortunately, it was that change that only led to more conflict.

Rachel had been playing music for a long time, but nothing ever really came from it. This song changed everything. She said,

“I grinded and worked so hard for so long and got to the point of… I didn’t think it was going to happen. I thought I might need to figure something else out. That moment bred ‘Fight Song.’ So that song came because I had to make a decision, ‘Am I going to keep going or am I going to give up on myself?'”

“I came up with the answer to the decision, I guess through writing the song,” she added. “I didn’t even realize it was happening, but through writing the song I made the decision to not give up on myself. Even if it’s only getting to play to a handful of people a night, that’s enough. At least I get to spread this message. Then funnily enough, by releasing the song, I got this amazing opportunity.”

Fight Song

What drew me to Dear Future Husband by Meghan Trainor was the sound. It sounded like a 50’s song and I liked it. This baffled me because I hated her debut song, “All About That Bass.”

Meghan revealed to The Miami Herald that the song’s subject matter was inspired by an ongoing joke between her and her father that Meghan’s future husband is out there somewhere, “chilling.”

The lyrics list the various things she expects from her future “groom-to-be.” They include “flowers every anniversary.” “open doors for me” and, “don’t have a dirty mind.” She says, “Girls need to be treated better. I never got that growing up.”

Hopefully, there are still men who do those things for their woman. Society tends to make those things old fashioned, but I disagree.

Dear Future Husband

Long before Sam and I were married, we were friends. We both work in sleep medicine. We would chat on the phone and talk about work. She knew I worked in music and told me that her new favorite song was Stressed Out by Twenty One Pilots. I hadn’t heard that one yet.

What has the guys stressed out these days? Tyler Joseph explains:

“I think one of the toughest things is that balances act of trying to maintain relationships while being on the road. It’s been a crazy few years. Josh and I are both very close with our families. It’s one of our favorite moments in our careers is being able to have our families in that video at the end. With that being said, it has been tough trying to maintain those relationships. The other stress is trying to outdo ourselves we either write a song or we play a show. Josh and I, we come from a local scene where every time you played your hometown you had to do something new. You can’t just play the same set. So we kind of apply it to the way that we approach every show, always trying to outdo ourselves.”

Fun Fact: Much of the video was filmed at Josh Dun’s childhood home. Because the home number is listed, Dun’s parents had to cancel the landline to put an end to the calls that were coming in all day and all night!

The song always reminds me of the early days of our friendship.

Stressed Out

Remember earlier in this series when I said “Gangnam Style” was the worst dance song ever? Well, I forgot about the annoying craze started by Silento. I didn’t know what the “Whip” or the “Nae Nae” were! Oh, the requests that I got for their piece of garbage! I would often have to play this two or three times at school dances. URGH!!!

According to songfacts:

“Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” was the soundtrack to the biggest dance craze of 2015. It’s actually two dances. For The Whip, just keep your arm straight and swing it in front of your face like you’re driving a car. The Nae Nae is similar, but with an open hand. They combine very well.

The Nae Nae is based on the character Sheneneh, played by Martin Lawrence in his ’90s TV series Martin. Sheneneh is a very brash woman who is extremely confrontational but gets offended easily. When she gets excited or upset, she makes an exaggerated “talk to the hand” gesture, which is the dance move here.

This song launched his career, but his success didn’t last long. A few years later, in 2021, he was indicted for murder after killing his cousin.

Watch Me

Another song that stuck out to me on the radio was 7 Years by Lukas Graham. The song has some really powerful lyrics.

Lukas Graham explained the song’s message to radio.com:

“The song’s basically just about becoming a good father, and being such a good father that your children would want to come and visit you when you’re an old, boring man,” he said. “I had a really, really cool father, so that’s what I wanna be too.”

“A lot of older people are actually very, very young,” he continued. “And they look at their age as some stamp that now they can point fingers at all the people that are younger than them; in reality I am probably a lot smarter than some of them anyway, at least. I’ve read more books; I’ve tried more stuff; I’ve seen more things.”

“And I think that’s why I can write a song like ‘Seven Years,’ because I might only be 27, but I know what my dreams are,” Graham concluded. “I knew when I was a young man that I wanted to be a father, and I knew I was gonna be a good father at that.”

I can totally relate to that. I have really tried to be a good father to all of my children.

If you listen closely, the sound of a film projector comes in during the quite parts of this song, including the intro. This gives it a nostalgic feel as if watching home movies.

7 Years

I also think of my wife when I hear the next song. I was unaware of her love of country music early in our relationship. Then she started to talk about Thomas Rhett. Die A Happy Man happened to be the first Rhett song I played when I was working at the country station.

He wrote the song for his wife, who’d been asking him to write her a love song. When he played it for her, he said watching her listen to it for the first time was very rewarding. He said:

“I’ve written love songs but never to the extent of that personal,” he said. “We strictly wrote that song about me and my wife’s relationship. I just think this song shows how me and Lauren love each other, and I hope this song is an encouragement to other married couples or people that are dating.”

It certainly was an encouragement to me!

Die A Happy Man

There was a student at one of the schools that would always ask for the group Panic! At The Disco. I’d see him walk up the me and I knew exactly what he wanted to hear. He’d come up multiple times with different songs. It is because of him that I became familiar with Death of a Bachelor.

In 2015, Frank Sinatra would have turned 100. The band used this song as a tribute to him. Brendon Urie posted on his Instagram in reference to the song’s release.

“I attach his music to so many memories: opening presents on Christmas day, my grandparents teaching the rest of the family to swing dance, watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit with my siblings (Sinatra makes a cameo in the form of a cartoon sword singing ‘Witchcraft’).”

“His music has been a major player in the soundtrack of my life. So it’s only right that I return the favor and/or pay it forward. I wrote a new album this year and even in the few songs that don’t sound remotely similar to any of his music I still felt his influence in the writing and the need to relate so personally to each song.”

He said of the song, “It’s like if Sinatra and Beyoncé made a song together. It’s like some Beyoncé beats with some Sinatra vocals. It’s really crazy.”

You even get a Sinatra vibe from the video

Death of a Bachelor

The next song is one that didn’t mean much to me until my divorce – Love Yourself by Justin Bieber. After a break up, the singer is still dealing with an ex. He tells her he’s not crying about things and she should really just go lover herself. It’s a great “blow off” song.

It was written by Ed Sheeran. Out of the many songs he has co-written for other artists, he considers this his favorite.

“I feel like the one that is the slam dunk, whenever I’m at a gig, to play someone else’s song that I had written is “Love Yourself” by Justin Bieber because it was so massive for him. I think it’s his biggest song… anywhere in the world, if I picked up a guitar and played that, they’d be like ‘oh my god, you wrote that!'”

“People always say, ‘Why didn’t you keep it?’ And to be honest, he was on such a roll at that point that I think it wouldn’t have been as big if I’d sung it,” he continued. “He had his whole period of his life that was a bit… you know what I mean. And America loves a comeback story.”

Love Yourself

As a bonus song, here is one that I really like because of its soulful sound. It is the debut single for Charlie Puth – Marvin Gaye. He wrote the chorus the first day he came to Los Angeles. Puth says he was at a coffee shop when the melody struck – he found himself tapping his foot and clapping out the beat.

The song is a duet with Meghan Trainor. Charlie explains how it all came about:

“Meghan and I were at a party one night, and we were exchanging the new music, and she heard ‘Marvin Gaye; and asked, ‘Who else is singing on this? It should be a duet. Let me sing on it!’ So I’m like… OK, Meghan Trainor just asked me to sing on my song, absolutely! In one day, she knew the whole thing. We did it all in one take.”

Asked if Marvin Gaye inspires his music, Puth replied:

“I listened to a lot of Marvin Gaye and Motown records. When I was making my record, I just wanted to make this soulful sound. When Marvin Gaye made his music, he evoked this feeling that would reach everybody.”

The video takes place at a school dance. There is plenty of sexual innuendo, but the music is so smooth and soulful that the people can’t help but dance.

Bonus: Marvin Gaye

So that wraps up 2015. Did I miss one of your favorites? Tell me in the comments. Next week, will be a little different. You may recall me mentioning that the further I got into the 2000’s, the less I connected with the music. I may have been familiar with a song or two, but if I couldn’t connect with it personally or call it a favorite – I didn’t add it.

Because of that, next week will feature the years 2016 & 2017. My list will feature a song with a life lesson, a suggestion for “our” song from my wife, movie music, a song that has a bit of a 60’s sound, and a song that pushes blame. I hope you’ll come back next week.

Thanks for reading and for listening.

The Music of My Life – 2014

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.

As you might remember, I started this last May on my birthday. I have tried to work a week or two ahead on this feature. One thing I have noticed as we move into the late 2010’s and 2020’s is that there are not that many songs that mean anything to me. No life event connects with them. There are only a few I may like. That being said, it is very possible that I will combine two or three years into one week. I also have a feeling that there may be upcoming years where I don’t pick any songs. If that happens, the feature will wrap sooner than expected, which may be a good thing.

2014 was actually a good year of music for me. I turned 44 that year. I had a new career in sleep and was still able to do a few hours on the radio. Many of the songs from this year were ones I played on the air …

It didn’t mean much to me in 2014, but Let It Go by Idina Menzel sure does today. It is the first song I danced to with my daughter at our first Daddy/Daughter Dance. That may have been the only song we danced to that first year, but I will never forget it. It is from her favorite movie, Frozen.

“Kids don’t want to stand out all the time, they want to fit in,” Menzel said regarding this song. “It’s about finding that thing that makes you different that’s going to make you special and extraordinary.”

Let It Go won for Best Song at the Oscars in the 2014 ceremony. It also earned an entry in the 2016 Guinness World Records book for “Most Languages Featured on a Single.” It was recorded in 42 different languages for Frozen‘s foreign releases.

Let It Go

Paramore was primarily known for their rock music. Ain’t It Fun is a very different sound for them. It was more pop/dance than rock. (From songfacts) Bassist Jeremy Davis told The Guardian that the band had their largely teenage fan base in mind. “After we started writing weird stuff like ‘Ain’t It Fun,’ we got nervous,” he said. “But that was a comfort. We’ve grown and we don’t like the same music we liked, so why would [our fans] not? That idea kept us pushing ourselves.”

Songfacts also says, “This upbeat track mixes gospel, soul and some Prince-style R&B. Hayley Williams told The Sun: “Taylor (York) and I came up with the melody and I thought about Prince, too. Then it got layered with more groove and funk and all the cool elements. The next thing I know there’s a gospel choir in the studio and we have that track. It’s been so liberating to write this record.”

The xylophone in the song really helped the song to stand out on the air. That’s what I remember most about the first time I played it. “Well, that’s certainly different,” I thought.

The song is catchy. I don’t know that I’d call it an earworm, but you get hooked right from the beginning.

Ain’t It Fun

The next song is one that I have written about before. I chose it in the 2021 Song Draft that Hanspostcard hosted. It is one of those songs that I love to listen to. Here is the blog I wrote for the Song Draft:

Song Draft 2021 – Pick 7 – Love Runs Out

Love Runs Out

Who would have imagined that in 2014 a Cole Porter song would be popular? Thanks to Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, Porter’s Anything Goes was very popular … again.

The recording of the song took place over a year in New York City. Bennett’s quartet was present, as well as other musicians. It received mostly positive reviews. The Chicago Tribune said that it found Gaga to be in “good voice” and Bennett in “classic form”. V Magazine called the song a “fresh take” on the original. MTV News said “Gaga is clearly having a blast, doing her best Broadway belting with tons of energy and enthusiasm”

On the Billboard Jazz Digital Songs chart, the track debuted at the top, becoming Gaga’s second entry on that chart, following “The Lady is a Tramp”. The song was Bennett’s 15th entry on the Jazz Digital Songs chart, and his third number-one single. “Anything Goes” sold 16,000 digital downloads in the US during the week of its release.

Lady Gaga’s voice is one that could easily sing the American Song Book. The true sound of her voice is lost on current music. And how could you not like Tony Bennett?

Anything Goes

One song that really stands out to me from 2014 is Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran. It was one that many brides I DJ’d for picked as their first dance. It’s a great choice.

The first time I heard it, it reminded me a bit of Into the Mystic by Van Morrison. Little did I know that Ed says Van Morrison heavily influenced this song. He told songfacts:

“No one’s really channeled Van Morrison for a long time. Everyone always channels, Michael Jackson and the Beatles and Bob Dylan, and I feel like Van Morrison is a key figure in the music that I make.”

The video features Sheeran and his partner Brittany Cherry ballroom dancing and was shot all at once in 16 mm film. “I wanted the video to be a little different, so I opted for ballroom dancing,” he explained when the video was released in October 2014. “I had lessons for five hours a day when I was on my US tour last month.”

Songfacts says: With electronic music ruling the airwaves, this was one of the few hit songs of its time with a guitar solo (played by Chris Leonard), which is near the end of the song in place of a bridge. Running 4:41, it was also very long by 2014 hit song standards, although this extra time makes the song more appealing as a first dance wedding number.

Thinking Out Loud

When Shake It Off hit the radio, it drove me crazy. At that time, Taylor Swift was everywhere. There was a ton of publicity leading up to her 1989 album. This was the lead single.

This song IS an earworm. Even if I switched stations or turned down the monitors in the studio, I still found that it would run through my head. Gee, I don’t know why? The phrase “shake it off” shows up 36 times in this song, mostly in the chorus. “Shake” appears 70 times. URGH!

Songfacts says: The song originated from Swift learning to overcome her fear of not being accepted. “I think it kind of takes not caring what people think about you a step further to kind of locking the fact that people don’t get you,” she explained to BBC Radio 1’s Breakfast Show. “Kind of taking pride in the fact that you know you are and it honestly doesn’t matter if someone else doesn’t want to understand you. We go through these scenarios in so many different phrases of our lives, no matter what it is.”

“I’ve had to learn a pretty tough lesson in the past couple years that people can say whatever they want about at any time, and we cannot control that,” said Swift. “The only thing we can control is our reaction to that… You can either let it get to you… [or] you just shake it off.”

Shake It Off

Another big song that worked well as school dances was Shut Up and Dance by Walk The Moon. I used to love watching folks jumping around and dancing to it. It was always great to hear them shout the chorus as it played.

Vocalist Nicholas Petricca told American Songwriter magazine the story of the song:

“Well, (Guitarist) Eli Maiman and I were working on something that’s now the verse. And it had this great feeling that we couldn’t stop playing over and over. We didn’t have a chorus and we didn’t have a subject or a lyric.”

“So over the next weekend, I went to this awesome party they have at The Echo in Echo Park, Los Angeles, called Funky Soul Saturday. The story of ‘Shut Up and Dance’ is based on a true story of hanging out there with my friends… this girl actually told me to shut up and dance with her. We took it back to the studio and it spun out very quickly after that.”

It was only later that Petricca realized he could use the girl’s comment as a song lyric. “At the time, I was in my head and not with it,” he said. “She’s one of my best friends and pulled me out into the moment, and that really became the subject of the song. Encouraging people to let go of whatever it is that’s bothering you and get into your body and out of your head. Coming home and working on the song I thought, this is it. This is totally it.”

Shut Up and Dance

OneRepublic makes a second appearance on the list with an amazing song – I Lived.

Songfacts says:

While opening for U2 in the summer of 2012, OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder observed the effect of Bono’s lyrics on the Irish band’s fans, as they sung along to their songs. “These lyrics are so from his gut and so like honest, but poetic,” Tedder told Radio.com. “They’re not trying to be ambiguous or trying to be cool.”

Inspired, Tedder decided that with the Native he was going to write lyrics people could relate to, which meant he would have to share a little bit of himself. Accordingly, nothing on the album is a work of fiction. This song, for instance is a love letter to the singer’s son, Copeland Cruz, who was born in 2010.

How often are we told to live life to its fullest? The chorus is an example of doing just that:

I, I did it all
I, I did it all
I owned every second that this world could give
I saw so many places
The things that I did
Yeah, with every broken bone
I swear I lived

The song’s music video pays tribute to teenage fan, Bryan Warnecke, and his struggles living with cystic fibrosis. The clip ends with Tedder driving Warnecke to a concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado to see OneReublic perform.

I Lived

Another song that jumped out of the radio at listeners was Honey, I’m Good by Andy Grammer. The song almost sounded out of place on Adult Contemporary stations because of its “country” sound. Grammer even went as far as to call the song, “a fun hoedown!”

The song’s music video features a montage of around one hundred real-life couples that have been together from several months to over 70 years. Grammer said,  “My manager and I were on the phone talking about an idea for the video. We wanted to press home the concept that this isn’t a song about a guy who’s cheating. This is about a guy who is being true. So we started calling all of our friends and family that we knew had been married for a long time and asked them to lip sync the song.”

“They all started sending videos in and we started asking by word of mouth if people knew a couple who’d been married a long time. It was so fun getting all our friends and family involved that we decided to just put it up on social media and ask the fans to be part of the video too. We asked them to get their parents and grandparents to be in it also.”

Honey I’m Good

Finally, another song that just clicked with the school dance crowds, as well as adult crowds. Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars struck gold with Uptown Funk.

The intro reminds me of the intro to Smoke on the Water. As it progresses, you get another instrument, then another, etc… Songfacts explains:

This intro sets the stage for the rest of the song, introducing the hooky “doh doh doh” vocal and the clapping drum sound (made with a Linn drum machine) that show up throughout the song. Before the intro ends, various other key instruments in the song appear: bass, snare drums, cheery guitar, horns and a swishy synth effect.

Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars and the producer Jeff Bhasker (Kanye West, Drake, Alicia Keys) share writing and production credits on the song. It originated from a lick that Mars and his band were playing on tour.

“When we hit on that opening line – ‘This s–t, that ice cold. Michelle Pfeiffer, that white gold’ – we knew that we had the seed of this really exciting idea,” Ronson told Billboard magazine. “I pushed myself much more than I have on anything else in the past.”

Mars and Ronson create a monster party vibe in this song, starting with the title: “Uptown” implies high class, while “Funk” is the rhythm and release. The lyrics are way over-the-top, with Mars explaining that he’s so hot he’s forcing dragons into retirement. It’s clever, fun and outrageous, but also meticulously constructed with a mix of rhyming patterns.

The song went on to be the biggest of 2015.

Uptown Funk

So there you have it, 2014 in song. Did I miss one of your favorites from that year? Tell me about it in the comments.

Next week, we’ll look at 2015. My list includes the first song my wife and I ever talked about (before we were married) and one by her favorite country singer. It also includes a “tribute” to Frank Sinatra and the worst dance song since Gangnam Style! All that and more next week.

Thanks for listening and for reading!

The Music of My Life – 2013

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 started this feature on my birthday back in May. We have come from 1970 to 2013. I would turn 43 that year. I was still working in radio part time at the Adult Contemporary station. I also graduated from college that year. It was 2013 that saw the career change from radio to sleep medicine.

Musically, there were quite a few tunes I really liked from 2013. Here are ten of my favorites.

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It is not every day that you hear a “chant” on the radio. That chant is what made Pompeii by Bastille very unique, and maybe even helped it reach top 5 status on the charts.

Songfacts says,

Rare for a hit song, the title never shows up in the lyrics. So why is it called “Pompeii”? Dan Smith told The Daily Telegraph that he was imagining what the dead inhabitants might have to say to one another. “It is essentially about fear of stasis and boredom,” he added. “Being quite a shy, self-conscious person, I was afraid my life might get stuck.”

Dan Smith was not a professional musician when he wrote this song – he was a bartender and student of English literature. He wrote the song in 2010 on a laptop in his bedroom after reading about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. He didn’t think anyone outside of his circle of friends would ever hear the song, but when he posted some tracks online, they got enough attention to earn his band a deal with Virgin Records. “Pompeii” was included on their first album and became their breakout hit.

While it isn’t a very “happy” subject, the song did very well.

Pompeii

There’s a song that Willie Nelson recorded called, “You Just Can’t Play a Sad Song on the Banjo.” I suppose that is true. The banjo is what really makes The Best Day of My Life by the American Authors stand out.

Songfacts.com says:

This joyful, banjo-laced tune celebrates the best in life, but was conceived in reaction to tragedy: the Sandy Hook school shooting on December 14, 2012. American Authors bass player Dave Rublin told Songfacts:

“We were upstate in the woods writing with our producer when the Sandy Hook shooting happened. When we heard the news, it was shocking to all of us because it happened right down the street from where we were. And in that framework, we were thinking that the world has hit a whole new low, and we wanted to focus on making things that make people happy and make people feel positive, because that’s something that was missing from rock and from songwriting, just something so simplistic that can be an earworm, that can carry people.”

Vocalist Zachary Barnett said, “We wanted to tell this story of how no matter what’s going on – whether you’re stuck at your job or having a bad day – there’s always an escape from that, and there’s always a way to make any day the best day of your life. It’s about escaping reality and entering into that dream world.”

This song was a big one at school dances when I was DJing. The positive message of the song is one that I can appreciate.

Best Day of My Life

To be clear, I have never seen Pitch Perfect, nor do I intend to (unless asked by my wife). At any rate Cups by Anna Kendrick is a song from that movie. It features the voice of Anna Kendrick accompanied only by a plastic cup, which she uses as improvised percussion. The song serves as her character Beca’s brief audition for the Barden Bellas, an all-female a cappella group from Barden University.

The version used in the movie was not the “hit” version. A longer version (a whole 2:09 minutes!) featuring instrumentation was released to radio in March 2013. I really liked this ditty.

Songfacts says: This song’s success meant that Kendrick became only the second artist to have earned both a top 10 single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and nominations in the two leading acting award ceremonies. The singer-actress was nominated for a 1998 Tony Award for featured actress in a musical (High Society) and the 2009 Academy Award for actress in a supporting role (Up in the Air). The only other performer to achieve the same feat is Barbra Streisand.

Cups

Life can be scary. As I have said in the past, my marriage to my ex was over at least a couple of years before the divorce. I stayed because of my boys. I had sworn that I would never divorce or fight like my parents, but I did both.

When my therapist and I talked it became very clear that I was only hurting myself and the kids by staying. As scary as it was, I had to be brave and step out of the comfort zone. I had to do what was right for me. That is kind of the message of Sara Bareillis’ Brave.

Songfacts.com says,

The record was inspired by her own life and addressed some of the demons she was battling. “I have never felt more open and more raw in my entire life,” said Bareilles. “2012 was a year of deconstruction for me personally. I have been confronting some of my greatest fears in the last handful of months and have been amazed at how empowered I can feel when I muster up the courage to turn and growl back at those monsters under the bed.”

Brave

Another song I played on the AC station that I liked had been a huge hit in Norway before going worldwide. Am I Wrong by Nico & Vinz was another great uptempo song that the kids loved at dances.

From Songfacts:

This song was Nico & Vinz’s international breakthrough. It peaked at #2 in their home country where it has been certified three times platinum. The single also hit the Top 10 in many other European countries as well as the US. “We always knew it was possible to reach outside of Norway with our music,” Sereba told Billboard magazine. “With this song, we wanted to say, ‘Are we wrong for thinking that we can actually do this?’ That’s how that message came about – trusting your gut feeling, going for it and searching for your own happiness.”

The theme continues – Before deciding on the divorce I had to “trust my gut feeling and go for it” as Sereba said.

Am I Wrong

Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic had great success as a writer. He wrote songs for Leona Lewis and Beyonce, just to name a few. Counting Stars is the first hit for him as a performer.

For whatever reason, I was really drawn to OneReublic’s music. When I read this quote from Ryan, it makes sense as to why. He told Billboard magazine that he finds it gratifying that so many have connected with such an uplifting and meaningful song.

“I think it’s our responsibility as a band, and what separates us from everyone else. I took that from being a fan of U2 for two decades now, since Achtung Baby,” he said. “To this day, they might be the only band on that level who sings about things other than just boy-girl troubles or the kind of selfish, ‘I’m a badass’ stuff. I’ve spoken with Bono about this when we toured with him, and he said the same thing.”

“I felt a responsibility to actually write and sing about things that have a level of human gravity to them,” Tedder continued. “If everybody else sings about sex and love and lust and money, then somebody’s gotta be singing about life and faith and hope and things of that nature. And in the pantheon of their esteemed career, they’ve had two #1 hits, and I think both were 25 years ago. It’s not about that – it’s about what songs feel real. I’d rather have a song that peaks at #15 that’s meaningful and embedded in the cultural framework we live in than a #1 song that explodes for five seconds, becomes the dance hit of the summer, then goes away.”

Counting Stars

Here is another song that got the kids dancing at school dances. I can see why. The Best Song Ever by One Direction may not be that, but it is a good one. It follows a proven format that has been used for decades. More on that in a second.

The song was compared to being almost identical to The Who’s Baba O’Riley. As a matter of fact, The Who guitarist Pete Townshend brushed off unsubstantiated reports that his band wanted to sue One Direction or seek to have this song withdrawn.

“No! I like the single. I like One Direction,” he told Uncut magazine. “The chords I used and the chords they used are the same three chords we’ve all been using in basic pop music since Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry made it clear that fancy chords don’t mean great music – not always. “

“I’m still writing songs that sound like ‘Baba O’Riley’ – or I’m trying to! It’s a part of my life and a part of pop’s lineage,” Townshend continued.

“One Direction are in my business, with a million fans, and I’m happy to think they may have been influenced a little bit by The Who. I’m just relieved they’re all not wearing boiler suits and Doc Martens, or Union Jack jackets.”

To me, I feel it is different enough. I guess I can hear a little of Baba in here. What do you think?

Best Song Ever

Again, another uptempo AC song makes the list. Again, a big dance song. This time around the personal connection is I remember my oldest boy loving this song. Wake Me Up By Avicii was another song that I loved a lot.

Songfacts says, Songwriting credits go to Avicii, Aloe Blacc, and multi-instrumentalist Mike Einziger of the rock band Incubus. They wrote the song at Einziger’s home studio in Malibu, California. According to Blacc, Avicii and Eizinger had the track worked up when he arrived. He had disparate bits of lyrics on hand, one of which was the line “Wake me up,” which he felt was the strongest message to go with the track.

While Einziger played, Blacc sang, “Wake me up when it’s all over,” and the cadence of the line went with the chord progression. The next line Blacc introduced from his notebook was “All this time I was finding myself, I didn’t know I was lost.” Blacc was concerned that these two lines wouldn’t make any sense in the same song, but Einziger told him it was fine, so they went with it.

Aloe Blacc came up with the lyrics on an airplane. “I was thinking to myself, ‘My life is a dream. Wake me up when it’s over,'” he recalled to Billboard magazine. “When I walked into the session with Mike Einziger on guitar and Avicii, Mike was playing his guitar chords and these words… the way I sang them just felt right. We ended up recording it that night and I drove home listening to this acoustic version that Avicii eventually made into a fantastic hit. It’s a wonderful experience.”

Wake Me Up

2013 was a very easy year for me to DJ for school dances, obviously. So many of these songs tie right into those dances. One Direction was a very hot group, so it is no wonder that they show up twice on my list. This time around it is Story of My Life.

From Songfacts:

Niall Horan recalled the first time Jamie Scott played them the song during an interview with UK radio station Capital FM. “We were in Nottingham on tour when we were touring the UK back in February and March,” he recalled, “and we just came into a room one day and he was like, ‘I’ve got this song that I’ve written and I want to play [it for] you.’ And we just fell in love with it the second we heard it.”

The song is more folk-orientated than most of One Direction’s previous offerings, but Scott told MTV News the quintet have the talent to pull it off. “It’s not that hard a thing to do because the boys have really good voices, they’ve all got very different voices. Harry [Styles’] rasp is something that you can always lean towards… All the boys have such a great sound themselves,” he said. “For instance the demo that we played the boys sounds a lot more folky than it does now. That’s what amazing about their voices [when they record it] straight away it sounds like them.”

Story of My Life

Happiness is a theme in many of these songs. It continues with my final selection by Pharrell Williams – Happy. Most hit songs around this time were written by teams of writers, but this one was entirely composed by Pharrell Williams. He wrote and recorded the song for the soundtrack of the 3D computer-animated action comedy film Despicable Me 2. Williams also penned tunes for the first Despicable Me movie.

I loved how Songfacts puts this:

Finding a way to follow a trend and be unique at the same time seems like an impossible task, but that is exactly what Williams was facing with “Happy.” It could have easily drowned in the stream of other songs that blended R&B, funk and soul if not for some clever techniques to help it ride the wave to the top of the charts.

For one, it had to be an earworm, and to do that, repetition is key. Aside from repeating the uplifting title 56 times, over 62% of the song is dedicated to its memorable chorus (about 20% more chorus time than most hits of the era). To make room for that monstrous chorus, there is no pre-chorus, solo, instrumental break or outro.

There is no denying that it is an earworm! All I can say is that as someone who is finally happy, I can understand proclaiming it over and over again!

Happy

That brings us to the end of 2013. What favorite of yours did I miss? Mention it in the comments.

Next week, we move into 2014. The list next week includes a Disney song, a song that dates back to 1934, some great dance songs, and one that I play at least twice when it comes up on my iPod. I hope you’ll join me next week.

Thanks for listening and for reading!

The Music of My Life – 2012

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.

We’ve come to 2012 – the year I turned 42. Once again, as I look over the list, many of these songs took on personal meaning after 2012. I was probably programming the Classic Rock station and beginning the sleep program in college in 2012. So let’s look at my ten picks.

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When I worked in radio, I had to watch American Idol to be able to talk about it on the air the next day. I truly loved Kelly Clarkson. I was glad that she won in the inaugural year of the show. She has also proven herself to those who thought she’d be here one day and gone the next.

What Doesn’t Kill You (Stronger) appeared on Kelly’s fifth album and went to number one on the charts. Would you believe it was inspired by one of the great philosophers? The song was inspired by a quotation from German philospher, Friedrich Nietzsche who said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” 

Kelly told the folks at MTV why they chose Stronger as the name of the album:

“There were a few different titles that were going around and I think the reason why we came up with Stronger was just because every song was about empowerment and almost like overcoming stuff,” she explained. “So, even if it was a bad situation and a sad song, it was about overcoming that. So by the end of the song, it’s kind of more inspiration than sad. So I think that’s why [we named it that], and I think after 10 years of doing it you feel a little stronger personally and musically. People know you better. It’s just easier, I think.”

For me, the song took on new meaning while going through my divorce. Believe me, there were times during it that I was so frustrated. The yelling, the fighting and all of that was just awful. But, I came through it. It didn’t kill me, but it certainly made me stronger.

What Doesn’t Kill You (Stronger)

Next is a song from another American Idol winner, Phillip Phillips. Honestly, I had no idea until I starting researching this post that he was from American Idol. After the first couple years, it got old to me and I stopped watching.Songfacts.com says:

Phillips was so ill with kidney problems during his Idol run, he had to be hooked up to IVs before going onstage and wear extra makeup to disguise his sickly pallor. Because he was so focused on his health, he never really knew what was going on with the show and didn’t expect to win in the final moment – which led to some confusion when his name was announced.

I was familiar with this song because I played it on the Adult Contemporary station. I liked the guitar work in it and thought it sounded a bit like Mumford and Sons.

Home

Entertainment relationships cannot be easy. It is almost rare to see one that lasts more than a couple years. Some of the break ups, though, have led to many a hit song (just ask Taylor Swift!). This song is said to be directed at Katy Perry’s ex, Russell Brand.

It is the lyric that hit me, once again, after the divorce.  

“I’m wide awake, not losing any sleep/ I picked up every piece, and landed on my feet,”

Wide Awake was written for her movie, Part of Me. She says, “I was doing this movie and they asked me if I wanted to write an end-title song for the movie, and I was like, ‘I know exactly what I want to say.’ I was really kind of dying to write another song at that point. I didn’t want to wait until I did a whole new record, and it’s kind of the perfect last word of me at this moment.”

Wide Awake

The next song is on my list because of job dissatisfaction. It is Icona Pop’s I Love It.

There were a few of us who were kind of miffed that we weren’t getting things we needed to do our job. A co-worker said, “Well, they obviously don’t care.” He began to sing the line, “I don’t care … I love it” whenever something went wrong.

No supplies? “I don’t care …” Computer keeps crashing? “I don’t care…..” Someone asked what you thought of the situation? “I don’t care…..” Yeah, it was not a very positive vibe around that time.

Whenever I hear the chorus of this song, I think of my former coworker ad chuckle a bit.

I Love It

Owl City is really Adam Young. He did this as a duet with Carly Rae Jepson. Asked about the song, he said,

“I feel like every artist is inherently granted one shot to sing about having a good time in his or her life, and six months ago, I realized I hadn’t cashed in my chips yet. So I thought, ‘I’m gonna sit down and I’m gonna give this a shot… and get my friend Carly to sing on it’. The final product rarely exceeds your expectations, and this thing just kind of happened.”

Did he like working with Jepson? He says,

“I feel like every artist is inherently granted one shot to sing about having a good time in his or her life, and six months ago, I realized I hadn’t cashed in my chips yet. So I thought, ‘I’m gonna sit down and I’m gonna give this a shot… and get my friend Carly to sing on it’. The final product rarely exceeds your expectations, and this thing just kind of happened.”

Who doesn’t love having a good time? This was a pretty big song at proms I did in 2012.

Good Time

One of the things about seeing a band live is the amount of audience participation. Some artists throw the microphone toward the audience so they can sing the next line. Sometimes there’s a question and answer chant between artist and audience. It’s gotta be cool for the artists to hear his or her song being sung by thousands.

The Ho’s and the Hey’s in The Lumineers song, Ho Hey, were not meant to be on the song. Yes, if the song was performed live, they had intended it to be something the audience would shout during the song. They decided after working on the song that they needed to be in the studio version.

Songfacts says,

The repetitive melodies and familiar section structure are kept interesting by the song’s sonic progressions that perfectly match the emotional developments in the song’s story. In the second verse, the lyrics move away from the dejection of the previous verse’s lyrics and take on a tone of hope and resolve. Fittingly, the melody is invigorated by a surprising octave jump and a more gravely, assured vocal performance. Also, a kick drum is introduced and synchronized with the “ho” and “hey,” which acts as a sort of exclamation point, encouraging the sing-along nature of the track.

I loved that the song sounded folky and stood out on the radio.

Ho Hey

In my years of DJing, I have seen dances come and go. In most cases, the dances are all the same with a different steps. One of the most annoying dances ever was Gangnam Style by Psy. The only reason it is here is because of the many times I had to play it at DJ gigs.

The lyrics are all in Korean except for the line, “hey… sexy lady.” It’s about a guy flossing his fashionable “Gangnam style,” and the sexy girl he’s after.

Here are a few of the lines translated to English:

I’m a guy who has bulging ideas rather than muscles
That kind of guy
Beautiful, lovable

A girl who covers herself but is more sexy than a girl who bares it all
A sensible girl like that

Yeah, the English doesn’t make it better.

Gangnam Style

Passenger is really a guy named Mike Rosenberg. He wrote Let Her Go. He told VH1,

“It didn’t take long to write, at all. Under an hour, I think. When I wrote it, I definitely felt like it had something… I never had a song on the radio, I didn’t believe I could have a song on the radio, because generally, folk music doesn’t get on commercial radio, it just doesn’t. I kinda thought that that kind of success was for other people, people who really tried to get that kind of success, because I never have.”

The song itself stands out not only for its sound, but the way it is laid out. It’s almost odd. Songfacts explains:

Structurally, this is a very unusual song. Based on acoustic guitar and strings, it has a 25-second intro before going directly into the first chorus (“Only need the light when it’s burning low…”). On the line “And you let her go,” the song picks up, introducing drums and going into an instrumental break before finally hitting the first verse at 1:03.

Beginning with the chorus is the equivalent of a movie that is shown out-of-sequence (like Pulp Fiction) – we know the big scene, but don’t know what led up to it. Passenger tells us the conclusion up front, then explains what he went through – the anguish he endured before he could just let her go.

The chorus comes back three more times, including at the end of the song where it repeats twice, ending with the voice isolated on the last lines to accentuate the conclusion: “You let her go.”

It is probably that strange lay out that makes me like the song. That and it is about finally letting go of someone.

Let Her Go

IF you want proof that real life inspires hits, listen to ANY Taylor Swift song. As a matter of fact, here is the story of how she came to write We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.

Songfacts says,

The empowering kiss-off to an ex was inspired by an incident when during a session in the studio with Max Martin and Johan Shellback, a friend of the singer’s former boyfriend happened to walk in. Swift told ABC News’ Nightline: “[My friend] starts talking about how he’s heard [my ex and I] were getting back together and that was not the case. When he leaves, Max and Johan are like, ‘So what’s the story behind that?’ And so I start telling them the story of ‘break up, get back together, break up, get back together,’ just, ugh, the worst.”

“Max says, ‘This is what we’re writing; we’re writing this song,'” continued Swift. “And I picked up the guitar and just started singing ‘we are never.’ It just happened so fast. It was so much fun.”

After the songs she has written about her many exes, I’m surprised anyone would want to date her.

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together

The last song on the list is about never quitting. If you have dreams, you gotta keep going, keep trying. Pink’s lyrics state,

“Where there is desire there is gonna be a flame, Where there is a flame someone’s bound to be get burned. But just because it burns doesn’t mean you’re gonna die. You gotta get up and try.”

I think many can relate to this. Pick yourself up and get back in the race.

Pink has claimed this is her favorite video. She does some pretty risque dancing. As a matter of fact, she showed it to her mom and posted her reaction on her Twitter page. Pink says,

“My mom, after seeing the new video… ‘Wow, honey. I’m speechless. And uncomfortable. No one can ever say you play it safe.'”

Try

So that wraps up 2012. Did I miss one of your favorites? Tell me in the comments.

Next week we head into 2013. The list from that year looks like a playlist from the Adult Contemporary station and a high school dance combined. It’s actually a good year for good tunes. I hope you’ll come back next week and check it out.

Thanks for reading and listening.

The Music of My Life – 2011

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.

This week, we look at 2011. I turned 41 that year. I was still working on the radio and I was still DJing a lot. I was surprised as I looked ahead to see that there was still some good tunes to choose from. The closer we get to 2025, I am not so sure.

When the song Safe and Sound was written, the band wasn’t even known as Capital Cities yet. “It started as a little idea we came up with – it wasn’t a fully fleshed-out song, per se,” Ryan Merchant told Billboard magazine. “We noticed that, when we showed it to people, there was this unanimous feeling that there was something special about this music, and we started to develop it. It took 10 different versions before we finally came to what you hear on the radio now, where we decided to add a trumpet for the main bridge part, which I think was one of our best decisions on the song. And we brought out this vintage keyboard that provides the foundation for the song. So the song really took a long time to get right, because we knew it was such an important song for us.”

What exactly does the song mean? Merchant says, “It seems like every generation feels like it’s living in the worst of times, and of course there are horrible things happening, but the average person is better off now than he or she was 50 years ago. In some ways ‘Safe and Sound’ is an antidote to the human tendency to think in apocalyptic terms and not really look at the logic of the world around us. Things are getting better and there’s a lot to be positive about.”

For me, I can still remember the first time I played it. I remember thinking how good it sounded in my headphones.

Safe and Sound

Someone Like You from Adele is about getting over an ex, hoping to find another who can bring back those feelings that made it so special. Not everyone can do that. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t do that! However, I was able to find someone who brought feelings that I had never experienced and a love that means more to me than anything.

It was a feeling that inspired Adele to write the song, “I was trying to remember how it was I felt at the beginning of a relationship,” she said. “Because as bad as a break up can be, as bitter and horrible and messy as it can be, that feeling when you first fall for someone is the best feeling on earth, and I am addicted to that feeling.”

This album runs the gamut of emotions. It is no wonder that so many of the songs were hits and won awards. Adele said, “The experience of writing this record was quite exhausting, because I would go from being a bitch to being completely on my knees.”

Someone Like You

Next a song I just like. Tonight Tonight starts with the line, “It’s been a really really rough week…” Who can’t relate to that? However, as the song gets going, it’s more of a feel good sound. I loved watching the high school kids dance and jump around when this one played.

The band was formed in Nashville and took their name from their first “dedicated fan.” Her name? Chelle Rae.

Tonight Tonight

I was programming a Classic Rock station when the next song came out. It got me in trouble. Maybe I am wrong, but I felt that if a classic rock band released a song that I felt “fit” the format, the listeners would want to hear it. So when the Cars released Sad Song, I added it.

The song played a few times before a VP of Programming called to ask why I was playing it. I told him, “It sounds like a classic Cars song, why wouldn’t I play it?” I was told to stop playing it and that is where the matter ended. It is also why most terrestrial radio sucks today.

Take a listen and tell me that this doesn’t fit a classic rock station …

Sad Song

Another great dance song that sounded good on the radio and worked well at dances was Moves Like Jagger. Now anyone familiar with the Rolling Stones can conjure up a visual of some sort of Mick Jagger dance. Mick was a master mover and his moves were something else. He was just fun to watch.

Adam Levine told MTV News why he likes to move like the veteran Stones’ frontman: “I’ve been a student at the Jagger School of Interesting Movement for 17 years. I’m graduating next fall, with honors,” he said. “[His moves are] a very carefully calculated, but slightly spastic, incredible rhythmic experience, in which all of your limbs and every bone in your body is moving at completely different times, and it’s impossible to re-create. Nobody has moves like Jagger, that’s kind of the point. That’s why the song is so fun, it’s fun to try.”

Fun Trivia: When this song climbed to #1 on the Hot 100, Mick Jagger became the first artist to have both topped the Hot 100 (as lead singer of the Rolling Stones) and be name-checked in the title of a #1 by another act.

Moves Like Jagger

The next song was one that I played at the Adult Contemporary station. It has such a unique sound to it that it really stuck out to me. I remember getting a call from the program director after the first time I played Somebody That I Used To Know because I had destroyed the artist’s name.

It is not “Got-Yee.” It is much classier – “Go-tee-ya”

The song was a number one in the states, in the UK, and other places world wide. American Songwriter magazine asked Gotye why he thought the song has proved so successful? He replied:

“I think it’s the kind of slow build and drama that it has, the two-part story, and the multiple perspective aspect that has struck people. It’s written openly enough that it expresses that confusion you can have after a broken relationship, and the way you can feel emotionally quite up and down.

You can feel nostalgic and rosily melancholy, in a way. But sometimes we often feel quite bitter about things, when you have nothing to do with that relationship or maybe with that person anymore, at least not actively. It can be quite a confusing feeling. So maybe the way the song expresses those feelings appears to strike people as quite true, and quite relevant with their experiences.”

Somebody That I Used To Know

Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen was all over the radio in 2001. The song was huge. Other singers loved it, too. Justin Bieber tweeted: “‘Call Me Maybe’ by Carly Rae Jepsen is possibly the catchiest song I’ve ever heard lol,” and his then-girlfriend Selena Gomez added, “This smile is because of Carly Rae Jepsen. We have not stopped listening to your song girl!”

The singer explained that when she and her guitarist Tavish Crowe are on the road together, during downtown she’ll sing out ideas whilst he plays off some chords on an acoustic guitar. “Actually, the chorus lyrics came out really easily,” she added, “the entire thing: [singing] ‘Hey I just met you, and this is crazy.’ We thought it was a nice little pre-chorus or something. We brought the idea to Josh and he was like, ‘That’s your chorus right there, keep that, that’s it.’ After a little while of production and just working together we had the song done. It was really easy to write.”

Carly was asked by NPR whether guys ever use this song’s lyrics as a pickup line. The Canadian songstress replied: “It’s happened a few times, yes. And they usually think that they’re the first person to do it. Some guys start with, ‘Hey, I just met you and this is crazy…’ It’s not very original.”

I have used some bad pick up lines in my day, but never this one.

Call Me Maybe

One Direction didn’t want to be known as another boy band. Songwriter Carl Falk wrote What Makes You Beautiful for them. I love his story.

“It was the first song we did for One Direction. It was hard at first for us to be convinced that a boy band like One Direction would work. How do you do this without sounding outdated or copying someone else? What we thought and what was clear about ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ was we had a vision of going back to the ’90s, and bringing a little bit of that sound from 1999 — like the sound choices and instruments — and just do an updated version of that.

If you look at the One Direction fans who are between 10 and 14 years old,” he added, “they haven’t grown up listening to music that I did when I was growing up, like’I Want It That Way’ [from the Backstreet Boys] or ‘Bye Bye Bye’ [from N Sync]. So we started to experiment with sounds and riff and everything. It didn’t take long.

The title was done already. We all loved it. It’s kind of cool to say, “You don’t know you’re beautiful. That’s what makes you beautiful.” That takes it from being a beautiful title to a really smart concept. So everything just clicked.

I tell my wife she is beautiful all the time, but she always tells me I need my eyes checked. I wish she could see the beauty that I see.

What Makes You Beautiful

I have never seen the Twilight movies and I have never read the books. However, they inspired a beautiful song from Christina Perri. A Thousand Years was that song.

SHewrote the song based on the emotions that she felt reading about the star-crossed love affair between Edward and Bella throughout Stephenie Meyer’s series. “When we went to watch the screening, they told us to see where there was temporary music added and just jump into those scenes a little harder,” she explained to MTV News. “But I’m fortunately a fan of the movie and the characters, and I feel like, by reading these books, I can step into that feeling that Edward and Bella have for each other. So [songwriter] David Hodges and I sat down, and it just came out in one afternoon. I feel like it was all meant to happen; I feel like it was all waiting inside me, waiting to come out.”

Knowing now that Twilight’s vampires inspired the song, all of a sudden one of the lines makes sense: “I have loved you for a thousand years, I’ll love you for a thousand more.” Because, you know, vampires are supposed to be immortal and all.

A Thousand Years

Another song that popped out of the radio at me in 2011 was Adele’s Rumour Has It. At first, it bugged me because I felt like that was all she sang. But as I went back and listened, I could tell that she wrote this from personal experience.

Songfacts says, The song sounds like it could be about the famous folks who show up in the tabloids, but it’s not. Adele says the inspiration was a lot closer to home.

After being away from home for about 18 months, she returned to the UK and reconnected with her old friends, meeting up for lunch and going out at night. She was shocked when her friends asked her about rumors that they had heard about Adele. “My own friends were gossiping about me and believing stuff that they’d hear,” she said. “I was mortified, really. I had to set the record straight with my own girlfriends who know and love me.”

She wrote the song with OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder. He told the US breakfast show Today that this song was inspired by Adele’s frustration at false speculation about her love life. He recalled how an angry Adele stormed into one of their recording sessions exclaiming: “People in London, my friends are saying, ‘Rumour has it that Adele has gone off and done this with this guy and she’s done this with another guy,’ and I didn’t do any of it, it’s a rumour!'”

Tedder responded: “There it is. We’re gonna write a song called Rumour Has It.”

Rumour Has It

With that, we wrap up 2011. Did I miss any of your favorites? Tell me about it in the comments.

Next week, we move on to 2012. My list includes one of the dumbest dances ever to hit the dance floor, a motivational song about getting through rough times, a non-sleepy song, and a song that we often shouted at work during some rough times. I hope to see you then.

Thanks for reading and listening.

The Music of My Life – 2010

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.

We are in the home stretch, as they say. We’re closing in on 2025 and admittedly, the newer music is not as well known to me. Once I was forced into retirement from radio and mobile DJing in 2020, I lost touch with almost all new stuff. I am guessing as we get closer to the end, I may need to double up on years and maybe feature 5 from some of them instead of 10.

I was introduced to Colby Caillat when I worked at the Adult Contemporary station. There was something about her voice that really stood out to me. I Never Told You is a song that I like not because of the lyrical content, but because of her voice.

As I heard this the first time, there was just something that sounded “real.” It was like there was real hurt and real struggle to it. It was only later that I found out why. She told songfacts.com in an interview that it was “the most difficult song she ever wrote. “‘I Never Told You’ was a long work in progress, said the Malibu-based singer-songwriter. “I started it by myself when I was on tour in Germany. Then two years later I played it for Jason Reeves and Kara DioGuardi when we were writing together in Hawaii for my album ‘Breakthrough’, and they helped me finish writing it that week. It’s now one of my favorite songs!”

I Never Told You

They say you are your own worst critic. When I listen back to my old radio shows, I think of how things could have been edited or worked with a better punch line. I’m fine when it is me telling myself what to do. Sometimes, however, there are people who think they know it all. They offer you this “sage” advice that isn’t worth squat.

That kind of situation led to my next song. I love the angst that you hear in the lyrics and voice of Sara Bareilles on King of Anything. She told Billboard magazine:

“It was the last song I wrote before we went into the studio, and I was at the point where I started sharing the music with my inner circle and started getting feedback. I remember having a very vivid realization of, ‘Oh, I forgot that this was a part of it. Everybody gets to tell you what they think about what you do.’ I could tell I was getting defensive. That song was a little bit of a pep-talk song-and that’s exactly what ‘Love Song’ was.”

She went on to tell PopEater:

“I’ve had more unsolicited advice on my life than I care to mention, and this was how I dealt with it. It felt empowering to turn that frustration into music, especially a song that doesn’t even sound angry. Apparently, I don’t get over things very quickly.”

She says that it is sort of an “F You” song. What do you think?

King of Anything

Adam Levine said that “‘Misery’ is about the desperation of wanting someone really badly in your life but having it be very difficult. Kind of what all the songs I write are about. I’m not treading on new ground, but I think a lot of people – including myself – deal with that all the time. Relationships are difficult, and it’s good therapy to write about them.”

I had never seen the video before choosing this one for my list. It’s loaded with some steamy scenes. Levine told MTV News about the Joseph Kahn-directed video.

“The cool thing is, when Joseph wrote the treatment after reading a few sentences, I thought it was really amazing,” he said. “Because it kind of turns the whole idea of the sexual energy between two people – a guy and a girl, a music video, you’ve seen that a million times – that exists in this video, but it’s turning it on its ass and having the girl be the more domineering one who’s trying to kill me.”

The song was one that really just stood out when it played on the radio.

Misery

I was still working at the Adult Contemporary station when I was going through my divorce. After it was finalized and Sam and I started to feel like there was something between us, I heard this song. The lyrics really struck a chord. I really did feel like a teenager again.

Katy Perry says that, “‘Teenage Dream’ is a euphoric feeling. It gives off this feeling that a lot of people have been through. I remember my teenage years, and I remember falling in love for the first time and how impressionable that was. How sensitive I was to every feeling. Heartbreak was really hard. Of course heartbreak is really hard now, and love is still intense, but it’s a different type of feeling, that teenage love. I want people to have that feeling again of falling in love unabashedly – those teenage dreams.”

This new love was unexpected, but made me feel giddy inside. It still feels that way.

Teenage Dream

In this world, we tend to beat ourselves up. We pick on ourselves. When we feel like doing that, we ought to remember what Mr. Rogers taught us. He would say, “I like you just the way you are. You’ve made this day a special day by just your being you.” That’s great advice for children and adults. That’s also why I picked the next song.

Bruno Mars conveys that Mr. Rogers message to his lady – “You’re amazing just the way you are!”

Bruno said, “I’m a big fan of simple songs. When we wrote Just The Way You Are, I wasn’t thinking of anything deep or poetic. I was telling a story. Get ready to fall in love!”

Sometimes the simple messages hit just right. The song went to #1 for Bruno.

Just The Way You Are

The Bruno Mars song was written with Cee Lo Green in mind. Cee Lo didn’t feel it was right for him, but he did feel like Forget You was.

Before I go on, I should state that Forget You is like the “Edited for Television” movies. If you replace “forget” with another F word, you’ll see what I mean. When I first hear this, I had no idea that is what the song was really called. The music service I used when DJing sent over the “radio edit” which had edited out the “s*#t” from “ain’t that some s*#t.” In the unedited version, Cee-Lo drops 16 f-bombs in just 3 1/2 minutes.

The song features Cee Lo’s Elektra labelmate Bruno Mars. It originated during a session in L.A. with Mars and Phil Lawrence.. The pair played to Cee-Lo a rough demo of a song they weren’t sure was worth completing. “When Bruno first sung ‘F—- You’ to me, they were still a bit indecisive on whether or not it could work at all,” Green told Entertainment Weekly. “I was like, ‘I like it. Let’s record it.'” The trio then completed the song with Cee Lo contributing many of the verse lyrics.

I loved the feel of this song and I was hooked from the line, “I guess he’s an X-Box and I’m more Atari!”

Forget You

A lot of folks dissed Michael Buble’ when he first came out. He was doing covers of old standards from crooners from the 40’s and 50’s. I guess they figured, anyone could do that, but Buble’ wrote some great original stuff. When his original stuff gained popularity, those folks shut up.

He has proven his talent and his fans love him. I love the arrangements he has come up with for his covers and his original stuff stands out, too. The guy is more than just covers and Christmas music.

Hollywood is not only a great song, but a great video. Michael likes to have fun and it shows here. His personality really shows through here I think. The video parodies several celebrities, including Canadian teen idol Justin Bieber. Speaking of the clip, Bublé told The Sun: “The video is about celebrity culture, people’s dreams about fame and what can go with it. You can see what fun I had playing the characters.”

Again, the song was different, fun and stuck out when it played on the radio, which is why I love it.

Hollywood

Christina Perri’s voice is very unique. It is almost as though it changes with each of her songs. For Jar of Hearts, I almost felt that it was deeper and darker than her other songs, if that even makes sense. I truly am mesmerized by her voice.

I have been accused by certain people from my past as being a “heart collector,” but that is really just nonsense. I was never a stud in school or afterward, and to say I was a Cassanova or Rudolph Valentino is simply hilarious. Anyway, in the song, Christina Perri looks to distance herself from a guy who is worse than a heartbreaker – he’s a heart collector, keeping them in a (metaphorical) jar and tearing love apart.

She wrote the lyric about a serial heart collector she once dated. On her blog, she told the story behind the tune: “I wrote the song after I went home to Philadelphia for the holiday last December [2009]. I sat in my childhood bedroom and hid from the boy (with the jar of hearts) who wanted to see me. My heart wanted to see him, my head knew better.”

I am aware that men are the more common keepers of “jars of hearts,” but I know at least two females from my past who were the same way.

Jar of Hearts

Train was really one of those groups I liked. I played a lot of their stuff on the radio and at parties and dances. This one, I found out, didn’t start out as Marry Me. From songfacts:

Pat Monahan got together with the producers David Katz and Sam Hollander to write the title track of the album, but their sessions also sparked “Marry Me,” which started off as a song called “Stay On Me.”

“It was absolutely beautiful and had the same longing melodies,” Hollander said in a songfacts interview, “but it just didn’t raise its hand. Then Pat went back in and flipped it to ‘Marry Me,’ and the emotion went a step further.

When Jonathan Daniel, Pat’s manager, played it for me, I had chills. I could not believe what Pat did with it. Sometimes you get those surprises. Sometimes a song never lives up to the demo in the room, but that one far surpassed it. He deserves the credit. That’s his heart – he’s a big-hearted guy with a really deft lyrical touch.”

I love hearing the origin stories for songs. I love the idea for the video, too. The video, directed by Lex Halaby, opens with a montage of real married couples telling the stories of how they met. When the song starts, it turns into a storyline where Monahan falls for a waitress, played by Anna Camp of True Blood and The Good Wife.

Marry Me

My final song is one that just “sounds happy.” What makes this unique is that instead of Tom Higgenson singing lead, guitar played Tim Lopez does the honors. Tim actually wrote the song. He told songfacts:

“It was written for this girl that I was dating while we were making our last album out in Malibu. We have a lot of history; I’ve known her since I was 11 or 12. I wasn’t really emotionally available to her at the time. I hadn’t completely gotten over my divorce, so when the band left on tour, I decided it wasn’t right to try to keep the relationship going so we called it quits. It was only over the last year or so that I’ve realized what I walked away from. The song was an attempt to rekindle things and win her back. She’s currently dating someone else, and I’m happy for her. But in case it doesn’t work out… who knows?”

The song barely cracked the top 40 (peaking at #38), but it is a song that sounds so good to me.

Rhythm of Love

With that, we wrap up 2010. Did I miss one of your favorites? Tell me in the comments.

Next week, we venture into 2011. Looking at the list, there is at least two ear worms; there are plenty of songs that I always played for one particular high school at their dances; and a song that I thought should have been a hit for a group who was big in the 80’s. I hope to see you next week.

Thanks for reading and for listening.

The Music of My Life – 2009

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.

One of my comedy heroes has always been Jack Benny. He claimed to be 39 for most of his career. It was one of the many personality traits built into his comedy character. In 2009, I actually turned 39 and have celebrated the anniversary of my 39th birthday ever since.

2009 once again brought changes as it was when my partner and I were let go from our morning show. They replaced us with a form of syndication. They had one person in Flint, and the rest of the crew was on the west side of the state. It hurt because we always talked about the importance of being local. Now the majority of the show is miles away and the only “local” Flint got was traffic and weather.

I think had they let us continue, we would have continued to do well in the ratings. Our program director loved what we were doing. When he passed and a new one came in, I always felt that they had it out for us. Why? So that they could do the morning show instead. In a sense, that is what happened.

It is one of those things that I have to look back on. When I do, I know that had that not happened, my life may have turned out very different. So I have to look back and be grateful for where I am now.

Ok, let’s look at some music.

I wrote all of the above without realizing that my first song is Lucky by Jason Mraz. This was the song that one of my former sisters-in-law used as her wedding song. Of all of my ex’s family, I miss her the most. I used to love making her laugh out loud. I think of her often.

This was a song I really liked right from the get go. I loved the blend of their voices. What was neat was to hear of their mutual love for each other’s music. Colbie Caillat said:

“He (Mraz) emailed me many months ago, saying that he loved my music, that he’s heard my album and he has a song on his album that he wanted me to help him finish writing and collaborate with. We finished writing through email. When he was in London recording his album, I was over there doing promotions for my album and I went over there to do vocals.”

Jason said:

“I became a fan of Colbie through MySpace and just cold-called her to see if she’d want to write and sing together. I dug her laid-back style and her attention to little things that make relationships work. She was a delight to share the mic with.”

They recorded the song without telling their respective record labels. The labels were not really into the idea. Those labels were obviously wrong as this won the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.

Lucky

It has been said that “men only want one thing.” I suppose there are many “things” that can be interpreted to be that “one thing.” If you think that one “thing” is money, well, here is a song for you.

I remember the first time I put this one in the CD player at work. It follows the classic “flip.” In other words, you have this slow, serious sounding introduction. That is immediately flipped into something not so serious. Does that make sense? Give it a listen and you will understand what I mean, I hope.

The Trace Adkins songs I have featured here have always had a very serious tone to them. He has had his share of hits with that serious tone, too. But every artists needs to break away from those ultra serious songs now and then. Trace says:

“It’s just fun stuff. You have to try to balance these records. I try to go deep on some, but you’ve got to do some that are just mindless – just stuff you can listen to and turn it up loud and drive fast and just have fun with it and smile and sing along and laugh. You’ve got to have that stuff.”

That’s exactly what “Marry For Money” is. It is the picture of a low down, cheating, male gold digger. And with that being said, it is fun to listen to!

Marry For Money

I had DJ’s enough high school and middle school dances to hate Miley Cyrus. Urgh! That Hannah Montana stuff that the kids loved was just crap to me. That is until I heard, The Climb. It was the first song where I felt like, “Ok, she can sing” and “That song is a hit!”

The song was written by Jessi Alexander and Jon Mabe. I was worked with Jessi before, as she did a show for our listeners at the Moose. She seemed shy and quiet, but she sang like a superstar. I always thought her debut album should have done more.

This was the first single to be taken from the soundtrack of the 2009 Miley Cyrus film Hannah Montana: The Movie. When this reached #1 on the on the Adult Contemporary chart, Miley was 16 years and seven months old. This meant she was the youngest artist to top that survey since LeAnn Rimes. It was Miley’s first #1 single on any of Billboard’s airplay charts.

The song’s lyrics remind me of the poem “The Dash.” The poem is about a grave stone’s dates and the dash between them. Life isn’t about the date of birth or date of death, it’s about what happened between them – the dash.

Here is the chorus of The Climb:

There’s always gonna be another mountain
I’m always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be an uphill battle
Sometimes I’m gonna have to lose
Ain’t about how fast I get there
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side
It’s the climb

Life is about the climb!

The Climb

The next song is one that really hits home for me. Not that it was important in 2009, however, it reflected my thoughts on a situation in the mid-90’s. Without giving too much info that folks who know her would figure it out, here is the story.

There was a gal who I really liked. Ok, loved. I hated seeing her with this other dude, who totally treated her like crap. She deserved more. Deep down, I wondered if I ever got a shot to be with her. If I did, I would treat her much differently. I would treat her like he should have. She would often come to me upset because of her relationship. I wanted to scream, “Dump him! I’m here!” That never happened.

Taylor Swift explained the song this way:

“This song is basically about wanting someone who is with this girl who doesn’t appreciate him at all. Basically like ‘girl-next-door-itis.’ You like this guy who you have for your whole life, and you know him better than she does but somehow the popular girl gets the guy every time.”

Last I heard, that gal married the guy. We lost touch, because of that guy. We were such good friends at one point. It is sad to think about.

You Belong With Me

When I used to DJ, I sort of had a rough play list. I started almost all of the weddings the same way. I would play Unchained Melody after all the wedding dances were done. This got all the couples on the dance floor to dance. After it, I would play a fast song to keep the floor packed. Depending on the age group, it might be Old Time Rock and Roll, Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It, Get The Party Started, or something else.

When the Black Eyed Peas released I Gotta Feeling, it was my go to “kick off” song. All age groups loved it. It was the perfect song to talk up, too. “I gotta feelin’ we’re going to have a great night tonight! What song can I play for you, etc….”

It was a great party song and a great radio song. The song was a number 1 song for 14 weeks! The song was the first ever single to be downloaded more than one million times in the UK. Said Fergie:

“It’s exhilarating to know we are so connected to our Peabodies. Hopefully the good vibes from that song will continue to brighten people’s lives.”

According to will.i.am, he literally dreamt up this tune. He said:

“I’ve written songs right from a sleep. Have you ever had a dream where there’s a melody in your dream? I’ll wake up out of my sleep and record that! ‘I Gotta Feeling’ was one of those songs.”

I Gotta Feeling

Next is a song that I remember playing when I worked at the Adult Contemporary station. I was, of course, familiar with Colby Caillat’s music already. It wasn’t until I had moved in with Sam while going through my divorce that the lyrics of this one took on a whole new meaning. I really did begin to fall for her.

Caillat explained to Elle that the song is:

“about falling for a guy I was friends with. We went out on a date and I realized that there was no one else in the room. The room was silent, and I was on this high from it the next day and wrote this song.”

If the guy in the video looks familiar, Colby explains why:

“Bobby Moynihan from SNL plays my love interest, and the whole video is about this guy who’s not my type, but he does all these dorky things on our date that somehow impress me. So he picks the roses from my garden instead of buying me flowers. And then we’re going to go surfing and he almost hits me over the head with the surfboard. And he also has this really funny fantasy dream where he’s dressed all ‘Guido’ in white shoes and his chest is showing and I’m in this ridiculous bathing suit with huge hair and we’re dancing at a DJ party on the beach. It’s just a funny, silly video.”

Falling For You

I have been friends with a gal for almost 40 years. She always said, “Remember to smile, it’s contagious!” I always loved that. There are plenty of great sayings about smiles. “Smile, it makes everyone wonder what you’ve been up to” is another great one. One of my favorite DJ’s used to say, “If you are walking down the street and you see someone with no smile, give them yours and tell them Don Alcorn says hello.”

There are some great songs about smiling, too. “When You’re Smiling” by Dean Martin and “Smile” by Nat King Cole immediately come to mind. Well, Uncle Cracker’s isn’t a bad one either.

Uncle Kracker told Billboard magazine this is: “probably the most positive song I’ve ever written.” He added that the overall tone of the album Happy Hour, “is pretty positive in light of everything that’s going on in the world.” He said: “I made a conscious decision to try something positive. It’s what I needed. it’s a positive spin on everything.”

It’s one of those positive songs that I love!

Smile

Remember the saying, “A stranger is a friend that you haven’t met yet?” That was the thought I had when I heard the title of this Michael Buble’ song. Whether it is an unborn baby or a future lover, the song can have special meaning.

When it came time to record the Crazy Love album, Michael told song facts:

“I started this record knowing I was going to record it differently than my previous ones. I dug way deeper and was more introspective on this one. Basically, I sang the truth – made each song autobiographical – and you can definitely hear the difference. I went back to the way my idols made their records. I wanted an organic feel – so people could feel like they were in the studio with me. The musicians and I all sat in the room, recorded it right from the floor and we let the sounds all come together and bleed into one another. It’s not contrived. Not too perfect. It just feels really good.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, Bublé was asked what the message is he’s trying to send with Crazy Love. He replied:

“I think the message is that all of us can relate to this feeling, this emotion called love and it’s a complicated feeling. It doesn’t just come with butterflies in the stomach and happiness and sunshine and lollipops, it comes with heartache and jealousy and sometimes rage and sometimes insecurity and sadness and regret. It’s a beautiful, complicated, and really special feeling that keeps us all connected.”

This was the first recording by a jazz crooner to reach the Top 30 of the Billboard singles chart since Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why” seven years previously in 2003.

Haven’t Met You Yet

The next song stood out to me because of the sound. The first time I heard Hey Soul Sister by Train on the radio, I loved it! That ukulele cut through like a knife to me. Train’s Pat Monahan said, “The ukulele made everybody happy. I think that along with the song itself and the melodies, people gravitate towards that positive part of it. The ukulele made a big difference.”

He told Billboard that the song and the album were a return to their folk roots. He said:

“There’s super catchy riffs and melodies in it, which I think are way more important that any production trick or great-sounding vocal production. It’s kind of us going backward so we can go forward.”

The song was the most downloaded on iTunes in 2010 and is just a great feel good song.

Hey Soul Sister

Lady Antebellum (Known now as Lady A) was one of those groups that came through on a radio tour and left me speechless. They were SO good. I knew that they would be stars. They music they played, their vocal stylings, the dynamics of the group – they had it all.

Lady A is Charles Kelley, Hillary Scott and David Haywood. Need You Now was from their second album. Hillary Scott explained that the song, and many others on the album, “Are about what we are learning as we go through the ups and downs of different relationships.” She added: “All three of us know what it’s like to get to that point where you feel lonely enough that you make a late night phone call that you very well could regret the next day. But you do it anyway because it’s the only thing that’s going to give you any relief in that moment.”

Charles Kelly said that initially there some concerns about the song’s lyrical content from executives at their record label. “The response from the get-go was so big,” he said. “I remember even having some conversations with the label and people were [saying], ‘Oh no, hope they don’t get offended by the ‘I’m a little drunk and I need you now’ line. And I said, ‘But that’s honest! We’re talking about Country radio, right? What happened to the old Waylon [Jennings] songs and stuff and people said what they felt?’ It’s storytelling.” Dave Haywood added, “The three of us have been there, too. I mean, we’ve been in serious relationships and when you get out of that, all you want is that person next to you.”

I don’t know one person who hasn’t felt that way after a break up. The song connected with people everywhere and went straight to # 1. When this ballad reached #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart in its 10th week, it achieved the quickest climb to the top (excluding seasonal titles) since Phil Collins.

Lady A performed “Need You Now” at the 2010 Grammy Awards, where it won for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. It marked just the second time a country song won the Record of the Year prize and the third time Song of the Year went Country.

The song is a great song, and sadly at its peak was overplayed on the radio.

Need You Now

So there you have my picks from 2009. Did I pick one of your favorites? Did I miss one of yours? Tell me about it in the comments.

The Music of My Life – 2008

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

In 2008, I turned 38. I was now a father of two boys, one with special needs. I was working in country radio at the time. Still grieving my mom’s passing, my emotions were heightened. Happiness was extra happy, sadness was extra sad, if that makes sense. So let’s get into 2008 and feel all the emotions…..

The first tune was released in January of 2008 and it struck me like a brick to the head. It was a song that really made me stop to realize how I had to take in all the little moments that were going on with my boys, even when I was too upset to do so.

I’ve written about this song before on here. It meant a lot then, and even more now. You’re Gonna Miss This by Trace Adkins blew me away the first time I heard it. It is all about how the things that aggravate you now, are the same things that you will miss in the years to come.

The song written by Ashley Gorley and Lee Thomas Miller. When they first worked on the song, they were so busy writing it and getting it recorded that they didn’t get into the emotion of it. It was only when Adkins recorded it that the duo realized its depth. If you have children, young or old, it hits home.

You’re Gonna Miss This

Natasha Bedingfield’s Pocketful of Sunshine is a song that kind of jumped out of the radio at me. It was one of seven songs that were recorded for her Unwritten album that were included to be “radio friendly” to American audiences. It was a good choice, as it was a Top 5 record for her.

Outside of the rhythm of the song, and the cadence of the vocal, the only other reason I can think of for liking the song is the chorus. The idea of having a bit of sunshine in your pocket, that struck me. On crappy days, you always carry sunshine with you to help you get through. I guess I needed to think about life that way. I had a lot of good going on in my life, and I needed to start focusing on that.

Pocketful of Sunshine

Brad Paisley is not only a fantastic guitar player, he is an amazing songwriter! He can write some of the most beautiful love songs and at the same time a “raise your beer at the bar and get drunk” song. The ones I really like are those where he finds those male vs female angles. That’s the next song, I’m Still A Guy.

The lyrics of this one are just great. Male perspective vs female perspective come verse after verse. “When you see a deer, you see Bambi, and I see antlers up on the wall” is just one example of the fantastic writing of Paisley.

From songfacts.com:

Brad Paisley explained to Great American Country: “I just wanted to capture this struggle a little bit between men and women in a playful way, which is ‘Why don’t you get a little cosmopolitan here and feminize up for me just a bit?’ [laughs] We’re fighting that every step of the way, some of us guys, and ironically in talking to the radio guys, they say the majority of the calls for it come from women, and I think the same thing happened with ‘I’m Gonna Miss Her.’ These women want their men to hear it, and by golly, that is the best way to get a man to hear something is to play it for their significant other. They’re gonna be forced to listen to it. It’s got that nudge-your-partner-with-your-elbow factor to it.”

I’m Still a Guy

“Kid Rock on a country station?!”

Those were the words of more than one country program director when All Summer Long came out. It was one of those songs that hit the Top 40 Chart for both Modern Rock and Country! Because Kid is from Michigan, it made sense for us to play it, but the rest of the country?

Kid Rock explained to MTV News why the song was so big:

“I knew the track was solid – it’s got two of the best songs of all time mashed up together [‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘Werewolves of London’], it’s got great melodies, so really, my work was done. I knew people would hear it and know I wrote it. They’d know it was real, and there’d be that connection. And that’s what’s missing in music today. I think people don’t believe half the s–t they hear some rapper or some pop girl singing about… but with me, they do. And that’s why people have reacted the way they have to the song.”

All Summer Long

The next song is on my list for a weird reason. I can nail the drum line!

Pink told the story of this song: “‘So What’ was a joke. I heard this beat from Max Martin. It’s such a fun beat, so fun. And I was actually kidding when I said, ‘I guess I just lost my husband, I don’t know where he went.’ Ha ha, that’s really funny. Let’s keep it and it just kind of went from there. And it just got more and more wrong. The more lines we wrote, the wronger it was. And we kept it because I don’t really care. I don’t think about the consequences when I write songs and now I am regretting every second of it. No, I’m not.”

At one of our family Christmas parties, one of the brothers-in-law had brought over their Playstation or X-Box with Rock Band on it. He had the guitars, the drum kit and whatever else they needed for the game. So What was a cut on there. I had never even heard the song at the time. I couldn’t do squat on those guitars, but the drums … we’ll I did ok!

Whenever I hear the song, I always remember jamming on the drums to it.

So What

I remember thinking, “Now that’s a great band name!” when I hear of the All-American Rejects. Gives You Hell didn’t mean much to me back in 2008, however, during my divorce it applied to a lot of people.

The group’s front man, Tyson Ritter, told MTV News:

“It’s kind of this tongue-in-cheek way of looking at someone you hate, whether it’s your mom, for some reason, or it’s your teacher at school, or it’s your boss at work. It’s just someone who makes you struggle, and it’s giving them the finger.”

Now, “hate” is a strong word. I certainly don’t hate some of the folks I think of when I hear this song, but I certainly would give them the finger….

Gives You Hell

“Oh, great, Keith has another Nickelback song on his list!”

I have always tried to live by the mantra, “Live every day as if it were your last, someday, you’ll be right.” That’s what this next song kind of meant to me. If Today Was Your Last Day, what would you do with it? It is a song that makes me wonder every time I hear it.

According to songfacts, the song had been around for awhile without ever being completed. Bass guitarist Mike Kroeger noted on the record label’s website, “Chad (Kroeger) brought it out of the vault and the creative juices started to flow.”

If Today Was Your Last Day

Not Meant to Be by Theory of a Deadman was another song that meant little or nothing to me when it was released. But when I was in therapy prior to my divorce, it started to hit me. Let’s face it, not all relationships are meant to be.

The group’s Tyler Connolly wrote the song with Kara DioGuardi at the American Idol judge’s house. He commented in a press release: “Amazing. I went over to her place, drank some wine and we wrote ‘Not Meant To Be’ in 5 minutes. Our writing styles fit together so perfectly it was almost like it was ‘meant to be.'”

“I remember giving Kara the song title and she said, ‘I like that! I don’t I’ve heard of a song with that title.’ So then I just wrote the chords right there on the spot. From there, she started humming the vocal melody and wrote the lyrics off of that. I took it home and finished the rest. The next day I show up with the finished song and she says, ‘That’s a hit.’ Once I sent Roadrunner Records the demo, they loved it.”

It only went to #55 on the charts, so I’m not sure I’d call it a “hit,” but I liked it.

Not Meant To Be

I believe when I blogged about the Trace Adkins song above, I also included this next one from Darius Rucker. Basically, it is the same song, or at least the same theme.

When Darius put out his Learn to Live album, a lot of folks (myself included) wondered how “Hootie” was going to make it singing country. Well, he showed us! He fit the format like a glove! His country stuff was better than some of the established artists at the time (in my opinion). He took It Won’t Be Like This For Long all the way to #1.

He said, “This is about my two daughters. I’ve got a 13 year old and 7 year old. I wrote it with Ashley Gorley and Chris DuBois, who also have daughters. This song may be my favorite song on the record. I love playing it acoustically. We play it when we visit radio stations, and there wasn’t a day where at least two people didn’t cry. We’d just look and count. It’s absolutely bittersweet. When we were writing it, we were talking about how fast our families were growing up. That first week after the baby is born is awful: you’re up all the time. Then when it’s not like that, you miss those times.”

Last night, my daughter asked me to tuck her in. She asked me to sing our song to her, which I haven’t done in a while. It had me almost in tears. The time goes so fast….

It Won’t Be Like This For Long

After Hey There Delilah, I made sure to listen to more of these Plain White T’s fellas. They packed my interest with their sound. 1,2,3,4 is one of my favorites from the decade.

Plain White T’s Lead singer Tom Higgenson wrote it for his girlfriend at the time, Angie Chavez. In the song, he tells her over and over that he loves her, which she makes as easy as counting. This is something I could easily sing to my wife.

The video is well done, too. It shows Higgenson busking in Chicago on a December day in 2008. As he plays, crowds gather and some people recognize him – nobody in the clip is an actor. Throughout the video, we see couples and groups of families and friends with graphics explaining who they are and how they got together. In the end, Higgenson meets up with Angie, and we learn that they met in Chicago.

What a wonderful little love song!

1, 2, 3, 4

Wow, that’s ten songs already. Ok, which hit from 2008 did I miss that is on your list? Tell me in the comments.

Next week, we move into 2009. My list includes a former sister-in-law’s wedding song, a surprisingly powerful song from a Disney kid, a song that tells how every expecting parent feels, a song from a group I knew would be a success the first time I heard them, and one that just makes you feel good and want to dance.

Thanks for listening and reading. See you next week.

The Music of My Life – 2007

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.

Late 2006 and most of 2007 was a blur to me. The loss of my mother hit me hard. I distanced myself from so many people, including my wife at the time. That wasn’t good because the weekend we buried my mom, we found out we were expecting our second son. I was there, but I was not there.

Life goes on, however, and I was still working and DJing. In between all of that, I was seeing a grief counselor, which helped a little. But not much. All that being said, music found a way to get me through the tough times. Let’s look at my 2007 picks.

One of the things that has always remained constant is that people love to dance. Line dances like the Hustle, the Madison, and the Stroll have been getting people on the dance floor for years.

The Cupid Shuffle has been compared many times to the Cha Cha Slide from 2000. They are two very different songs, but they both have easy to follow line dances. Those songs became a staple of DJ gigs, dance clubs, and a night at the bar. It remains one of those songs that people of all ages can dance to. Folks still get excited when there here it play.

Nothing makes a DJ happier than a full dance floor. This one always filled them.

Cupid Shuffle

Honestly, I had forgotten that Michael Buble’ dated Emily Blunt. It seems like she and John Krasinski have been together forever. Michael was her boyfriend before she met and married John. Buble’ wrote the song Everything for Emily when they were still together. He explained:

“I wrote that song about the great happiness of real love, but at the same time I was making a statement about the world. We’re living in really crazy times, and I wanted to say that no matter what’s happening, this person in my life is what really makes it worthwhile.”

In 2009, after Buble’ and Blunt broke up, an Australian newspaper asked him about the song. He explained:

“I can sing ‘Everything’ because I’m OK now. But straight after, well, I didn’t want to listen to music. Forget about my music. I couldn’t do anything. The only good thing I did do was I went and got a therapist. I felt bad for everybody involved. It’s definitely worse cause it’s all done publicly. You go to the grocery store and it’s in every magazine. It’s the same thing that’s happened in my other break-ups. It’s always tough. You grow attached to someone and they become your best friend. You lose a friend – that’s one of the most difficult parts. I’m a sentimental person.”

This one didn’t mean much to me until after Sam and I got together. She is my everything without a doubt.

Everything

There was something about Colbie Caillat for me. I still don’t know whether it is her voice or the words of her songs. I really connected to her music. I remember hearing Bubbly for the first time and trying to figure out just what (or who) it is about. I found out, it isn’t about anyone or anything specific. According to songfacts, Colbie says,

“It’s about the feelings you get when you have a crush on someone and they make you make smile all the time; they give you butterflies and you just adore everything they do.” She added that the inspiration for the song came in the summer of 2006 when she was realizing that, “I didn’t have a crush on anyone, and its always fun to have a crush. So I was just thinking about missing those feelings and wanting them.”

She comes from a musical family. Her father, Ken Caillat produced Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Tusk albums!

Colbie Caillat explained the album title to MTV. “Coco is my nickname,” she said. “My parents called me it since I was a baby. And then my friends called me that, now my producer calls me it. So I just, I don’t know, I figured that would be a cool name for the album.”

She is a beautiful lady with a beautiful voice.

Bubbly

Sara Bareilles signed with Epic Records in 2005 and recorded the album Little Voice. Prior to this, she released a lot of demos. Things changed in a heartbeat thanks to iTunes.

“Love Song” was featured as the free single of the week on iTunes between June 19th and 26th June 2007. People then began to check out her album. Little Voice became the most downloaded album on the iTunes store between July 8th and 17th. Because of this, her music gained a lot of fans. She went from having a relatively small following to national exposure within a very short space of time. In an interview with Songwriter Universe, she commented on the popularity of the song:

“Honestly, I don’t know what it is about ‘Love Song’ that’s catching on with everyone. I think it’s just a cool and sassy uptempo tune and people are ready for a female artist in that range.”

What many people don’t know is that an artist doesn’t always have a lot of control of their music. Many times, they are asked to record something that the label feels is what the public wants. That was sort of the case with Love Song. Sara says,

“‘Love Song’ came out of my own frustration about trying to please somebody else with my music. I really put an unseen pressure on myself and got way too caught up in what other people wanted. That is not why I write songs. No one was really excited about the material I turned in. ‘Love Song’ came on a day where I was like, ‘God, just let me write something – anything – just for me.’ The label had no idea I was writing about them.”

I guess I like this because it does have a “feel” to it. It is as cool and sassy as she says.

Love Song

One of the absolute coolest artists I have ever met is James Otto. When I worked at the Moose he dropped by to play us some tunes and blew us away. One of the songs was “Just Got Started Lovin’ You.” My program director, Jim Johnson, and I looked at each other when he was done playing it and asked if we could start playing it on the air that day!

It was the ultimate smooth love song. When you get married, it’s easy to say I will love you forever. However, when you say, “Hold on to your seat, because I just got started loving you!” In other words, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

James wrote this with Jim Femino and D. Vincent Williams. In an AOL interview, he said,

“We sat down to write and I said, ‘I have got this hook – just got started loving you.’ D. Vincent had this melody line, which turned out to be completely hooky. The feel of that melody and that hook just sounds sexy, but I had no idea it was going to do what it did.”

In regard to the song itself, he says,  

“This song is kind of a real groovy, R&B-feeling song. Like if Ray Charles was doing a modern Country record. It would have that R&B-feel to it, that kind of groove to it. It seems to be appealing to more women than men, which is not a bad thing. Actually the key demographic in Country music is women and all men want to reach women. That’s why we play music and buy nice cars and buy nice things, because we want to meet women in the first place. So, I guess it’s just a groovy song, it’s got a unique feel and kind of a sexy thing and hopefully it reaches them on all those levels.”

The song reached #1 in May of 2008. We were thrilled for him and were glad to see him on more than one occasion when he came through town. He and I are friends on Facebook and chat every so often. Over the past year or so he’s been working on rebuilding a late 60’s early 70’s Chevelle. It’s been fun to watch.

Side note: The first time he shook my hand, I thought he’d crush it! His hands were HUGE!

Just Got Started Loving You

The next song is about murder. I don’t promote it and I don’t think it is right. However, anyone who watches the First 48 or any of those cop shows knows that cheating is often a motive for murder.

My introduction to Wake Up Call by Maroon 5 was via video. The video was edited in the style of a NC-17 movie trailer. Naturally, lead singer Adam Levine as the main character. At the end of the video, Levine is arrested and dies in the electric chair. It was one of those videos that I thought was very well done. I like when a video lines up with the content in the song.

Despite the content of the song, I love the song.

Wake Up Call

New Eagles music?! Yes, please! That was my reaction when the song How Long hit my desk. I was working at a country station at the time. There were many people who did not want to play it, but I was super excited to add it. It was so fresh and so “Eagles!” Those harmonies were still fantastic!

From songfacts:  “How Long,” was recorded with Don Henley and Glenn Frey sharing lead vocals. The song sounds especially familiar, like it could have come from the 1970s. That’s because it did.

The song was written by the band’s longtime friend J.D. Souther in 1969. Souther wrote many songs for the band (Best of My Love, Heartache Tonight, etc…). The Eagles used to perform it live in the early ’70s, but never recorded it. Souther put it on his first solo album in 1972. At the time, if one member or a cohort released a song, the Eagles wouldn’t do it themselves. However, 35 years separated them from Souther’s version. So they had no problem adding it to the Long Road Out Of Eden album.

We have YouTube to thank for the Eagles recording this song. Glenn Frey’s kids were online watching videos. They came across footage of the Eagles performing “How Long” in 1974 on a Dutch TV show called Pop Gala. They showed it to their dad and had a good laugh. Glenn’s wife suggested he record it with the Eagles. He took the idea to the band and they all got on board.

The album was the band’s first studio album in 28 years. The single didn’t even crack the Hot 100, peaking at #101. That didn’t matter, the song won the Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocals.

I just love this song!

How Long

I’m not the biggest Kenny Chesney fan. I know that will not go over well with some people. I felt that there was a time when he could record a piece of trash song and people would play it. Why? Because he is Kenny Chesney. There were songs that were much better than some of his tunes that never got airplay because stations only played established acts.

With all of that being said, he did have some great songs! Don’t Blink is one of those. It basically says what I have said over and over on this blog – Time flies! Life goes faster than you can imagine.

From songfacts: “Don’t Blink” is a reflective song where Kenny Chesney sings of a TV news story where a 102-year-old man is asked about the secret to his longevity. The man’s response is “don’t blink,” which inspired the song’s message about slowing down and cherishing every moment. So very true!

For me, having children sped up the clock of time. It just goes faster when you have children. Before you know it, you blink and they go from toddlers to high school graduates.

Don’t Blink

Leona Lewis is one of those artists who appeared on a reality singing show. She won The X-Factor in February of 2008. She waited almost a year before putting out this song. Songfacts says, the 22-year-old from Islington took her time over the follow up and accompanying album. She didn’t want to rush out a record that might disappoint all her fans who supported her on the show. It was worth the wait. In its debut week “the single “Bleeding Love” sold 218,000 copies, the biggest total for any UK single since “A Moment Like This.” In it’s debut week it outsold the rest of the UK top five put together.

“Bleeding Love” was originally intended for Jesse McCartney’s third album, Departure. However record label boss Clive Davis heard the song and wanted it for Leona Lewis, who he was championing. McCartney said: “We originally wrote the song for my record and then I guess Clive Davis heard it, called up and said, ‘We really wanna use it for her album.'” Jesse co-wrote the song with OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder.

Jesse McCartney revealed that his songwriting inspiration for this song was the pain of a long distance relationship (specifically actress Katie Cassidy, daughter of singer David Cassidy). He said: “I kept thinking about being in love so much that it hurts. I was away from my girlfriend for four months at the time and I really wanted to throw in the towel (quit) and fly home. I was so in love that it was painful. It was like bleeding, it cut me open. That’s how my head was and that idea just really fit the song.”

Bleeding Love

When Taylor Swift first came out, I was impressed with her stuff. There were some really deep songs for a gal that young. I suppose I knew when they started remixing her songs for pop radio that she’d wind up leaving behind the format that made her famous.

There were some great songs from that debut album, and Our Song is no exception. AOL asked her if there was a true story behind this song. She replied:

“I wrote this song in my freshman year of high school for my ninth grade talent show. I was sitting there thinking, ‘I’ve gotta write an upbeat song that’s gonna relate to everyone.’ And at that time, I was dating a guy and we didn’t have a song. So I wrote us one, and I played it at the show. Months later, people would come up to me and say, ‘I loved that song that you played.’ And then they’d start singing lines of it back to me. They’d only heard it once, so I thought, ‘There must be something here!'”

Her debut album went Platinum on June 7, 2007. This made the 17-year-old Swift the first female solo artist to write or co-write every song on a Platinum-selling debut album. The album eventually went 7x Platinum.

When this reached #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, Swift became the youngest performer ever to write and sing a chart-topping Country single.

This made my list because of my wife and me. We’ll be married 7 years in March. Would you believe we do not have a song?!

Our Song

So that wraps up 2007. What songs did I miss that are on your list? List them in the comments.

Next week, we’ll move into 2008. My list includes two fantastic parent songs, a counting song, a couple songs that make you ponder, a song with a great sample, one that I came to love because of the Rock Band video game, and a song for the guys. I thank you for listening and reading!

See you next week.