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 – 1996

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 suppose it is when you are on the backside of 20, you begin to really understand how fast the years go by. I turned 26 in 1996 and I was told, “30 is just around the corner!” One co-worker told me that every thing starts to fall apart when you turn 30. I learned that he was right!

My first pick from 1996 has a Meatloaf vibe. “I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that. The Gin Blossoms will “follow you down, but not that far.” Follow You Down was their first single from the “Congratulations…I’m Sorry” album. The album got its name because that was what people said to the band finally having hits (Hey, Jealousy & Found Out About You) after struggling to get one for years.

The song was a last minute addition to the album. “We were working on the record, and I’d come home at night to my hotel room, and I had those chords, and finished writing by the time we got home,” guitarist Jesse Valenzuela told songfacts.com. “We’d already finished the record, but I had this great song, so I demoed it up and I sent it to my main A&R man, David Andaly, the great David Andaly, and he said, ‘Why are you hiding this thing? Let’s put it on the record.’ So we went and recorded it right away.”

This is one of those songs that really stuck out to me on the radio. I loved the little harmony on “Anywhere you go.” It was another one of those songs that I would crank up the radi.

Follow You Down

Let it be known that I am not the biggest Celine Dion fan. However, I think Diane Warren is one of the best songwriters ever. Diane wrote the song Because You Loved Me for the movie Up Close & Personal.

From songfacts.com:

Diane Warren explained in the book Chicken Soup For the Soul: The Story Behind The Song how she honors her father in this song. Said Warren: “I saw the film with the director, Jon Avnet, on a Friday. I thought, ‘What would I want to hear at the end of the movie?’ Jon played me a tape of a gospel singer to give me a sense of what he was looking for – something really soulful.

I went into my office on Saturday, the following day, and the chorus came quickly. Michelle Pfeiffer’s character is thanking Robert Redford’s character for believing in her. The song became personal at the same time that it was telling the story of the film. Once I began, it became a way of thanking my dad for everything he did for me and the support he has always given me. He believed in me and my music from the time I was a little girl. When I was 15, he took me around to music publishers. Not only did he support my goals, he supported me financially while I was struggling in the beginning.

I had to wait for months to see if my song would be chosen to use in the film or if they would select one of the other four submissions. Thank goodness I had just started therapy! It got me through it.”

When I was DJing weddings, I would say that 8 out of 10 couples used it as their wedding song. Even Vince Gill and Amy Grant used it for their first dance. Lyrically, it is just spectacular.

On a Billboard podcast, Diane Warren said, “I feel like it was a leap in my craft. I felt that when I wrote that song, it was better than I was at the time, if that makes sense. I was like, ‘Whoa, this is probably my best song.’ There’s something lyrically about it.”

Because You Loved Me

My next pick was actually a hit back in 1973 for BW Stevenson. My Maria was written by Daniel Moore and Stevenson. It is basically Three Dog Night’s Shambala written about a woman.

In 1996, it was covered by Brooks and Dunn and it went straight to number one on the Country Chart. It was also named Country Song of the Year.

This version made Moore happy as it made him more money than any other version. He said, “The original sold 950,000 singles, Brooks & Dunn’s version has sold over 6 million. The original version got about 1,500,000 US radio performances. The Brooks & Dunn version is over 6,500,000 US radio performances and still going.”

It was one of Brooks and Dunn’s biggest hits, but it almost wasn’t recorded. Ronnie Dunn admitted he was reluctant to cut the song when the idea was first presented to him. “I thought, ‘Oh man, it’s just that falsetto thing,'” he remembered. “It’s a rock song, in my opinion. And I was very much wrong.”

Personally, I like the Brooks and Dunn version better than the original. I also have fond memories of a few of the country stations I played this one on.

My Maria

Next is a song that was never released on a Weird Al album. The song Spy Hard was recorded and used as the title song for the Leslie Neilsen movie of the same name.

Anyone who has seen a James Bond film knows the importance of the opening credits. They were all very unique and this song (and video) were a nod to those Bond intros. Spy Hard is unique in that it was recorded with an orchestra (which was conducted by Bill Conti of Rocky fame).

There is a Bond Urban legend that says that for the song Thunderball, Tom Jones held the song’s final note long enough to pass out; in this film, Yankovic holds it long enough to make his head explode. Originally, Yankovic had planned to loop the note to the required length, but in the studio, he discovered he was able to hold the note long enough that no looping was required. What a talent!

As for the movie itself? Let’s just stick with the song ….

Spy Hard

One of the first songs I remember playing when I started at my first country station was by a group called Ricochet. Many of the “older” songs I was playing were new to me at the time and that included Daddy’s Money.

This song was their second single and it was a number one hit for them. I could relate to the song in a way. Whenever the choir at church there, I often found myself staring a a pretty girl singer. The opening lyric:

Can’t concentrate on the preacher preaching
My attention span done turned off
I’m honed in on that angel singing
Up there in the choir loft

I love the line, “My attention span done turned off!” The only thing that makes me chuckle more in this song is the fact that it goes out of the way to make sure you know that she is “a good bass fisher!” Now, what man doesn’t want that in a woman?!

This is on my list because I love singing along to it.

Daddy’s Money

I knew Alanis Morissette from the children’s comedy show You Can’t Do That On Television. When her Jagged Little Pill album was released I was struck by the deep and profound lyrics of many of the songs. Some of the lyrics shocked me, honestly.

At a live show, she explained how the song came about:

“When relationships get healthier and healthier we somehow equate that with not being as passionate or as sexy,” she explained. “I’ve kind of realized that it’s actually sexier when there’s less drama. It’s been better, and I never thought that that would be the case because of the whole clingy, overly dependent roller coaster that often times seemed very passionate and very sexy. And when I wrote ‘Head Over Feet’ about this particular person it was the first time that I actually had a glimpse of what it would be like to be in love and have it be something that was inducing of the heart palpitations, yet at the same time I could spend a couple minutes and actually not think about that person. It was very new to me.”

I was dating a gal in 1996 who was not as vocal about her feelings as me. I have always believed in letting people know how you feel about them. I always thought it was odd for me to say “I Love You” and not hear it back in return.

I had made a cassette tape of love songs for this gal and it had a huge variety of singers. She actually liked it a lot. She told me that she had a song that made her think of me and told me to listen to it. The song was Head Over Feet.

Knowing this gal like I did, it made perfect sense for her to use this song. She was exactly like the gal in this song and I was exactly like the guy. It wasn’t exactly the way I wanted her to express her emotions, but it worked.

Later on, she broke up with me by putting a note on my windshield. That even led me to some pretty dark times.

Head Over Feet

Some of my music blogger friends are familiar with the next song. I love it because it has that 60’s Beatles feel to it. It’s from the imaginary group called The Wonders. That Thing You Do becomes a hit for the group in the movie of the same name.

The song was written by Fountains of Wayne bass player, Adam Schlesinger. He said, “That was 1995 I think I first heard about it, or ’96, and I was just starting out. I had a publishing deal as a writer and they told me about this movie – they said that they were looking for something that sounds like early Beatles. And they knew that that was an era that I liked a lot. So I just took a shot at it and got very lucky and they used the song.”

Adam says he is better known for this song than Fountains of Wayne’s Stacy’s Mom.

I admit that this is a song that I play over a couple of times when it comes up on my music playlist. I just love this one.

That Thing You Do

One of the best interviews I’ve ever done was with Jewel. She promoting a country album when I chatted with her on the air, but I was very familiar with her music. Some folks wanted to write her off as a one hit wonder after her song Who Will Save Your Soul, but You Were Meant For Me stopped that!

Jewel wrote the song during the time she was homeless and living in her car. During that period she started having panic attacks and anxiety, and came up with her own way of coping, using mindfulness exercises to retrain her brain. In an interview with ABC radio, she said the line, “Dreams last for so long even after you’re gone” is about “the love of fantasy versus the actual reality.”

Songfacts.com says, “Jewel wrote the song during the time she was homeless and living in her car. During that period she started having panic attacks and anxiety, and came up with her own way of coping, using mindfulness exercises to retrain her brain. In an interview with ABC radio, she said the line, “Dreams last for so long even after you’re gone” is about “the love of fantasy versus the actual reality.”

At the time, this was the biggest-selling single in the history of Atlantic Records, and Jewel became the label’s first artist to grace the cover of TIME magazine (July 21, 1997). She is such an amazing singer and songwriter.

You Were Meant For Me

Beavis and Butthead were so successful that they got their own movie – Beavis and Butthead Do America. The soundtrack included songs from Ozzy Osbourne, White Zombie, No Doubt, Isaac Hayes, and AC/DC. It also included a cover of the Ohio Players’ song Love Rollercoaster by the Red Hot Chili Peppers!

While the original was a number one song, the Chili Peppers’ version didn’t do much in America. It did go Top 10 in the UK.

It’s not that I love this song, but I do like the more modern take on it by the RHCP. The video is kind of fun to watch too.

Love Rollercoaster

Remember the movie The Mirror Has Two Faces? Me either.

I Finally Found Someone was a hit for Barbra Streisand and Bryan Adams. Streisand initially wrote the love theme with veteran composer Marvin Hamlisch, but her producer, David Foster, envisioned it as a duet. That’s when Bryan Adams and his producer, Mutt Lange, were brought on to the project.

Barbra says, “Bryan played our track and heard me humming and fell in love with this little theme that I wrote, and then he and his producer Mutt Lange wrote a counter melody based on the track that I sent him. And they wrote the lyrics. So that’s how that happened.“

The single gave Streisand her first Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 since 1981 and was a top ten hit. This was a song that I would often suggest to couples who did not want the most popular wedding songs (like the aforementioned Celine Dion). This was also a song that I mentioned to my wife as a possible “our song.”

Adams and Streisand have two very distinct voices, but they blend well together and this is really a fantastic and underrated love song.

I Finally Found Someone

This year was a difficult one for me to narrow down to ten songs for some reason, so I am sure I left off a few of your favorites. Tell me about yours in the comments.

Next week, we’ll look at 1997. I can see that this was another difficult year to pick ten songs as below the ten I have another nine artists names! The list does lean a bit alternative, but there is also some pop, country and swing!

I mentioned that my breakup of 1996 began some dark times. In 1997, there is a song that ties in way to closely with what I was doing in my personal life … More on that next week.