Tag: 30 Day Song Challenge Page 2 of 4

Today’s challenge invites us to share a song with someone’s name in the title. Obviously lots to choose from, but this song is one I’ve loved since I first bought the album it’s own, the year it came out, and which I cover form time to time.

Here’s Concrete Blonde, with “Caroline”

Today’s challenge invites us to share a song that has many meanings to ourselves, and I have to admit that I’m a bit stumped. There are certainly songs that have different *associations* in my mind. It isn’t so much that the song means a different thing as that it resonates on a different frequency emotionally, depending on the context. I’m not sure that’s entirely what the question is going for, but since that’s all we have to go on, here’s a song that stirs a lot of different emotions in me, depending on who is on my mind when I play it¹. Here’s “Beeswing” by Richard Thompson.

1. The details of which I have no intention of expanding upon here ↩

Today’s challenge invites us to share a song that makes us think about life. There’s a lot of great songs that make one introspective and philosphical, especially in the singer-songwriter canon. For today’s entry, here’s a song that directly addresses modern life in a way that is both humourous but also profound. Here’s Baltimore’s We’re About 9, with their song “Live With This”

I was born in 1970, which was a pretty great year for music. The Billboard year-end Top 100 chart would make a pretty killer playlist.

I’m going with a song that reflected the mood of the times, and sadly, which still does. It would require almost no alteration to bring this song into the present. Here’s The Temptations, with “Ball of Confusion”.

Today’s challenge invites us to share a song we would sing as a duet with someone at karaoke. After 16 days of difficult decisions choosing which song to highlight, finally here’s an easy one. Not only is this a fun song, but it is a favourite memory with one of my favourite people. The very first time I met Julie Wotzko, at Sunnie Larsen’s birthday party, we did this song together. We’ve since reprised it, and even though she’s now an ocean away¹, I look forward to doing it again sometime.

Here’s “The Internet Is For Porn”, from the cast recording of the Broadway musical “Avenue Q”.

1. do you have to be an ocean away? ↩

Astute readers will (and did) notice that in my haste to make sure I got yesterday’s post up on time, i accidentally skipped a day¹. So here is the entry that was skipped, and tomorrow we’ll be back on track.

This is another hard one to pick a single song. I’m a huge fan of covers², especially covers that do something really interesting and different with a song that transform in a way that feels entirely organic and natural. I mean, I also love covers that are just gimmicks,³, but someone taking a song and really turning it into something personal is always a treat.

So I’m using this entry to share a favourite track from one of my favourite musicians, Richard Thompson. At a 2000 tribute to Joni Mitchell, he performed this rendition of her classic song, “Woodstock”, and it delights me every time I hear it.

1. Amusingly, the song I picked for the out of order challenge would have also been a valid entry here ↩

2. and if you are too, you should subscribe to Brian Ibbott’s magnificent podcast, “Coverville” ↩

3. such as those produced by Hayseed Dixie, Me First And the Gimme Gimmes, or Richard Cheese ↩

Today’s challenge invites us to share a song that’s a classic favourite.

I have no idea what this means. Seriously, I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I have no idea.

So, here’s my favourite Beatles cover, “Dear Prudence” by Souixie And The Banshees

Today’s challenge invites us to share a song we’d love to be played at our wedding. There’s a few songs that come to mind here; songs that were “our songs” early in our relationship, that meant a lot to us. When Larissa and I first got together, I was living in Atlanta and she in New Hampshire, so we spent a lot of time burning up the phone lines at night, and spending about one weekend a month actually together, which is as often as we could manage between finances and other commitments. On one of her first trips down, she gave me a copy of a mix-CD that included this wonderful song, and it quickly became a talisman for us. (I eventually leanred to play it, so that I could sing it to her myself.) Here’s Anne Hills, with “Follow That Road”.

Today’s challenge invites us to share a song we like from the 70s. This is another huge lift, as so much of the music I grew up with, both at the time it was current, and later when it was the cornerstone of “classic rock” radio formats, came from that storied decade. There’s the birth and maturation of heavy metal. There’s the cradle of punk. And disco. ¹ And that’s not even mentioning such mainstays of my record collection as Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, or The Carpenters²

But the more I pondered this, I realised that in my musical pantheon, there is one figure who stands astride all the rest like a colossus. So, for the second time in this challenge, I give you the immortal David Bowie, today with his 1977 single “Sound and Vision”

1. Hush. It was never cool, but you could dance to it. ↩

2. who are probably rarely mentioned in the same sentence, but this is my blog, so you have to deal with my eccentricities. ↩

Today’s challenge invites us to share a song from our preteen years.   While one could take this as “anytime before you were a teen”, I’m going to go with the narrower sense of the word meaning “immediately before you were a teen, so roughly between the ages of 10 and 12, which in my case, gives me a range of roughly 1980 – 1983.

In addition, I’m going to pick a song that I was actually fond of at the time, rather than one I discovered later.   Because we didn’t have cable TV in 1981, the only time I ever saw the newfangled music videos everyone was talking about was on an NBC late night program called “Friday Night Videos”, and the songs that featured in its heavy rotation were special to me.  This song, in particular, I remember being especially fond of, every time it would come up.   Something about that wonderfully slinky saxophone and Rindy Ross’s sultry vocals sparked something in my preadolescent imagination, and besides, Quarterflash is an *awesome* band name.  Here’s their 1981 hit single, “Harden My Heart”.