Music

30 Day Song Challenge, Day 30: A Song You Discovered This Month (During The Challenge)

They say all good things must come to an end, and since today is the last day of June, it’s time to put the finishing touch on this year’s 30 Day Song Challenge. If you’re interested in going back to check out my previous picks, I’ve collected them all at this link. I had a…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 29: A Song You Want Played At Your Funeral

IT’S A TWO-FER TODAY in the 30 Day Song Challenge!! I couldn’t pick just one so I’m giving you both of my picks for today. That may be kind of a sad commentary on the things I think too much about, since today calls for me to pick a song that I want played at my…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 28: A Song From Your Childhood

Only a few days left in this year’s 30 Day Song Challenge and as much as I’ve enjoyed participating again this summer, it just got considerably more difficult to do so as I am now swamped with other blog-matters (specifically, my post regarding the recent SCOTUS “marriage equality” decision).  Thankfully, today’s prompt is a simple…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 27: A Song You Wish You Could Sing

I play guitar and there are plenty of songs that I actually can’t play (because I lack the skill/proficiency) but wish I could.  Like, I can’t even play those songs badly. Singing is different than playing an instrument, I think, because anyone with a voice can sing any song, even if they do so poorly.  Today I’m picking…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 13: A Song That Is A Guilty Pleasure

As a rule, I don’t like the category “guilty pleasure” when it’s applied to music.  You like the songs you like.  No harm, no foul Most of the time, when asked to report their “guilty” music pleasures, people tend to pick from artists like ABBA or Neil Diamond or Boyz II Men— all of whom I love, by the way– but what…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 16: A Song You Used To Love But Now Hate

Falling out of love with something (or someplace, or someone) can be awkward to experience, even more awkward to explain.  Our affections are mercurial, often unpredictably so, and there isn’t always a neat and clean account to be given for why you stopped to stare amorously into one of life’s store-windows only to then, well,…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 18: A Song That Every Bar Band Should Know

I’m resisting every last urge of my lesser self to pick “Sweet Caroline” today. You’re welcome. First, allow me to set the proper mise-en-scene for today’s prompt. There is, blessedly, a wide variety of live-entertainment bars in these more-or-less-blessed United States, with a correspondingly wide variety of  what counts as “appropriate” music to play in them.  And…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 17: A Song You Hear Often On The Radio

I do not abide total silence well and so, as a consequence, it is hardly ever completely quiet in my living space  I turn on NPR first thing in the morning, I listen to music or news-programming when I’m in the car, I always have something playing in my home or office while I work,…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 20: A Song To Listen To When You’re Angry

My entries for the rest of the month are going to be brief, because I just had elbow surgery and am now living what, if it were a sitcom,  I’d dub “My So Called One-Armed Life.”  My options for typing now are either henpecking or voice recognition software, both of which are time-consuming and neither…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 19: A Song That Bar Bands Should Stop Playing

For the most part, bar band songs become “bar band songs” in the first place because they’re the sort that people can hear over and over again without tiring of them. So I don’t really have a beef with most bar band songs.  I wish that Beale Street bands didn’t play “Sweet Home Alabama” so frequently,…

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