So over on my Twitter (@danwithatwist) I've been playing along with the 30 Days of Music meme. While it's great to think about the role music has played in my life (which in general, can be characterized as "central", "monumental," and any other adjective that means "of epic importance"), I'm finding I can't really express it in one tweet. So here are a few more thoughts on the songs I picked this week, and why.
Day 1: Your Favorite Song
This is a totally unfair question. It changes by the day, the year, the mood. So, I had to think about songs that have consistently moved me and inspired me, at different points in my life. Songs that have stood the test of Dani-time. The Beatles always fit into this category, and for me, "A Day in the Life" is probably the most perfect Beatles song. I've always been equally devoted to the "Lennon" songs and the "McCartney" songs and this song has the best elements of both. I love the bizarre lyrics, I love that it's really two songs in one, I love the cacaphonous symphony at the end of the song, followed by the one dramatic chord. Do I really have to explain? It's the fucking Beatles, people.
Day 2: Your Least Favorite Song
Really, I could have chosen from any of the shallow electro-pop songs from the late 1990s, but I chose the song emblematic of the genre (if you can call it that): "Barbie Girl," by Aqua. Life in plastic is NOT fantastic, and singing that I look like Barbie in a baby's voice is just. not. cool. Other songs that would fit into this category? "Cotton Eyed Joe," "I'm Blue," and really, even "Mambo Number 5." All of these could be obliterated from the planet, as far as I'm concerned.
Day 3: A Song that Makes You Happy
Alot of songs make me happy, but the song that right now is the "Oh my god, I'm almost done my run and I just need to keep going for a few more minutes" song, and also the "dance in my bedroom with a hairbrush microphone" song is "Remedy" by Little Boots. It's really easy, in the exhausting grind of my work week, to turn off, become a worker-zombie. I love the lyrics "No more poison killing my emotions/I will not be frozen/dancing is my remedy, remedy." I mean, how can you not get up and dance to that?
Day 4: A Song that Makes You Sad
"Moon and Moon" by Bat For Lashes is so beautiful, and tremendously sad. Natasha Khan's voice is haunting and there is always a tone of longing present, even in her more positive songs. In "Moon and Moon", her voice is tremulous; there are notes of hope ("If I had you here..." she sings, dreamily) as well as of resignation, to loss and loneliness: "I won't see you no more." I feel that for so many people who have passed through my life - if I had them here...oh, the possibilities in the impossibilities.
Day 5: A Song that Reminds You of Someone
I chose "I Can't Go For That" by Hall & Oates. Anything Hall & Oates, really, reminds me of my dad. When I was little, we had a tradition of going downstairs to the rec room in our house on Winchester after dinner, and dancing away. We danced to Hall & Oates (I liked "Maneater." And keep your thoughts to yourself, I was 4), Michael Jackson's "Thriller," "Sesame Street Live," Sly and the Family Stone. Anytime I hear Hall & Oates, I think of those dances with my dad in the rec room.
Day 6 & 7: A Song that Reminds You of Somewhere/A Certain Event
I combined these two, for good reason. I chose anything off Coldplay's "A Rush of Blood to the Head," which reminds me of moving to Montreal...so the album cannot be thought of without remembering the place, or the event. The album came out just a few days after I moved to Montreal, my first long-term move from Victoria. I remember playing the album on repeat every sweltering August afternoon, in my apartment on Avenue D'Esplanade, which I shared with a crazy harpsichordist who looked like Trotsky. The album reminds me of finding my feet in a new city, meeting my new friends, immersing myself in Montreal, which I grew to love.
Coldplay has always timed their albums appropriately to my life: "X and Y" came out when I was studying in London and is inextricably linked with my memories of Edy and I's first months in love. On a darker not, we saw Coldplay in Crystal Palace hours before the London bombings on 7/7/5. "Viva La Vida" was on the playlist the week I left Vancouver for London again. I don't know what comes first, my change in location or the Coldplay album - we'll have to wait until the next one to find out, I guess. And where will it take me?
Day 8 - A Song you Know All the Words To
I was immediately transported back to Calgary House, at Pearson, and lying on Miguel's bed one late night while he tried to "stump" me with song lyrics. We went on and on; I guess I just have a knack for remembering these things. If I'm on your pub quiz team, I'm in invaluable asset in this category. So the song I chose was one that I sang in the beginning of Act II of "Priscilla, Queen of the Damned!" in June at the Waterfront Theatre - "I Got Life" from Hair. Trying to remember the order of the myriad body parts was so difficult - I got my: head/hair/brains/ears/eyes/nose/mouth/teeth/tongue/lips/neck/tits/heart/soul/back/ass/arms/hands/fingers/legs/feet/toe/liver/blood. PHEW! I would shake in terror prior to being wheeled (yes, wheeled) onstage to sing this song. If ever there was a song in which I was going to stumble, it would be this one, but thankfully that never happened.
Well, there's Week 1. Stay tuned for Week 2!