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30 Day Song Challenge – Week 2 Recap

Hello, too many days late! Last Thursday through yesterday-ish, I had what I hope was the only bad cold/sinus infection I’ll experience in 2019. So here I am with the Week 2 Song Challenge Recap, with the Week 3 Recap not far behind at all. Let’s not waste any time!

Day 6: Transports you to another place and time
“Drift Away” by Dobie Gray

The place: Midland Dairy in Kearny, New Jersey
The time: throughout the school year, circa 1999-2004

On most days during lunch period, I would visit this great deli/convenience store near school to get a bottle of Coke (in a glass bottle, because I was a class act), some kind of celebrity-centric magazine (to balance out the classiness), and a Snickers ice cream bar (no explanation necessary). I swear that every time I walked into the store, “Drift Away” was playing. I often visited Midland Dairy with my friend Chris during this time, so hearing “Drift Away” reminds me of him too, which is great because Chris is great.

Day 7: Would be the soundtrack to your training montage
“Magic” by B.o.B (feat. Rivers Cuomo)

Let me be perfectly clear: I am a complete sucker for upbeat, gleeful songs ESPECIALLY if they have a whiff of cheese. I love the inherent silliness in music like this, and if the song has any sort of confidence-building message, even if it’s more tongue-in-cheek, you know I am going to add that to my exercise or my “let’s rock this presentation” playlist. And since I’m a little nerdy and odd, the fact that Rivers Cuomo is the one actually singing the words “I’ve got the magic in me” makes it a bit of an anthem for the awkward person who wants to be convinced that they, too, indeed have the magic in them. It’s sincere in a bit of a desperate way, and I adore it.

Day 8: Is really good live (based on your experience)
“Pride (In the Name of Love)” by U2

Typically I prefer smaller venues to arenas when consuming live music–small places require a more stripped-down and music-focused act instead of a multi-media performance, and I confess I like the dinginess and casualness of a bar show versus a concert that’s in the triple digits for one ticket (not to mention it takes like an hour to get out of the parking lot at the end of an arena show, ugh).

The only time I’ve seen U2 is also the only time I’ve been to a huge venue show and afterwards felt like “yeah, I’d like to do that again”. Arena shows are great places for flashier entertainers with costume changes and other bells and whistles and marvels in concert special effects and dancers and other such business. When I saw U2, there was a long stage and a massive screen, but otherwise it was just the band dressing in the same style they’ve been dressing in for decades, and yet they do not get swallowed up in the vastness of the place where they’re performing. Bono is this small dude who somehow manages to be larger than life, leaning on sheer charisma instead of props or other add-on’s. It’s incredible. I was captivated by him, and I literally cried while I sang along with everyone else: “Free at last, they took your life, they could not take your pride!”

Also, I chose to feature this specific video because the footage was shot the day before I saw U2 in the same venue.

Day 9: You can’t help but dance to
“Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson (feat. Bruno Mars)

This song is too cool for me and I can’t handle how much I want to dance to it. This is the song that got me out on the dance floor during a work party recently, and I’m embarrassed just thinking about how goofy I must’ve looked. But I remember not caring at the time because there was literally nothing I could do about it.

Day 10: You can sing really really well
“When I’m Sixty-Four” by The Beatles

This song is sweet and the melody has a limited range that’s neither too high or too low for me–a goldilocks of a song! I’m not a great or strong singer, but sometimes I can hold a tune. I can hold a tune with this song and so I belt it out when it graces me with its presence on the radio (YES I already told you I listen to the radio!). Not that this is really a song you “belt out” but you know what I mean.

Day 11: You resonate with most right now
“Crossed Wires” by Superchunk


One of the many upsides of my current job is that I do a lot of independent, quiet work which allows me to listen to music throughout my day. Recently I was listening to a playlist on Google Music and the first lines in this song stopped me in my tracks:

I went out and felt the sun on my face
Then a tug on my leg and now I’m
Back in the cave
There’s a moment of peace
That I just can’t re-create

I immediately was like YUP, I get it, and this song gets me.

The imagery here is a boiled down version of what my daily struggle with anxiety looks like. Often I’ll get a glimpse of something hopeful and joyful (e.g. a start of a day, a good feeling, an idea, anything really), and then something else, internally or externally, will almost immediately counter and overcome the feelings of hope and joy, replacing them with despair.

Of course I don’t want to feel despairing, so it’s a constant battle of hope versus hopelessness that takes place in the innermost recesses of my mind. And since it’s rooted so deeply, it comes out in ways that are tough to explain. It takes different forms, including experiencing complicated and contradicting emotions, acting moody and flaky, isolating myself from people altogether, etc. BUT, in the midst of this, even though everything is chaos, there are moments when I do feel the sun on my face, and that brief peace is a gift when I otherwise constantly live in fear that something in my life is going to burst into flames.

If that was too much of a downer for you, I’m not going to apologize, so just watch the music video to feel better (or watch it again if you watched it already).

Day 12: Was #1 the week you were born
“Invisible Touch” by Genesis

Remember when I said the following: “I am a complete sucker for upbeat, gleeful songs ESPECIALLY if they have a whiff of cheese”? Well, perhaps it’s because I was born with a predisposition to loving this type of music! This song! This music video! It’s everything. I couldn’t be prouder of being born during this moment in popular music, ha! Truly though.

Coming soon: Days 13-19 of the 30-Day Song Challenge!

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30 Day Song Challenge – Week 1 Recap

Some of my record recollection! (In case you weren’t aware of how serious I am about music, ha!)

Five days down, twenty-five to go! Even though I created the questions for my song-a-day questionnaire, I’m already finding some of them to be a bit difficult to answer. Hence the challenge part of this experiment, I guess!

The intent of my question-setup was to encourage myself to think carefully through an eclectic assortment of music. However, I’m finding that when I’m a bit under pressure, my brain automatically defaults to what I’ve currently been listening to, and it’s a challenge (word of the day!) to break out of that mode. And through this challenge, I do want to showcase the fun music I enjoy, but not sacrifice honesty for some kind of insincere aesthetic. Does that make sense? If not, it’s cool. I’ve got 25 more days to figure it out. 😉


Alright, here we go! Days 1-5 of my Song-a-Day Challenge!
Name a song that……..

Day 1: Once you hear it, it will be stuck in your head for an entire day
“Red Red Wine” by UB40

I don’t get the hiccups often. The day that I do get the hiccups though, I have them all day. Sure, there is a point in the process when the diaphragm relaxes and the hiccuping ceases, but inevitably an hour later, the hiccuping will start up again. This is how those few days of the year go; on that day, I am aware of the struggle, but I’m confident that it will end when I fall asleep, and the next day it’ll be like nothing ever happened. That’s the best analogy I can come up to help get across what it’s like for me on the days when our radio station (yes radio station, look it up) plays Red Red Wine. Or when Red Red Wine is played in a commercial or TV show. The main difference is I hear Red Red Wine more often than I get the hiccups, but the feeling is still pretty similar.

Day 2: Was the gateway to a lot of the music you currently enjoy
Tie between…
“Last Nite” by The Strokes
“Birdhouse in Your Soul” by They Might Be Giants

Yes, only Day 2 and already a tie. I get why you’re angry, but hear me out. To choose only one of these songs would basically be like saying half of me is more important than the other half of me. It would be like having two children but only celebrating one of them. It would be like saying “yeah I’ve got two eyes but that seems excessive” whilst scooping one of my gratuitous eyes out of my skull. So you see the quandary I was in. It was best to bend the unwritten yet understood rules.

I won’t let it happen again.

Day 3: Reminds you of one of your closest friends in life:
“Mushaboom” by Feist

This song was released in 2004, and 2004 was the year I started college. Looking back, I realized that I subconsciously gave myself permission to take social risks during my freshman year, to try to “find my own”, since as a teenager I had always felt a little awkward and never quite “fit it”. Out of that relationship quest I gained a very important and formative friendship that always (then and now) seems to strike a healthy balance of fun and seriousness, with a side of interesting music. She played me this song during one of our first times hanging out in the student union on campus, and to this day, hearing Mushaboom always reminds me of being 18 and being optimistic and hopeful about life and friendships.

Day 4: Isn’t overtly religious, but feels inspirational in a spiritual sense
“Everlasting Arms” by Vampire Weekend

If I could just choose the entire Modern Vampires in the City album, I would–but as we’ve already established, I’ve already broken one rule this post. Here’s the thing.. I think I’m using the word “inspirational” more in terms of inspiring me to dwell on spiritual things, versus “inspirational” in the “uplifting” sense. I don’t think this song or this album is uplifting at all, but it’s grappling with religious tradition and beliefs in a way that is vulnerable and honest. I doubt Ezra Koenig would care for the comparison (I don’t think he reads this blog, so I’m in the clear), but when he writes about God, he truly in my opinion is a modern psalmist, in a very Davidic sense. This song captures the tension of fear/doubt with crying for help and safety in the midst of it. It’s all very beautiful and hits the core of me.

Day 5: You enjoy that’s in a different language
“Dragostea Din Tei” by O-Zone

I wish had a better answer for this, one that showed how aware I am of the contributions to music that other countries have to offer. Instead, you’re stuck with this blast from the not too distant past that borders on novelty due to its internet fame. Again though, this song brings me back to really happy-go-lucky college freshman days when YouTube was basically just the Numa Numa video, when my monstrosity of a cell phone was to be used only for long-distance calls to my family, and when The Facebook wasn’t so infuriating and evil.

Side note, “Dragostea Din Tei” is SUPER fun in Just Dance! Seriously.

What do you think, sirs? Check back in next Friday for Days 6-12!