30 Day Song Challenge

Day 16 – A song that you used to love but now hate — “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls

(Source: Spotify)

30 Day Song Challenge

Day 15 — A song that describes you

“Suicide Blonde” by The Weepies

30 Day Song Challenge

Day 14 — A song no one would expect you to love: “Bang! Bang!” by the Knux

I came across this song because it’s on the soundtrack for The Unusuals, an ill-fated but awesome quirky cop show. They used the chorus for a chase scene, and at first that was all I got out of it.

A couple plays later, I started really listening to the lyrics and realized the damn thing’s an historical document. Not only do the artists explore the mentality of a specific time and place (post-crack inner city New Orleans) they describe a culture that no longer exists as it did.

… I was a dancing b-boy who resorted to slinging them e-boys
And jacking them cars, macking them broads, sadistic shit, then flipped the script
I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite, but momma raised me for greatness
But we broke as fuck and hope is stuck and New Orleans defines the cage its
The animal house and getting out’s like taking food from an animal’s mouth
Roar roar like a dungeon dragon, taking it back to the cannibal’s route

Apparently these guys (who are brothers) moved to LA after Katrina hit, and the song starts with mention of another era ending. I think it really shows an acute awareness of the impermanence and unpredictability that comes with poverty. Where are all these guys now?

30 Day Song Challenge

Day 13 — A song that’s a guilty pleasure: “American Pie” by Don Mclean

I’m embarrassed to admit that I really like this song, because it’s gotten this reputation as being cheesy and over-dramatic. And maybe it is? But I love lyrics-heavy folk songs from this era, and it’s the epitome of that genre.

It also evokes this visceral image of high school possibly more real than anyone’s actual high school experience — a kind of hyper-realism that launches the subject matter out of personal narrative and into the realm of symbolic legend.

And I didn’t even LIKE high school all that much.

30 Day Song Challenge

Day 12 — A song from a band you hate

At first I was like “But I don’t waste my time hating bands!”

Then I remembered Glee.

30 Day Song Challenge

Day 11 — A song from your favorite band: “When in Rome” by Nickel Creek

Where can a teacher go?
Wherever she thinks people need the things she knows
Hey, those books you gave us look good on the shelves at home
And they’ll burn warm in the fireplace, teacher — when in Rome. 

30 Day Song Challenge

Day 10 — A song that makes you fall asleep: “Serenade” by Emiliana Torrini

I always associate this song with my first dorm room, the lights out and the window open on a quiet grey afternoon, a soft rain dripping through the pines outside.

30 Day Song Challenge 

Day 9 — A song you can dance to: ”Tunak Tunak Tun” by Daler Mehndi

I can’t dance much at all, so have this one. I at least know the bit with the fingers and claps because it was always the last song of the night at my fiance’s frat (we would stomp at points and the whole floor would shake).

Also, WoW male draenei.

30 Day Song Challenge

Day 8 — A song you know all the words to: “Inevitable” by Shakira

“El cielo está cansado ya de ver
La lluvia caer
Y cada día que pasó es uno más
Parecido ayer
No encuentro forma algún olvidarte 
Porque
Seguir atandote es inevitable.” 

30 Day Song Challenge

Day 7 — A song that reminds you of a certain event.

Lame story, but one day I was in a Wal-Mart (in a town small enough that that wasn’t such an awful thing) and this came on over the sound system. I started singing along and a woman, maybe in her early 30s, looked at me as if I had started reciting Homer’s Odyssey in the original ancient Greek.

“You — you know the words to this song?”

“Yeah?”

Apparently I was too young for this sort of thing to have been expected.