If Your Life Were A Song Part II

Last week’s topic of having a life song triggered some great discussions with friends and family.

Betcha Can’t Pick Just One

One point that came up repeatedly was how difficult it is to pick a life song. As Jenn put it, “I have many life songs! A song that defined my single digit years, another for my teens, my first love, my first breakup, as well as significant places I’ve lived. I can’t just pick one!”

I totally agree with you, Jenn. It’s why I had such a hard time choosing one song and also why I ended up choosing “Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha. After all, it’s not just difficult to choose, it’s impossible. 😉

Theme Songs

So, songs with a theme; songs that speak to a period of one’s life or commemorate a life event. My friend, Rupert, has a theme song and encourages others to have a theme song.

For Rupert, a theme song is something that others will sing when you enter a room! (Rupert’s theme song is Raiders of The Lost Ark, in case you want to announce his next entrance. hee hee)

Other types of songs could be, as Jenn suggested, song of your first love, or song of your senior year in high school.

Maybe I was asking a different question

Perhaps when I posed the question “If your life were a song, what would it be?”, I wanted people to name a current favorite song; a song that in some way defines them at this point in their lives.

That makes me think of…

All this talk about favorite songs from a period in one’s life has me recalling my senior year in high school. I played in the pit orchestra for the musical, “Cabaret“, put on by our drama department.

There are many great songs from this show but only one that totally grabbed me. I would belt it out for the other pit musicians during breaks. The song was “Maybe This Time.”

Now if you listen to the lyric, you might think I led quite a mature life for 16 years old. In fact, I loved the melody and the dramatic effect of the lyric.

Maybe this time, I’ll be lucky
Maybe this time, he’ll stay
Maybe this time
For the first time
Love won’t hurry away

He will hold me fast
I’ll be home at last
Not a loser anymore
Like the last time
And the time before

Everybody loves a winner
So nobody loved me;
‘Lady Peaceful,’ ‘Lady Happy,’
That’s what I long to be
All the odds are in my favor
Something’s bound to begin

It’s got to happen, happen sometime
Maybe this time I’ll win

Sally Bowles sings that she’s been unlucky in love in the past, people always leaving her. But she believes this time is different, “maybe this time I’ll win!”

Just something about the song

Clever lyrics always engage me. And a clever lyric tied to a dramatic melody will always do me in.

Another song from Cabaret is the title track. Again, the Sally Bowles character sings.

I used to have this girlfriend known as Elsie
With whom I shared four sordid rooms in Chelsea
She wasn’t what you’d call a blushing flower
As a matter of fact she rented by the hour

The day she died the neighbors came to snicker
“Well, that’s what comes from too much pills and liquor”
But when I saw her laid out like a Queen
She was the happiest corpse, I’d ever seen

How risqué! And so much fun to sing “four sordid rooms in Chelsea.” Just rolls off the tongue.

Which reminds me of…

Ah! That reminds me of a song from Oklahoma.

My mother played broadway musicals on the hi-fi all the time as I was growing up and I really got into the merging of melody and lyric at a young age.

In the musical, Oklahoma, the Ado Annie character sings about how much fun she has on dates with her cowboy friends in the community. The song is “I Cain’t Say No.”

I’m just a girl who cain’t say ‘no’
I’m in a terrible fix!
I always say ‘Come on, let’s go’ just when I aughta say ‘Nix.’

When a person tries to kiss a girl
I know she aughta give his face a smack!
But as soon as someone kisses me
I somehow sorta want to kiss him back!

Turn of the century feminism

Maybe if there wasn’t a double standard for women on dating behavior, she could have enjoyed her sexuality and felt empowered by her body reactions, instead of feeling somehow wrong.

The story of this musical is two different love stories set against the backdrop of the Oklahoma Territory in 1906. This makes Ado Annie a first-wave feminist!

Select Life Songs

I guess these three songs are some of my own life songs; songs that defined a period of my life.

Your Life Songs?

Did you have a tough time choosing just one life song? If you could pick a song from a single defining time of your life, would that make it easier? What did you choose?

Epilogue

So I was searching for an image that could represent the concept of life song and came across one of those Facebook personality quizzes: What is your Life Song?

A few simple questions and answers later, it turns out that my life song is Paradise by Coldplay. 😉

At the very least, doing the quiz prompted me to look up the song and listen to it. Now you can too.

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