Music Makes the People Come Together

Madonna was right.  Music makes the bourgeoisie and the rebel.

Okay, I don't know what the hell that lyric means either, but the point is that music somehow pulls us into the song and the lyrics and we are suddenly overwhelmed with emotions we didn't even know we had. Memories that were buried and mostly forgotten are somehow crystal clear when a song from your past plays.

For instance. I don't have too many happy memories of my mother before she had her nervous breakdowns, but I do remember that she had a Creedence Clearwater Revival tape that she would play over and over again when I was very little when she took me to run errands with her. She would call me Suzy Q, and I remember trying to sing along, basking in the glow of having a pet name and feeling loved.

But this song more than anything, makes me think of my mother and being little and carted around in my mom's light blue Mazda, while she sang along with the windows rolled down.

Once I got my license, I drove my sister in my mom's light blue Mazda. We were listening to the radio and this song came on and we were both obsessed with it. It was the first time Imogen Heap was played in states, and I was hooked. This song always remind me of my sister.


I came back from college one summer and played this song nonstop.

It was my theme song for about three years, but that summer, gosh, I must've played it at least 600 times. I still love this song. It feels new and familiar everytime I hear it.
My sister missed me terribly that year. It was before Skype and Facebook, so she felt like I had abandoned her, and the times I did reach out to her, she rebuffed me. So hurt that I had left. She told me years later that she would play the cd I had burned for her and listen to this song on replay whenever she missed me.

My first few years out in Hollywood, my dad told me that there was a very strong chance he had cancer. I took that news like any young woman who counts her father as one of her heroes. I drove out to a cemetary nearby, sat on the grass, played this song on my player over and over again and bawled my eyes out.

I liked going to the cemetery whenever I was upset because it was the one place people wouldn't ask me what was wrong.  This song still reminds me of that time when I thought I would lose my dad, and it still makes my eyes well up.

Blog reader Katie Kavett sent me a very lovely email and asked me if I was familiar with the musical Next to Normal, because it was about mental illness tearing a family apart and she thought it might be of some comfort to me. I had never heard of it, read the synopsis, listened to the song she thought I'd love, and wow. It made my eyes well up. I SO know what this is like. You have to read the synopsis to understand what the heck is going on, and the lyrics will practically take your breath away.

The best part of this song? It's in my range!

It's been a while since I've had a theme song, and when I heard this ditty by Shakira, I thought, yup. This is my life here. I just freakin love the chorus and think the whole thing is so pretty.

I don't know why, but the song simply seems to underscore my living in LA at this stage in my life. I feel like a gypsy sometimes.

What song makes you cry? What song do you strut to every time you hear it? [I strut to this one!!]