I guess everybody’s already heard of the 30 day music challenge because it’s been around for a little while now. I’ve been thinking about doing it for a few days and then decided I wanted to join in. But as I’m not really active on Facebook any more, Twitter doesn’t give me enough space to explain why I’ve chosen which song and Instagram only works if you’ve got at least okay-ish pictures to go with I decided on turning the challenge into a blog post.
So as not to make this post too long and to keep the spirit of the challenge (which originally aimed at posting every day for 30 days getting through the list) at least a little bit, I’m splitting the 30 days up into three posts. That means you’ll be getting the first 10 songs of my list today, another 10 songs on the 11th of March and the rest of it will be posted on March 21.
I’ll also try to keep any explanations as short as I can but I know already there will be points of the list where I’ll just have to say a few words about my chosen song. So here we go.
Day 1) A song you like with a colour in the title
Hard one to start with. At first only songs came to mind where the colour was in the lyrics not in the title. But I found one at last (that is, if gold counts as a colour):
Sting: Fields of Gold
Day 2) A song you like with a number in the title
This one was a tad easier. After all, the whole title is one long number:
Paul McCartney and Wings: Nineteen Hundred And Eighty-Five
Day 3) A song that reminds you of summertime
There isn’t really a lot to say about this one. It just feels summery, really.
Hair – Aquarius
Day 4) A song that reminds you of someone you would rather forget about
This one was so hard. It seems I’ve been lucky enough not to have had a person in my life that I’d want to forget about. So I’ve taken the liberty to change this day’s theme into „A song that reminds you of someone/something“ – and then it was still hard because they were quite a few. In the end I went for Robbie – it’s always good to have a bit of Robbie in your life even though I generally prefer his later work. But there are memories linked with „Angels“, so here we go.
Robbie Williams: Angels
Day 5) A song that needs to be played loud
Easy one. There is no other way this song can be played than loud. This is also what I wake up to every morning – it makes getting up just that little bit easier.
The Beatles: Twist And Shout
Day 6) A song that makes you want to dance
We’re back to musicals with this one. Although I have to say first that I’m not really a dancer. But if any song can make me want to move, it’s this one.
Hairspray – You Can’t Stop The Beat
Day 7) A song to drive to
There were two songs that made it onto the shortlist for this day. For the sake of at least a bit of diversity I decided against „Get Out Of My Way“ by Paul McCartney and for this one (oops, now I’ve actually given you two). Although it might be one of those songs that get played just a little bit too often I really do like it – and it is great for singing along in the car as well.
Bryan Adams: Summer of ’69
Day 8) A song about drugs or alcohol
This certainly isn’t a very pleasant song – neither from a musical nor from any other point of view. But what song could be more fitting for this day than one that’s named „Cold Turkey“? Exactly. There is debate about whether this song really is about Lennon’s going through withdrawal from heroin. He said so himself but his assistant in the late 70s reported that Lennon had confided in him that the song was actually about a food poisoning he had suffered from. I guess everyone can decide for himself what he thinks is more likely.
John Lennon: Cold Turkey
Day 9) A song that makes you happy
This one was incredibly hard. Music in general makes me happy and I have so many favourite songs that all make me happy whenever I hear them. I went for something a bit out of the ordinary then and chose „Superstar“ from „Jesus Christ Superstar“. It has to be the version sung by Tim Minchin in the 2012 arena tour of the show though because it is just brilliant and I think part of why I love this song so much is Tim’s voice. But the lyrics also are simply great. Unfortunately, there’s only a part of the song available on YouTube.
Tim Minchin – Superstar (Jesus Christ Superstar)
Day 10) A song that makes you sad
Wow, there are so so many songs I could list here. You’ll see once you have my full list that there are certain people, musicians, singers I’ll always come back to when we’re talking about emotions. The song I chose here closely coincides with the song for day 27 because they’re both by (Ex-)Beatles and they’re both about John Lennon.
George Harrison: All Those Years Ago
The next ten songs will be posted here on 11 March.