Author Ed Miller: “Music is the weirdest human thing. A few dozen songs out of the zillions recorded fire off like a massive dopamine flood every time I hear them.
And then like other people don’t even like those songs.”
Recently a dear friend and long-time loyal follower of my Musings sent me this meme in the unspoken hope that I would bite on it and take on this challenge as a series of blog posts. Well bite, chomp, chew, munch and masticate[1] I did, and a rather obsessive flurry of writing ensued.
This was HARD!!!!! So many songs came to mind for some categories; or many songs could have fit in multiple categories. Another problem was definitions. For example – and said friend above will love this – what does “smile” (Day 2) mean in the context of the way I experience music? Is it a wry smile at a cleverly bad song like the theme from Bachelor in Paradise co-written by Ann Wilson from Heart? A smile of contentedness over a song with a pleasant memory or story, e.g. Tait’s Spy? A delighted smile as an immediate reaction to something about the sound of the song (Miles Davis’ trumpet or Carlos Santana’s guitar)? A chuckling smile at a song a friend loves but I detest (anything by John Denver)? That giddy smile I always get at the beginning of Banks’ Poltergeist? Arrrrrrggggghhhhhhh!!!!!
Because of my tendency to make things overly complexified[2], I gave myself one basic rule to follow: no over-thinking! I wanted the answers to be as random and in the moment as the way I experience music. If a decision was close, it would be decided in favor of a story, memory or personal part of my musical psyche rather than through detached, objective analysis. If you’re into Jungian typology, this was to be an exercise in using my non-preferred Sensing and Feeling functions AND THAT WAS HARD!!!!
But it was also fun! Filling up the categories came quickly with just a few exceptions. And then I was completely overtaken by the urge to write up one blog post after another. Hopefully you and the person who inspired me to take up this challenge will find this to be an interesting journey into my musical mind and history. More importantly, I hope you’ll have your own fun thinking about what songs in each category come to mind for you.
Coming tomorrow: Day 1 – a song you discovered this month.
P.S. Each article includes a YouTube link to that Day’s song. Too many late-night hours spent going down the YouTube rabbit hole has taught me that seeing artists intensifies my connection to them and/or a particular song.
P.P.S. A few days will include an Honorable Mention citation for songs that were strongly considered and I didn’t feel right leaving them out. It helped me resist that over-thinking thing I tend to do.
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[1] I love this word.
[2] See? I even complexified the word complex.
Ray's Musings 