Thank you for everyone who visited last week for the Long and Short Review Wednesday Blog Hop. This week our topic is our theme songs.

This is another hard one for me. I don’t listen to a lot of music. Never have. I write in quiet. When I need background noise, I prefer conversation and usually pop on a film I’ve seen many times so it fades into the background. When I do listen to music, its purposeful. I use music to navigate through the challenging times or key events in my life. For example, I got through two hard break-ups with songs — REO SpeedWagon’s Time for Me to Fly and Jessica Riddle’s Even Angels Fall (Ten Things I Hate About You Soundtrack). I would sing them over and over again until I was hoarse and even then kept singing. The words and the act of singing helped me work through complex feelings of grief and anger. I danced my through college to Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive and graduate school to Lionel Richie’s Dancing on the Ceiling. Dancing helped me vent my stress, and keep my spirits up when the work seemed too much and relationships too crazed. I sang Its a Small World, One Tin Soldier (Billy Jack’s Soundtrack) and You are My Sunshine to my daughter to help her sleep and it helped me feel connected to her. Babies respond to music. Singing felt like something we shared. My now teen-aged daughter loves music and sings all the time.

I never had an ipod although I did have a walkman, but I didn’t use it all that much. For fun, my daughter created a playlist for me based on the songs she knew that I liked from all the time we spent together in the car. She loved to listen to the radio when we were driving. I listen to news and podcasts when I’m alone in the car. Looking over that playlist, I can identify one song that comes close to working as a theme song for me. That’s Pink’s Raise Your Glass. It has some of my favorite lyrics ever. Some (not all) of those lyrics really sum up core parts of my life. Here are key ones:

So raise your glass if you are wrong

In all the right ways.

And

If you are too school for cool…

So raise your glass!!

IStock Credit: EoNaYa

Thanks for dropping by. Please visit all the other bloggers participating on the blog hop.

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18 Replies to “Raise Your Glass #Blog Hop”

    • Its interesting how some of us need quiet to create, and others need noise. The world is a fascinating place.

  • My dad used to sing “You Are So Beautiful” to me… It always reminds me of him. Songs are good for that…

    And, finally someone else who knows “One Tin Soldier”! I always feel so alone when I mention (or sing) it.

    I love Pink. She’s amazing.

    • I’m so glad I’m not the only one who knows Tin Soldier. I love that song, but sometimes wonder if I made it up!

      • I love that song! The whole movie has somehow been lost in history. There’s a song I heard as a kid that I love and it’s hard to find anyone who knows it (I finally found it on a “lost songs” list). The chorus went “Meet me at midnight, Mary/ Same place we always go/ Meet me at midnight, Mary/ And don’t let anyone know” https://youtu.be/_5WAst3B35E

        • It does seem like the movie was lost. I’m so glad to learn there is a lost songs list. What a great idea someone came up with.

  • Pink really is amazing, and Raise Your Glass is a great song. (And I, too, know “One Tin Soldier”.)

    I frequently listen to music when I’m writing, though usually not anything with lyrics. Just sort of depends on what I’m working on and what sort of mood I’m trying to set in order to get there.

    • I love Pink! I’m glad so many people know one Tin Soldier. Even though I don’t listen to music when I write, I tend to listen to music based on my mood at the time, or the mood I’m trying to get to.

    • It is interesting how different we are, and yet we must have something in common as writers and bloggers. Certainly makes the world an interesting place.

  • I definitely write in the quiet. And picking one song is sooooo difficult because I love music! I’m mostly an 80s gal with some country thrown in, and Pat Benatar’s All Fired Up could probably be my song.

    • Picking one song is too difficult, which is I couldn’t! Anything from Pat Benatar is a good choice.

  • My dad would sort of sing, but also sort of talk (he’s not much of a singer) to the song “You Can Do Magic” by America, while I, as a three year old, would wear these ridiculously huge 1970s era headphones. Now, he was singing into the end you plug into the radio, so I wasn’t listening to anything through the headphones, but I heard him. I remember him singing that song while I wore those headphones and his boots. Makes me smile to this day. Plus, I have the do, do, do, do, do, dit portion of the song stuck in my head as an earworm. Oh well. 🙂

    Great post!

    • Thanks, Megan. I don’t think my daughter remembers me singing to her, but she sings all the time, so I’ll take it.

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