Hello! As you may have guessed from the name of this blog, my name is Liz and I am fascinated by song lyrics. I hope you enjoy my waxing lyrical about lyrics and about music generally. I also review albums and gigs and have interviewed several wonderful musicians. Enjoy!
...and reminiscing about good times - hearing this for the first time on the radio while eating in a supermarket café and wondering what it was; looking it up and finding out it was Gloria Estefan and being pleased because I like a lot of her music; then listening to it a great deal on YouTube in the next few weeks, maybe even the next few months.
This was all in my early days of college, so hearing the song always brings back very strong and distinct memories; for example sitting in the language lab at lunchtimes on Fridays because I'd had a lesson there before lunch, and listening to music calmly and happily for an hour and maybe doing a bit of homework, before going to biology in the afternoon. This is how I would generally end my college week, and it was a pleasant ending, and this song brings it all back very clearly. Thank you, Gloria! ♥
Also I can't mention those early college days without this song, which for a while I simply could not get out of my head:
More good memories! Particularly of bus rides home - the scenery near our college is quite nice and, much as I love college, it was always nice to be going home after a hard day's work for a well-deserved rest : ) And, as I've said, I couldn't get this song out of my head. So thank you Amy Grant too ♥ And I think it's adorable that she wrote the lyrics of this song for her baby daughter.
That's probably enough reminiscing about college for the time being; I should probably get on with my homework; but I hope maybe you've enjoyed these songs too, and that this blog post has inspired you to consider which songs have a special significance for you.
Merci de lire,
(that means thanks for reading!)
Liz x
Songs: Don't Wanna Lose You - Gloria Estefan - 1989
I know you may be wondering what R.E.M. and Paul Young have to do with each other; the answer is: not a lot, really, except that I've recently been listening to and enjoying music from both of them.
When I first heard that R.E.M. had split up, it didn't really mean a lot to me. I wasn't really familiar with R.E.M.; the only song I could have named as being by them was Everybody Hurts.
However, I quickly found out that they were the ones who sung Losing My Religion; a song that has gained special significance for me this summer. And further investigation revealed that they were also the band behind Bad Day, the iconic video for which I had seen once on TV; I had enjoyed the song since but never really knew who it was by.
So, it turns out I have enjoyed R.E.M.'s music for a long time without realising it. Bad Day, I am so happy to have rediscovered. It is what it says on the tin really; just the perfect song to listen to when you've been having a bad day.
And I still find the video really impressive. It is one of those where you keep spotting new things everytime you watch it. I would post the official video if I could but it seems you can't post it on Blogger : ( So you will just have to YouTube it, I'm afraid.
Losing My Religion I first heard properly on a minibus on the way to a Duke of Edinburgh's Award expedition in the Lake District. It therefore stuck in my head the whole time I was there; trekking through forests, scrambling over walls, fighting my way through ferns taller than me which made me feel like a fairy or a pixie.
The group I was in were really lovely, and so were the places we walked through. But the weather was terrible the second day, and I was slowly losing the will to live and wishing I could go home, and this song was in my head, playing over and over, the only bit I really knew...
"I thought that I saw you laughing,
I thought that I heard you sing,
I think I thought I saw you try..."
Except I thought the last line was, "I think I thought I saw your smile."
And those few lines became the soundrack to that D of E expedition for me. It has a special significance for me now. I don't know what the supposed religious connotations are; I haven't listened to the whole song enough for that, nor seen the video properly. I listen to it because of what it means to me. It gave me hope and it kept me going. It will always be special to me now.
I also like Shiny Happy People, which I discovered through Bad Day, and I really like it and especially the female singer(Kate Pierson?)'s voice, which I think is beautiful and adds so much to the song.
Now for Paul Young... I was listening to Senza Una Donna, which I have enjoyed since I was a child, even before I understood what the Italian lyrics meant, and I saw in the related videos Everytime You Go Away, which I was pretty sure I had heard once on the radio in the car, and which I had liked.
So, I listened to it, and yes, it was the same song, and yes, I did enjoy it - even more, in fact, now that I heard the intro, which I think is one of the the most beautiful intros to a song that I have ever heard (it also reminds me of Love and Regret by Deacon Blue), and which epitomises the very best of the synth sound of the 80s. It is a simply beautiful song.
So, this week I have discoevered - or re-discovered, a great deal of good music. It's just a shame that it took R.E.M. breaking up for me to realise how good they were, and how much I had always enjoyed their music without even knowing who they were.
Thanks for reading.
Liz x
Songs: Bad Day - R.E.M. (2003)
Losing my Religion - R.E.M. (1991)
Shiny Happy People - R.E.M. (1991)
Senza Una Donna - Zucchero and Paul Young (1991)
Everytime You Go Away - Paul Young (1985)
P.S. I hadn't realised they were all from 1991! Must have been a good year for music! But then I guess every year is.
