The Soundtrack of My Life

I'm starting a project with one of my classes this week about music.  Specifically, if your life had a soundtrack, what songs would be on it and why?  In preparation for it, I thought I would post a few of the songs on my soundtrack.

"Breakout" by Swing Out Sister  - My favorite song of all time.  I was hooked from the first moment I heard it on the radio way back in 1987.  It's my personal "empowerment" song.  It's the one song that I never get tired of hearing and when it comes on the radio a smile always comes across my face. Swing Out Sister is probably my favorite musical group.  I have just about everything they've recorded and love each album.  You gotta love the lyric - "Don't stop to ask.  Now that you've found your break go make it last.  You've got to find a way, say what you want to say, BREAKOUT!"

"Only You Can Love Me This Way" by Keith Urban -  One of the more recent songs on my soundtrack, this is the song that Matt and I had our First Dance to during our wedding reception.  We had been going round and round about what song we would select for that first dance, but nothing seemed right.  Following a meeting with our cake baker, we were headed back home when the song played on the radio.  When it finished, Matt and I just looked at one another and knew that was the song.  The lyrics fit us perfectly and it just felt right.  Our first dance was a simple, perfect moment in time - a couple hundred of our family and friends in the room and all we could see was each other.

"She's Always A Woman" by Billy Joel - In 2003 my great-aunt Betty passed away.  I was fortunate to have been able to visit her before she died.  It was a wonderful visit with her and it was a time I will always remember.  Betty for me personified the word 'elegant'.  Even as a kid, she never talked to me on her level and she was truly the classiest lady I have ever known.  Starting up my rental car after saying goodbye, "She's Always A Woman" began to play on the radio.  I couldn't even put the car in gear as all the emotions I had been holding back came out.  I sat there in the car and just cried.  It was the song that allowed me to say goodbye to her in my own way.  It was the emotional release that I needed.  Betty passed away a few days later.  Every time I hear that song I think of her.

"Maggie May / Reason To Believe" by Rod Stewart - This was the number 1 song in the United States on the day I was born.  So of course it has to be on my soundtrack.  I've never been a big Rod Stewart fan, but this song is a good one.  Any time I hear a song from the 1970's that I know very well, I have to give props to my mom.  When I was a baby, she would always have a radio playing in my crib.  I credit her for nurturing my uncanny ability to remember songs and lyrics and recall them quickly.  It's funny that I can't carry a tune or play an instrument, but I have an ear for the music and words.  It surprises people when I can remember very obscure 70s songs and just start singing along.

"Love Shack" by the B-52s - Welcome back to my college years!  One of the best party songs of all time and it has a special place in my heart for the simple reason that it mentions a road.  I went to Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama.  In the city there is a road that heads out of town to the east called the "Atlanta Highway", it's an older U.S. highway that was once the main road to Atlanta.  So in the song there is the lyric, "I'm heading down the Atlanta Highway....."  Now I know that the song is referring to a road in Athens, Georgia, but I don't care.  To me, that line will always be about that road in Montgomery and take me back to my college years.

More songs to come.....