J IS FOR J-names

For each letter of the A to Z, I'm going to give you a KEYWORD. You post in the comments a song with that word in the title. I will give you one to start (along with a video). If you like, you can go to YouTube and embed your video in the comments, so that readers can also listen to your song. No repeats and only post one song so that everyone can participate. If you're just brimming with songs, come back in a few days and lay it on me! If you want to see who else is participating in the A to Z click here.

You guys (with some exceptions) struggled a bit more with yesterday's word, If, than I'd have liked. I suppose it was bound to happen. (Just wait until we get to X and Z... whooey!) Anyway, here are the songs you thought of with If in the title:

Michele: If by Bread 

Ericka: If You Leave by OMD

Mary (who rocked this keyword!): If I Were A Boy by Beyonce 

and If I Were A Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof 

and If Tomorrow Never Comes by Garth Brooks

Stephen T. McCarthy: If You Leave Me Now by Chicago

Jeffrey: If I Had A $1,000,000 by Barenaked Ladies

Andrea: If I Could Turn Back Time by Cher

Alex (who just ditched the keyword and went with "I"...ha!): Illumination Theory by Dream Theater

Robyn: If I Can't Have You by The Bee Gees

Debbie The Doglady: If You Could Read My Mind by Gordon Lightfoot

ABFTS: Scat Me If You Can by Scatman John

D.G. Hudson: If I Didn't Care by The Inkspots

Dixie: If I Were A Carpenter by Tim Hardin

Rosey: If You Asked Me To by Celine Dion

Mich: If I Had A Heart by Fever Ray

Robin (yes, me again): If I Die Young by The Band Perry 

and If Everyone Cared by Nickelback and If I Didn't Know Any Better by Alison Krauss

 

If you can think of more songs from previous letters and WANT to post them now, feel free to go back and add them:)

It's a new day and a new letter!

What is the KEYWORD?

We're going to do something different with the letter J. For those of you who've read this blog for some time, you know that people with names beginning with "J" feature prominently in my life. Turns out, lots of songs are out there with names that begin with "J." Any song with a name that begins with "J" goes. I think there are so many of these that you can post two right from Go.


I present to you....Just Like Jesse James by Cher.




You can comment with a song or embed the video by copy/pasting the code in the search bar. Thanks for playing along!


Special thanks to Arlee Bird and the A to Z team who make this possible!

Arlee Bird @ Tossing it Out
Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh
Jeremy Hawkins @ Hollywood Nuts
Damyanti Biswas @ Daily Write
Heather M. Gardner @ The Waiting is the Hardest Part
Author AJ Lauer
Pam Brown Margolis @ An Unconventional Librarian
Zalka Csenge Virág @ The Multicolored Diary
Joy Campbell @ The Character Depot
John Holton @The Sound of One Hand Typing

JUST LIKE SUMMER OF HEAVEN

Today is that magical music Saturday I promised. Yeah, we ride this merry-go-round every Saturday just because. Just because it's fun. I have a few newbies for this Saturday, so this is the dish on this event: every Saturday I pick one 80s artist who impacted MTV. That means they rode MTV or MTV rode them to success. MTV was this magnificent vehicle for the artists who figured out how to harness it. As a teenager when MTV came out, I can attest that it was very much like crack cocaine to the teenage brain. I can't tell you how many hours I spent glued to the set watching video after video. So, it is safe to say that MTV in its heyday was a success. Music Television. MTV has forgotten its roots and has taken the M out of the TV, so we are reliving its glory days here.

The other part of what happens today is that I pick a song that speaks to me today. I usually end up picking said song today. I picked a song by Cher about a month ago, and said something like you should never count Cher out of The Game. As soon as you do, she is back In. I recently went to see The Easy A (hilarious movie if you are going to just zone out and laugh), and there was a preview for the movie Burlesque.... starring Cher and Christina Aguilera. I did an internal high five with myself. Yep. She's back and hotter than ever. So, prepare yourself for some Cher awesomeness because she is about to blast us into space again. This woman just gets better all of the time. When I decided I wanted to be Cher when I was seven, at least I chose well. She has got it all. So, here she is with one of my favorites. It is designed to get all of your senses heightened so that you are fully prepared for the onslaught of magnificence headed your way. Okay, hit it...




Okay, so on the days that I don't want to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I still want to be Cher. Man, she can SING. I can't wait for her new movie because she can also ACT like nobody's business. And DANCE. The woman is a triple threat. The trifecta. She probably really is a vampire slayer in her free time. Okay, got to move on...

Well, there are always so many artists to choose from that I have trouble narrowing the field. I decided on (drumroll please) Bryan Adams. I almost went with John Cougar Mellencamp. That might be next week. The only thing that prevented that this week was my including one of his videos in my Thursday lineup. It just gave me a taste for some John Mellencamp. And then last night we went to the local pizza joint for dinner and they had karaoke in there. OMG. I couldn't believe it. I hadn't done any karaoke in forever. So... I took the plunge again and again and again. I even sang a John Mellencamp song. Yeah, it was on the brain. But, it made me think about Bryan Adams. They all came out about the same time. And then I remembered the video for this song, which is one of my favorites...



Which made me think of this video. Anyone look familiar?




Now that is exactly the sort of deliciousness that made teenagers want to just jump up and down and scream for more. What happened next? Well, my fellow youtube addicts... I am not telling. You will have to go searching yourself to see if they ever answered that story, or if it all just disappeared into the mist. However, the strategy was brilliant. Everyone was waiting for the next Bryan Adams video. It was better than a soap opera. And it was this sort of brilliance that shot Bryan Adams to the top of the music charts. Not saying he isn't a great singer, or that the songs weren't awesome, but just that he is the whole package. People who are smart enough to use everything that they have and make it all work for them deserve to come out on top. They are THINKING. Rolling concert footage of yourself is just lazy. Gimme some genius. Thank you Bryan Adams for that blast to the past. And thank you MTV for the good ole days. You might think about revisiting them in the present and cut out the reality crap. Everyone has enough reality in their actual life. It is called MTV for a reason. Just sayin'.

INSPIRATIONAL SONG SATURDAY

We are skipping the letters today because it is Inspirational Song Saturday. That means we start out with a song that is inspirational to me and then move on to a singer or band from the 80s that rocked out on MTV. As usual, the 80s singer came, the song choices were a bit tougher, and I didn't nail my inspirational song down until this morning. In other words, today is pretty much like every other Saturday!

We will kick it off with the song that feels inspirational to me. I was debating between two songs by the same singer, but then decided that this is the one that really lights me up. For those of you who haven't been reading this blog since I started writing it, you might not know that I wanted to be Cher when I was about seven. I had Sonny and Cher records, Cher's Greatest Hits, watched their show on TV, and wrapped my towel on my head in order to pretend that I had that long black hair. Of course, an orange towel on a pale white kid still does not add up to Cher. I was living in the land of pretend.

However, pretending to be Cher wasn't a bad choice all in all. Her career has had amazing longevity. Her body is fantastic (still). And just when you think that she is done, washed up, not going to be in another movie, make another record, have another hit song, she surprises you and does one or all of those things. *Bang* That is what I like about Cher. Don't ever think she is out of the game, because she will turn around and surprise you. "Cher? She hasn't had a hit in forever. She's done." Don't say it because she will burn you and come out with a movie and a soundtrack and be back on the charts. Or just a kicka$$ record and land on number one. Never ever think she is out of the game. And I might pick her as one of my 80s singers at some point because she has blasted through every decade since the 60s. That is freaking awesome. And she looked HOT the whole time. Now who does that???



I like that song because it is all about not settling. It is ALL OR NOTHING. Nothing in between. Not just a little bit. I will take what you're willing to give. Okay, well just give me what you've got left over. ALL OR NOTHING. Yeah.

Moving on to the 80s and MTV. I think about how some singers rode MTV to the top. If you watched the clip last week, that was said in a clip about Michael Jackson and MTV. It was the perfect storm. Thriller came out at just the right time. Michael Jackson and MTV rode each other to success. However, he wasn't the only one that did that. We have looked at other artists who did the same thing. I wonder what would have happened without MTV? Of course, we will never know.

Today we are looking at Cyndi Lauper. I had a wonderful time reminiscing as I wandered through her videos on youtube. I picked out three and had H-Girl watch them. She hadn't seen any of them and didn't know the songs, either. I asked her to tell me which two she liked best. (H-Girl spent the night last night.) So, based on her selections, these are the two best Cyndi Lauper videos:





What made Cyndi Lauper great? Well, I think people were intrigued with her hair. I am not kidding. She was making a bold fashion statement. She also had a lot of fun songs versus really serious songs. She Bop and Girls Just Want To Have Fun on the fun side and True Colors and Time After Time on the serious side, for example. She also tender and sweet and her voice was unique. In terms of MTV, she was another artist who understood the value of making a good video. A good video tells the story of your song. And she rode the wave. My hat is off to you Cyndi and your hair of many colors.

I WANT TO BE A ROCKSTAR

I have this really superb choral singing voice. I'm an alto, if you wanted to know. When I say choral singing voice, what I mean is that I am an excellent singer for a choir. I can harmonize and I blend. My voice doesn't have vibrato in it so that I stand out. This is wonderful news for a choir. Remember when I mentioned all that about wanting to major in music in college? Well, I still had these visions of me being Cher. That just wasn't going to happen. Cher stands out. Cher is a soloist. I can hold my own in a karaoke joint, which means people aren't going to throw things or run for the door like the place is on fire, but I'm not ever going to be Cher. I bet you're thinking that we covered this blog already with the hairbrush and curling iron. The thing is, I left out this cool graphic. See below. Isn't that awesome? I just wanted you know I always wanted to be a rockstar. Now we can move on.


I've also been thinking about what I wrote about my book writing a few days ago. Yeah, that conversation with my mom happened pretty much like I described it. But, here's the deal. Ever since my fingers started tapping on the keys, the book has been for me and no one else. What happened when mom and I had that conversation was this: pretty much everything in my life was derailing and I was having an anxiety attack. Have you ever had one of those? They don't happen unless pretty much everything blows up all at once. Well, they can happen to me if I'm having a bad migraine and am hit with a load of crap, but that wasn't the case. In this case, it was everything blowing up all at once. So, what I needed to do was start nailing things down one at a time. Basically, what that meant was gaining control over the stuff in my life one thing at a time. I started with my book. Yeah, I sounded nuts. And, I probably was a little nuts, but it was because it was the first thing I nailed down. Once I got that in place, it made it possible to start dealing with everything else. Unfortunately, some of the stuff was kinda out of my control. I just had to stop reacting to it. That is a toughie all by itself. Just stopping. Then I became proactive. I tell you what, though, it feels so much better to be proactive than reactive.

The other thing about me that is tough for people is this: the migraine. If you've never had one, you don't get it. Just like I don't get a lot of chronic pain that other people have. Or the weight loss journey that some of my fellow bloggers are on. I am encouraging them like crazy, but I don't get it like the other people who are also sharing that journey. The thing about my current migraine is this: it started in July 2009 and I don't know when it will end. I am living on pain pills. When I tell you that I keep track of pain pills on a notepad so that I don't OD, I am not joshing you. Imitrex, and drugs like that, only work at the start of a migraine, and mine started almost a year ago. There is not a chance of those drugs stopping it now. The last time I went through this, my migraine last four years. Four years. I want you to think about that and let it resonate in your head. It stopped when I moved to Florida and got on a drug and vitamin protocol and out of a stressful situation.

I know what you're thinking. Why aren't you back on the drug and vitamin protocol? I am. I am as destressed as I can be. It doesn't matter. The overwhelming allergic reaction that I had to the mattress/box spring nuked my immune system. I'm not whining and complaining and saying woe is me. I'm still hopeful. However, I think that the answer is time. My body needs me to keep doing what I'm doing and give it time to repair itself. In the meantime, I have a migraine all of the time and I deal. And I write. Sometimes I sing. I'm so glad I'm not a rockstar. It's so loud. I can't imagine what that would do to my migraine!