I’ve Got the Music In Me

No, I cannot carry a tune.  So much so that my elementary school music teacher pulled me from a group song for our Christmas concert.  And I have no sense of rhythm, but I love music!!! Music has always been important in my life.  One of my favorite things to do is to listen to live music.  It doesn’t have to be someone famous or an expensive concert (although I love those too).  It can just be good musicians who are passionate about their art.  I like the sound, beat of the music, especially from artists that can get me up dancing like Bruno Mars or Justin Timberlake.  But I really like a good lyric. There have been so many songs that when I hear them I think, “Yes, that’s exactly how I feel”.  So many songs that have expressed my emotions better than I ever could.  Then, there are the songs that when you hear them they take you back either to a time in your life, a special moment, or to a memory of a special person.  Music, like my journaling, takes care of me.  It helps me release my emotions in such a raw way.  It makes me smile, cry, and feel.

I know my parents’ love of music is where my love started.  I remember watching my parents on the dance floor at a wedding.  They were in such sync with one another and almost floated above the floor as they moved across it and boy did they move across it.  They would use the entire dance floor not like Don and I who stay in our own four by four part of the floor.😂  I wish I could dance like they did.

I also remember when my brother got my mom a stereo for Christmas.  It was a jukebox style stereo and my mom loved it.  I would come home from school and my mom would have her Saturday Night Fever soundtrack playing on that stereo and she would be in the kitchen cooking with a huge smile on her face.

I also remember my parents going to concerts such as Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck.  They especially liked to catch these types of concerts on their travels to Las Vegas.  When I was an adult my mom and I watched shows together like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars.  When we didn’t watch the shows together, my mom would write notes about each performance so when we talked about the shows she would remember what she wanted to tell me.  When my girls got old enough, we took them to several of the American Idol concerts–such great memories.♥️

My sister also had a love of music.  When I was a teenager, I would always play her records even though she didn’t like me to.  I would also snoop in her stuff and she always had song lyrics written in her journals.  

As a teenager, I was the mixtape Queen.  I would always listen to the radio and whenever I heard a song I liked I would hit record on my cassette player.  These were some quality tapes!!!! 😂 Even when I started dating Don I made him a mix tape-a sure sign of true love.  I then made him another one after being married for a few years–we called these tapes “Higgins Hits”.  Recently, we came across the tapes and I still had a cassette player from my mom so we played them and Don downloaded each song and made an Amazon Playlist of the songs.

Don and I recently went to the Milwaukee Festival of Lights Christmas Celebration in Pierre Marquette Park.  As we walked up we heard the song that every Christmas gets me.  It was the last song that my dad and I ever danced to.  It was Christmas of 1987 and my boyfriend had bought me a stereo for Christmas and we were hooking it up in the kitchen.  My dad was about two months into his cancer treatments and the song Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas came on.  My dad took me in his arms and we danced and cried.  The words were so perfect for the time:  

Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Let your heart be light

From now on our troubles will be out of sight

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Make the Yuletide gay

From now on our troubles will be miles away

And the line that always gets be:  

Through the years we will all be together, if the fates allow

Well. . .the fates did not allow and he was gone the following August.  It was the last Christmas and last dance I had with my dad.  Don always takes me in his arms every Christmas when we hear that song for the first time–I love him for that.

The song that can make me feel 16 again is Jessie’s Girl by Rick Springfield.  I had. . .okay still have a crush on Rick Springfield.  He still looks great at 75!!!  It was him and Shaun Cassidy.  Both actors and singers.  I would watch the Hardy Boys every Sunday to see Shaun and the only time I watched General Hospital was when Rick was on it.  To this day, I still attend Rick Springfield concerts and whenever those first guitar strums of Jessie’s Girl play I feel like I am singing into my hairbrush in my teenage bedroom all over again!

Uncle Kracker’s Drift Away is a song that always puts the most vivid picture of my girls in my head.  When they were little they came up with a little dance for the chorus of this song and whenever it would come on they would do this dance.  I can look in my rearview mirror and see them both in their car seats right now waving their arms in the air like waves in the ocean for the drift away line—oh my heart♥️

Right before our 25th wedding anniversary I first heard Brad Paisley’s song, Then.  As soon as I heard the words I knew it was the perfect love letter for how I felt about Don.  The words take you through your life as a couple and how in each stage you feel like you are so in love with each other but as time goes on and you experience more of the ups and downs of life you realize how deep your love grows for one another along the way.  

What I can’t see is how I am going to love you more

But I’ve said that before

And now you’re my whole life

Now you’re my whole world

I just can’t believe the way I feel about you girl

We’ll look back someday

At this moment we’re in

And I’ll look at you and say

And I thought I loved you then

I played that song for Don and it rang just as true for him.  So true that we both got each other a print for each other for our anniversary gifts with those lyrics!

The song that I am relating to currently in my life is Jelly Roll’s song “I Am Not Okay”.  This fall has been a difficult one and I have not been feeling myself.  I have been down the road of grief before but each time the road looks a little different and I know I will get to the other side as I have in the past but right now:  

I am not okay

I’m hanging on the rails

So if I say I’m fine

Just know I’ve learned to hide it well

I’m not okay

But it’s all gonna be alright

Would love to hear from my fellow music lovers.  What is a song or a lyric that means a lot to you and why?