I friend issued a challenge on her blog for people who know her to divulge their theme song. So, I started to make a post in the comment section, and it was getting way too long, so I moved the comment here. After all, if I'm going to write that much, I might as well get some bloggage out of it.
I don't think a song is meant to last a lifetime as a theme song. The magic of music is that our mood at a certain point in life/time when we hear a song for the first time influences which songs touch us the most deeply.
Have you ever noticed how it seems like after a breakup that there are just a million songs about failed romance on the radio? Or when you are falling in love, every song seems to be a love song? If Sting's stalker lyrics to "Every Breath You Take" doesn't prove that, nothing will.
Other songs just take us back to a point in time, often from our youth. Maybe it's that summer after graduating from high school, or the time of a first love. Van Halen's "Jump" for example. Love the song, heard it a million times, still have no clue what it's really about. Yea, Dave, I've seen you standing there against the record machine for 20 years now, and seen you doing the midair splits in spandex, but I don't know what the fuck you were jumping about. But it was off the band's 1984 album, and I was in the class of 1984, and damn the song rocked! What else was there to know?
Songs also evoke a feeling of the time, regardless of whether the lyrics are meaningful or not, as a thorough analysis of most pop lyrics will show they are mostly meaningless. But it has a beat and you can dance to it. I give it an 89 Dick, and I can't wait to be back on American Bandstand.
As Trisha Yearwood sang, "The song remembers when," even if sometimes we don't, or maybe we do, but we don't know why.
For me, the song of the latter half of 2004 will be George Strait's "I Hate Everything" because it is a song about a bitter man after a breakup, and yet it is a song of hope with one man deciding he doesn't want to give up on his relationship and become bitter like the broken man at the bar. It's not my story, but it's a story I could relate to at the time. We don't know how the story ends, but we know there's hope. And sometimes that's what we need to get through another day.
But now I'm more in a Terri Clark "The World Needs A Drink" space. Because it does. I mean, if everyone chilled out and had a cold one and passed around pictures of their kids and shit, maybe we would relate to one another rather than trying to blow each other up with shoulder-fired rocket launchers. And, I realize not everyone drinks alcohol, but there's no saying the drinks have to contain booze. It's the principle of the thing. But a little buzz doesn't necessarily hurt. Who wouldn't benefit from a little "I luv ya man" mentality. OK, who's up for a group hug?
But if we're looking for deep meaning in a song, and if pressed to pick a theme song it would have to be "The Dance" written by Tony Arata. Of course, most people don't know who Tony Arata is, but he did write the song, so he should get a mention. But the song was a hit for Garth Brooks. Again, it's a song about a broken relationship, but through the music video it came to symbolize anyone who has lost someone and a life in retrospect. Either way, it works.
"I could have missed the pain but I'd of had to miss the dance." And the dance is worth dancing.
Dance on, Tiny Dancer.
But of course the best theme song is the one we write with our own life's pen, whether in a major or a minor key.
Music
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