"...take a sad song and make it better..."

As I collect songs and stories for my book, I’ve loved hearing from those who not only enjoy listening to music, but also creating it. I’m curious about what is was and, in particular, what song ignited a person’s passion to perform music. For Jo Ann Butler, that inspiration came early—very early.  

“Mom was pregnant with me,” Jo Ann tells, “and at a choir rehearsal a few weeks before I was born, Mom said I began tapping time as she sang, using my toe or elbow. The choir began another song with a tempo, and though I stopped tapping during the pause, I began again at the correct tempo.”

That’s certainly a strong indication that Jo Ann would make music an important part of her life. She ended up singing in a choir and knew how to play a recorder even before she joined band in the fourth grade, where she took up the clarinet. She switched to bass clarinet in the seventh grade, which she described as sounding like “warm molasses [that] can lay out a commanding tempo.”

Jo Ann soon learned that the bass clarinet “plays a supporting role in elementary band music. I was weary of playing whole notes and oom-pahs and wished for more challenging music.”  She got what she wanted from Fulton Junior High Band’s director, Joe Trupia. She notes that Mr. Trupia didn’t stay with the school district long, moving to a job in the New York State School Music Association in 1967. But before he left, he gave young musicians like Jo Ann a solid foundation for performance, helping the Junior High Band win praises for tackling difficult music.

While in seventh grade, which Jo Ann describes as “one of the worst years of my life, with difficult schoolwork and harsh words from schoolmates and harsh words at home, band became my refuge and joy.” During that turbulent time, her band leader gave her one more gift of music.

“Mr. Trupia handed me a solo written for bass clarinet by Leroy Ostransky,” Jo Ann remembers. “‘Marche Comique’ was perfect for me; a relaxed piece which encouraged whimsy.”

Unfamiliar with “Marche Comique,” I took a listen, trying to imagine seventh grader Jo Ann, weary from the challenges of a young teen’s life, diving into this piece of music. To my untrained ear, “Marche Comique” sounds like a frolic in an open field, the bass clarinet running up and down rolling hills. It gives me a feeling of a sunny day, in a time and place far removed from a troubling world.

The experience was a big success for Jo Ann. “[The piece] was hard enough to give me great satisfaction and Mr. Trupia coached me all the way to an A in solo competition.” And, through music’s magic and power, “Marche Comique” provided Jo Ann with one more achievement. “It lifted me from a pit of despair, and gave me hope that better times and musical accomplishments lay ahead for me - and they did!”

What could be better than that? Well, maybe this: the lift Jo Ann received from that piece of music wasn’t fleeting. As she will tell you, “‘Marche Comique’ is forever in my soul.”

Readers, are you having a bad day? Why not take a listen to “Marche Comique” and see if you feel as Jo Ann did all those years ago and still does today. Then, if there’s a musical instrument sitting around your house, waiting to come to life, why not give it a try? Maybe there’ll be a song, tucked away inside you, ready for the world to appreciate. I’d love to hear its story. Share it here.

"...break on through to the other side..."

This book I’m writing about the power of music will certainly explore a song’s ability to impact our health. I’ve already posted a blog about a woman’s breast cancer diagnosis, treatment and recovery (link to that blog here) and my book will share other stories I’ve received about the challenges we face with our physical health. But thus far, I’ve only received a few stories about our struggles with mental health. I think I know why.

Though one in every four adults deals with a mental health issue—such as depression, anxiety, addictions—it remains a misunderstood illness, often laden with shame and guilt. Further complicating matters is, while people think of physical illness as something that happens to us, we often falsely believe that mental health is something we do to ourselves. That’s why I was grateful to receive a song and story about depression from Vince Markowsky, but before I share his song’s story, let me share some of Vince’s life story.

In his sixty years, Vince has accomplished a lot, but perhaps he is best known as an effective therapist who’s helped many with their mental health issues. One reason he is such a gifted counselor for those suffering is because he understands it personally.

“I’ve had six major depressions in my life,” Vince explains. “During those times, I’ve been unable to enjoy anything or anyone. Those depressions were pain, suffering, being unable to work, no motivation to connect with others or engage in life.” And here’s how Vince describes himself when he’s not in depression: “Who I genuinely am is someone passionate about loving my fellow human beings, animals and the environment. I’m extremely sensitive and love to express my emotions, both of joy and sadness/hurt/destitution.”

One of the ways Vince passionately engages in life is with music. When not helping people as a therapist, he’s healing others as a guitarist and singer. And it’s a song from his favorite band, America, that he chose to tell the story of his troubled journey with depression: “Riverside.”

With just one listen, I could understand why Vince considers the song so impactful. “Riverside” opens with guitars playing a rhythm that sounds to me a lot like something—or someone—coming to life. Vince agrees.

“When I listen to ‘Riverside,’ it reminds me of and helps to regain my incredible sense of resilience, recovery, and return back to strength, pure joy, and my strong need to fight for myself and my life. At times, ‘Riverside’ feels like the song is grabbing hold of my hand and pulling me out of my depression.”

Vince’s six depressions total about 10 years of his life and he admits that he “continues to experience grief and sadness for the loss of those years.” But instead of allowing that grief to hold him back, Vince focuses on his recovery, which he describes with a unique choice of words. “ ‘Riverside’ represents my celebrations of ‘comebackisms’ and ‘standbackupisms,’ transitioning out from my deep depressions and back into the joy, passion, and happiness that I’ve brought to my career as a mental health therapist, to my life passions and to my love and companionship with my loved ones, friends, my beautiful dogs, and most important, with my God, my high sense of spirituality, which includes my sense of gratitude, through my experience.”

For certain, every health challenge—physical or mental—is as unique as each person facing that challenge. Finding the right diagnosis, therapy and cure is an individual journey. For Vince Markowsky, music is an integral part of that journey. How about you? Has there been a challenge—perhaps one you’ve previously been uncomfortable to share—that had a song to help your journey? Sometimes telling your story is part of the healing. You’re welcome to share it here.

"...smiles we gave to one another..."

While pop songs are almost always about love and most of them are romantic in nature, I have received submissions to my One Song-One Story project that are about the love between a parent and child. As I think about how to write this book on the impact of music in our lives, I’m imagining a chapter devoted to meaningful songs like “Wind Beneath My Wings” and “Leader of the Band”: songs that honor our parents as the heroes and role models they often are. For today’s blog, though, I’m sharing a mother and child story that is loving but also expresses the difficult relationship we can have with our parents.

Stuart Wakefield’s song and story begins with a memory of when, at a young age, he and his mother went to visit his grandparents. A lifelong resident of England, Stuart’s story opens with, “It was the kind of trip that always filled me with excitement. As we drove, the eternal greyness of Newcastle gave way to the glorious sunshine of the Essex coast.”

To accompany them on this road trip, Stuart and his mother listened to a collection of the Andrews Sisters’ greatest hits, which, he noted, “we had on repeat.” But when one song in particular played, Stuart felt that “something magical happened.” That song? A gorgeous ballad of unrequited love, “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” Here’s how Stuart describes the magic he felt:

“My mum and I sang together, our voices blending in harmony that felt effortless and joyful. She had always dreamed of being an actress, but life got in her way. From the age of five, I’d shared that love of performance, and she supported my dream wholeheartedly. In that car, as the harmonies swirled around us, we were both happy—simply and purely.”

Stuart’s story feels magical indeed, expressed with a child’s sense of wonder. But his story doesn’t end there.

“Looking back, I realise that moment was the closest I’d ever felt to my mum…That trip captured everything good about our relationship: joy, connection, and shared love for the arts. But life isn’t always as perfect as a song. Later in her life, we became estranged, and she passed away from dementia without me knowing how ill she was.”

This unexpected shift in Stuart’s tender story brought up something painfully true for me. The relationship I had with my parents suffered when I decided to head out on a road unlike theirs. As I listened to “I Can Dream, Can’t I?,” I heard the conflict between the sweet innocence of childhood and the harsh realities of life.

I'm aware my heart is a sad affair
the Andrews Sisters sang
There's much disillusion there
But I can dream, can't I?

It seems to me that Andrews Sisters song gave all of us, including young Stuart, a gift we may someday need. I believe this because of how Stuart ends his story, after his mom’s passing. “That loss and distance could have overshadowed our earlier closeness, but instead, ‘I Can Dream, Can't I?’ has become a bridge back to that drive, that sunshine, and that harmony.”

Isn’t this one of a song’s greatest gifts? How it can become a bridge to those we’ve loved and lost, and how it can help us heal from our hurt. “For me,” Stuart shares, “it’s a reminder of how fleeting moments of connection can be—and how powerful music is in preserving them. In those few minutes of singing together, everything was right with the world, and that memory will always stay with me.”

And you, dear reader? What song reminds you of your mom or dad, whether the story is filled with love or love encumbered with regret? You can share your story here. By doing so, you very well could be helping someone lovingly recall their parents.

"...you can make it if you try..."

One of the powerful ways that music can impact our lives is its ability to motivate us, to nudge us toward what we hope to achieve. Isn’t that why movies with heroes and wanna be heroes come with such memorable songs? Think of “Gonna Fly Now” (from Rocky, for my generation) or “Defying Gravity” (from Wicked, for my kids and grandkids).

My belief in music’s inspirational powers grows every time I hear a story of how a song helped someone reach a goal. I’m not talking about goals achieved while listening as a Fitbit counts your steps. I mean how Deb Van Schaack’s song took her goal, pardon the pun, one giant step further.

“In 2013,” Deb’s story begins, “I took a leave from my job and hiked the Appalachian Trail, starting in Georgia on March 8 and ending in Maine on Mt. Katahdin on July 28.”

Hiking the Appalachian Trail is a major goal to be sure, and one of the things Deb packed in her backpack was an IPod of songs. But she wasn’t thinking of music as a steady soundtrack that most of us require when pushing our bodies hard.

“I was careful not to listen to my music all the time,” she recalls. “But on rainy days or days when I was aching, or on those days when I thought I'd never make it up another mountain, music gave me a focus that blocked out the thoughts of self-doubt when I was anxious and actually helped me concentrate on my hiking.”

And when the Trail got real tough, Deb shares how one special song, "Unwritten," by Natasha Bedingfield, helped her focus: “The song happened to play as I crossed my first state line, from Georgia into North Carolina, and listening to the lyrics on a sunny day as I crossed that line (78 miles into my 2,185 mile trip) was a transcendent moment.”

Unfamiliar with Deb’s song, I took a listen to “Unwritten” and imagined her hearing it, so early in her long journey:

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it…

Tasting the goal of completing the Appalachian Trail is something lots of people—about 4,000 a year—dream of. But only one in four completes it and about half of those achievers are in their twenties, younger folks who might relate to Bedingfield, who was 21 when she recorded “Unwritten.” Even so, Deb says that the song spoke “to the core of my 55-year-old being. The further north I walked, the more the song spoke to me. Every time I heard ‘Unwritten,’ tears would stream down my face.”

No one else can feel it for you
Natasha advised Deb
Only you can let it in…
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

A decade later, Deb looks back on that hike and “Unwritten” as life-defining. “This song is a tribute to reaching for your dreams, no matter your age. Hiking the Appalachian Trail was the largest goal I'd ever set for myself.”

To end her story, Deb asks a question, “What's your dream?” I pass that question on to you, readers. If you’ve got a story of a song that motivated you to fulfill a challenging dream, please share it here. I look forward to being inspired by the song that, as it did for Deb, helped get you to your goal.

"...together wherever we go..."

The month of February is a perfect time for a music blog about love songs. Heck, I don’t think there’d be a thing called music, especially pop music, without the sweet mystery of falling in love. Take a listen to some of your favorite songs, no matter what era you grew up in, and you’ll hear about a whole lotta love.

As I work on my book about music’s impact on our lives, I can already see that it will include a lengthy chapter on people’s stories of falling in love. As I think about how to write that chapter, I’ve been contemplating the memories from people who’ve shared their songs about love, and today I want to spotlight a couple of them. While the two contributors talk about music and their love differently, they get to its heart with one thing in common: The Beatles.

Lots of people have fallen in love while Beatles songs were playing, but only some of those couples stayed in love. Kevin Kovacs, for one. Kevin’s music memories and his appreciation for The Beatles also show up at other important times in his life, but for today’s blog, we’ll look at how their music—and one song in particular—gave him the chance with a woman he fell for a long long time ago.

“Shortly after meeting my wife Beth, 47 years ago,” Kevin remembers, “I played my beat up acoustic guitar and sang her a Beatles song.”

Back when The Beatles dominated the music scene, many boys thought of taking up guitar to catch a girl’s eye, but that’s not how it was for Kevin. “I took lessons beginning at age 9, before The Beatles came to America and before I had any interest in girls.” And Kevin didn’t choose the more popular Beatles songs, like “Love Me Do” or “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” to convince Beth of his love. He went with something more lasting…more promising. “In My Life.”

Imagine what Beth must have felt when she listened to Kevin strumming his guitar while singing these words:

But of all these friends and lovers
there’s no one compares with you…
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I love you more

Kevin’s story of The Beatles’ influence ends with his appreciation for “In My Life.” “Beth later told me it sealed the deal.”

Now that’s a love story with staying power! The same goes for Mike Otis’ Beatles song and story, though his carries on even longer, after his wife had passed away. Though Mike’s story is brief, it says so much.

“After my wife Holly died, the relistening to ‘The Long and Winding Road’ helped me envision a day we might be reunited!”

As I normally do when I receive a person’s song and story, I took some time to listen to this Beatles classic, their last number one hit before heading off on four different roads. I was reminded of how that song, back when it was released, sounded like the end of a journey we fans we shared with The Beatles. But then I listened to the song as Mike does, as a way to keep connected to the love who’s no longer with him.

The long and winding road
 that leads to your door
will never disappear
I’ve seen that road before
It always leads me here
Leads me to your door…

Did The Beatles have any idea of the gift they gave us back when we first heard their songs, as Paul McCartney sang in “Winding Road,” “a long, long time ago”? Isn’t it amazing how, decades later, our beloved love songs still can stir our heart? What about you? Do you have a song and story about Falling In Love—whether it lasted for a day or a lifetime—to share? Let me know, so I can write the best chapter about the power of love to be found in music. Here’s the link. 

"...the strength to carry on..."

It’s no surprise that some of the songs and stories people have submitted for my music project come from experiencing a health crisis. When faced with a threat to our well-being, we often turn inward to wrestle with our new reality. Sometimes a song is there for us, either from a memory or supportive friend or happenstance, to help us gain perspective and figure out the road ahead. That’s what the song “Titanium” did for Colleen Grimshaw.

Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012, Colleen found herself facing a barrage of uncertainties. “With this diagnosis,” she explains, “came so many emotions, and fear of the unknown was one of the most debilitating. Fear that I could not be strong enough to have chemotherapy. Fear that I would lose my hair. Fear that I may not survive not just the cancer, but the cure. Fear that I would not be the same physically. Fear that I could not do what I always took for granted. Fear that my body would be repulsive and ugly.”

When Colleen shared her story, I’d not yet heard “Titanium.” A click on the internet, though, was all it took to understand why the song mattered. With music by David Guetta, the song quietly begins, as if he’s setting the stage for the story of someone facing a challenge. Then it builds, heading toward an explosive chorus. Sitting at my computer, light years away from the challenge Colleen was facing, I still felt myself being lifted.

Equally powerful are the song’s lyrics. Composed by Australian singer and songwriter Sia, her words match the musical strength of “Titanium.” Long after my first listen, this lyric echoes in my mind: You shoot me down, but I won’t fall.

Every time Colleen learned some disturbing news during her treatment, “Titanium” was there. “In the dark of the night,” she says, “when all rational thought escapes you and fear would keep me awake, I would play this song and feel that tomorrow I could do this. I could handle what I was dealt; I would be okay losing my breast, losing my hair. I would be strong.”

Moved by Colleen’s story of discovering strength, I decided to dig deeper into her song. I knew the title Titanium came from the world of science, a subject in which I’m particularly weak, so I relied on Google to explain that titanium is a metal known for its strength, its “resistance to corrosion.” Now if that’s not a metaphor for a person fighting cancer, I don’t know what is.

Fourteen years after it was released, with over 100 million views on YouTube, it’s clear that “Titanium” continues to be a healing message for many. As Colleen will tell you, “I still play the song when I’m in need of a boost of strength.”

Sound familiar? Do you have a song of strength? Have you faced a health crisis that first knocked you off your feet, but you managed to carry on? Or maybe you’ve witnessed a medical challenge of a loved one? Was a song playing on the radio, in the car to and from endless doctor’s appointments, or in the healing way our mind replays the song we most need to hear? If so, share your story with me here. And please know how much you inspire me when I hear your stories. When my book is published, so many others will have the same opportunity

...on the road of experience...

Welcome to (or welcome back) to my Music Blog! As a lifelong music enthusiast, I am pleased to once again be thinking and writing about its impact on our lives. Along with the joy it brings me, I’m also blogging again to help with a book I’m writing, tentatively titled One Song-One Story. The book will focus on music’s influence not only on us as individuals, but as a community of human beings…or, as some say, of humans being.

To collect what I’ll need for such an expansive topic, I’m asking people to think of a song that recalls a time when their life changed, and then tell me the story of how it did. In my first few months of collecting these song-stories, I’ve been humbled by what people have shared. In these individual stories, I’ve noticed recurring themes of how music becomes part of our important experiences. Each of my blogs will focus on one theme. Today’s will look at songs that have helped us come of age.

It’s no surprise that several One Song-One Story responses are associated with a person’s coming of age. Songs have often been a healing salve during our turbulent years of self-discovery. And while we normally think of this transition happening when we’re teenagers, it can only happen when we’re ready. This was certainly true for Betty Mauté.

Betty’s influential song was John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High,” probably not the first tune we think of for someone coming of age. But for Betty, it only took a couple lines from the song.

He was born in the summer of his 27th year
Coming home to a place he'd never been before

Maybe you’ve had that happen; finally feeling alive after finding a place you can call home. That idea intrigued Betty, so she decided, at age 22, to sell what little she had—“except my record albums,” she noted—and hitchhiked from Syracuse, New York, to Denver. With her dog, $75 and no cell phone (it was 1973), Betty headed out on the road. Here’s how she describes what she discovered:

“I had to overcome the fear of being totally on my own. I was to find out that not all strangers could be trusted, which forced me to use skills I didn't know I had. When I found myself in a bad situation, I talked fast and lied to escape. At the same time, I learned not to judge others, as I met all kinds of people that would not normally cross my path, including pimps and prostitutes, who were some of the kindest people.”

Betty’s story seems to end there until she adds, “John Denver motivated me to experience Colorado, but it was not to be my new home.” In fact, she admits, “I’m still waiting to come home to a place I've never been before.” We needn’t feel sorry for Betty though, because, all these years later, she’s thankful for the song that gave her the kick she needed to stand on the side of a road and stick out her thumb. “I did discover who I was,” Betty’s story ends, “and the strength within.”

Maybe that’s what coming of age really is about: finding our inner strength. What about you? Was there a time, whether you were 16 or 46, when you decided to shed a comfortable life and stick out your thumb? Or stick out your chin and take a chance to speak up for something you believed in? Or stick out your hand to make an unexpected friend? Was there a song—or just one line of a song—playing on an endless loop as you took that leap of faith? I’d love to hear your story. You can share it here.

The Golden Record Project

I’ve always loved music because of its ability to express the wide range of emotions that is the human experience. But when I was a teenager I was also obsessed with the popularity aspect of pop music. I spent hours studying Billboard’s Top 40 to see where my favorite songs landed and couldn’t wait to find out if they would be awarded a Grammy. I grew out of my fixation on which songs earned the most honors, but recently my interest in choosing the best of the best was rekindled. It all started when I learned about the Golden Record Project.

Created by NASA in 1977, the Project indeed had an out-of-this-world goal: producing a collection of recordings to send into space with the Voyager rocket ship. According to NASA, “the records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for future humans, who may find them.”

What a fantastic idea! Since Voyager’s goal was to explore the universe, it was exciting to think about who or what might someday hear the unique sounds created by Earthlings. Great minds like Carl Sagan supported the Project, describing it as “the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean, [which] says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” And the best part about the Project? Of all the cultural artifacts that NASA planners could have chosen, it was music that they thought could best explain us to the universe.

Twenty-seven recordings were included in the Project. Some of them, like Beethoven and Bach, I expected to make the cut. Others were less familiar, but exciting to imagine: night chants by Navajo Indians, panpipes and drums from Peru, Aborigine songs from the land down under. But NASA didn’t forget American popular music. Among the sounds ETs can hear are songs by Louie Armstrong, Blind Willie Johnson, and a little number you might know by Chuck Berry, “Johnny B. Goode.”

Once I learned about the Project’s lofty goals, my imagination took off. What if NASA was looking for one human being to share their love of music with the heavens? What if I was lucky enough to be that person? What songs would end up on my Golden Record? I thought about going the traditional “Top Ten Songs of My Life,” but that idea seemed overdone and too limiting after 60+ years of loving music. I ended up approaching the Project like I’ve written these music blogs over the past few years, by honoring the songs that express what it has meant for me to live fully on this planet. Here’s my list:

“I Can Only Be Me” Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder - I CAN ONLY BE ME (Unreleased) - YouTube

I start with this song, which is about loving ourselves as we are, because I had a particularly tough time accepting myself as gay, largely due to my self-doubt and self-deprecation. But finally coming out was not only the hardest thing I’ve done, it was also the most fulfilling. It took me awhile and thankfully singers like Stevie Wonder offered me sage advice:

“How many times have you wished you were some other,
someone than who you are
Yet who's to say if all were uncovered
You will like what you see
You can only be you
As I can only be me…”

“New World Coming” Mama Cass

New World Coming - YouTube

Being an optimist has been the anecdote for the troubles I’ve had accepting myself. As bad as things felt at certain points in my life, I’ve always believed they’d get better. I was lucky to have the optimistic music of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s to show me what happiness looks like, including my favorite “things are looking up” song, by Mama Cass.

“Yes a new world's coming
the one we've had visions of
Coming in peace, coming in joy,
coming in love…”

“He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” Neil Diamond

He Ain't Heavy...He's My Brother - YouTube

The ‘60s also gave me lots of messages about respecting others, helping those in need and living life in peace. I memorized the words of those songs, believing in their message with all my heart, referring to them as My Ten Commandments. There were many songs that awakened my social consciousness, but I am choosing “He Ain’t Heavy” because it was the first one in which I remember being aware that I could make a difference. Sitting on my bedroom floor, listening to these words over and over, I made a pledge to follow wherever they’d take me:

“The road is long
with many a winding turn
that leads us to who knows where
who knows when

But I'm strong
strong enough to carry him
He ain't heavy, he's my brother...”

“The Caterpillar & The Butterfly” Rosalie Sorrels
(sorry I could not find this song on YouTube)

Of all the experiences I’ve been allowed, becoming a father is the greatest. To have had the opportunity to bring life into this world twice and to help my daughter and son grow has been a blessing. It’s also been challenging and confusing. My favorite song about the mysteries of parenthood comes from folksinger Rosalie Sorrels, who tells the dilemma many feel when trying to be the best possible parent (the caterpillar) while also wanting freedom to achieve great things in the world (the butterfly).

“So I the caterpillar will keep working at my trade
and I won’t know what I’m weaving until I’ve got it made
And if I don’t believe in butterflies, I can tell you this:
We all must do what we must do
simply to exist…”

“Nature Boy” Nat King Cole

(29) Nature Boy - YouTube

I was lucky to have grown up a on country road, where I was free to explore nature without the distractions of a busy world. Early on, I learned the healing powers of nature and have returned to its peace countless times. Nature is always the answer to my most troubling questions, which is why I love this Nat King Cole song about meeting someone who explains the biggest question in life:

“…And then one magic day
he passed my way
and while we spoke of many things
fools and kings
this he said to me

The greatest thing you'll ever learn
is just to love and be loved in return…”

Since this is my last blog on the powers of pop music I invite you to share your Golden Record Project songs. What music in your life deserves to be heard by others in this world and beyond?

"I Wanna Know What Love Is" Foreigner

I’m a big fan of songs with a big chorus. You know, the ones that sound and feel like rallying cries for love or social change or our dreams to come true. The stories those songs tell are important, of course, but it’s their choruses—especially the ones sung by a full choir of voices—that inspire me to sing along. At the top of my lungs.

Singing those big choruses always feels like I’m part of something bigger than myself. My earliest memory of that feeling came in 1969 with “Give Peace a Chance,” when, as a fourteen-year-old, I decided to join John & Yoko in choosing love over war. The next year, Diana Ross’s version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” made me believe that even a kid like me could conquer my doubts and fears. Those big songs kept coming, each rousing chorus inspiring me: Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” in 1977; “We Are the World,” in 1985. But my all-time favorite big chorus comes in the song “I Wanna Know What Love Is.”

I wasn’t a Foreigner fan back in 1984, when they first belted out that song’s larger-than-life chorus. The group seemed like just another hard-rock-flirting-with-pop-music band, with big hits that were about what everybody else was selling: finding, losing or winning back somebody to love. With song titles like “Waiting For a Girl Like You,” “Hot-Blooded,” and “Urgent,” one might assume “I Wanna Know What Love Is,” was just more of the same for Foreigner. But after one listen, I knew these guys were singing about something more important than a latest crush. Take a listen.

Maybe you could interpret “I Wanna Know” as the search for romantic love, but that’s not what it sounded like to me. Who starts a love song out like this:

“I gotta take a little time
a little time to think things over
I better read between the lines
in case I need it when I'm older
Now this mountain I must climb
feels like a world upon my shoulders…”

Something told me—no, it was more of a feeling—that Foreigner’s lead singer, Lou Gramm, was facing mountains for more than a girlfriend. By the time I heard this anthem I was already well aware that a song’s lyrics can be interpreted more than one way. Like back in 1977, when Debby Boone had a massive hit with “You Light Up My Life.” If you were listening to pop radio back then, when Debby’s version of the song got stuck at number one for ten weeks, the song is permanently lodged in your brain—whether you like it or not. But Debby shocked the world when she revealed that she wasn’t singing to some guy. It was God, she claimed, who lit up her life.

I had troubling believing Debby’s interpretation of her hit song, mostly because it was featured in a romantic-comedy of the same name. After seeing a girl and guy fall in love on the big screen while the song played, I just couldn’t imagine it as a musical prayer.

Thankfully, I didn’t make the same mistake with Foreigner. From the day MTV started, I decided not to watch music videos, preferring to let my imagination interpret new music. So I had no idea how the band chose to dramatize “I Wanna Know What Love Is” and I had no problem believing that Foreigner could be singing these words to Someone Greater:

“I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me…”

Those words from the chorus, which were repeated after more lyrics about heartache and pain, was powerful in itself, but Foreigner did something to make it extraordinary. With each chorus, their song builds in intensity. After Gramm first reaches for the stars, he’s joined in the next chorus by the New Jersey Mass Choir, a Christian gospel group. That’s weird, I thought, when I found out a religious group was backing a rock band. Isn’t that sacrilegious?

Foreigner’s songwriter Mick Jones satisfied my curiosity when I read an interview in which he explained what he had in mind for this song. Knowing he wanted a choir for his chorus, he struck gold with the New Jersey group. “We did a few takes and it was good,” Jones recalled, “but it was still a bit tentative. So [the choir] got round in a circle, held hands and said The Lord’s Prayer and it seemed to inspire them, because after that they did it in one take.”

But Jones wasn’t finished with the group’s powerful chorus. For the song’s finale, he brought in Jennifer Holiday, a powerhouse vocalist who’d become a star in the Broadway musical Dreamgirls. Holiday added an explosive ending, taking the deep meaning of the song to new heights. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of listening to “I Wanna Know What Love Is.”

And I’ll never get tired of hearing new interpretations of sweet and innocent pop songs. It happened again this past spring, when we were all trying to get used to staying at home. One of the things that felt particularly lonesome to me was the thought on not hearing live music. When might I again be lifted up by a chorus of voices? Then a friend sent me this link.

There it was again, that tricky word Love and all the mixed messages we can hear in it. But listening to all those voices singing about it left me with no doubt what kind of love we need right now. Watching those voices united on my computer, I just had to sing along.

"A Place in the Sun" Stevie Wonder

If you’re lucky, you have a place where you feel completely comfortable, where you’re free to be exactly who you are. Some people find that place in their own home; for others, it’s a shade tree in their neighborhood park or a beach on the ocean. It doesn’t really matter where this place exists as long as you’ve found it. I feel especially lucky because I found my place when I was just a kid—eight years old, to be exact, when I spent my first summer at Camp Hollis.

Established on the shores of Lake Ontario in the town of Oswego, Camp Hollis has served children in Oswego County since 1946 and I’ve spent the last two years writing a book about its history. I’ll publish the book next year, when the camp celebrates its 75th year of providing boys and girls fun in the sun. It’s been a pleasure to write about Camp Hollis, especially since I’m honoring my special place, my “Place in the Sun.”

You may not be familiar with Stevie Wonder’s song “A Place in the Sun.” When he recorded it in 1966, it didn’t spend much time on the music charts. Maybe that’s because the song wasn’t particularly flashy and didn’t come with a killer chorus, but Stevie was saying something important when he sang it. Take a listen.

Wonder was 16 years old when Motown, his record company, released “A Place in the Sun.” He was just shedding his “Little Stevie Wonder” image that made him a star, but no one could have predicted the groundbreaking music—most of it self-composed—he would soon be creating. But even in his youth, when others supplied the songs he recorded, Stevie often had a message to share. He had an unlikely hit with Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” deepening the song’s meaning when sung by a Black teenager. Motown’s in-house composers gave him “Heaven Help Us All,” a song about our country’s failing social conditions, and Stevie’s impassioned singing asked us to pray for soldiers dying in war and drug addicts dying in the streets.

With the same yearning in his voice, Stevie sang “A Place in the Sun.” Using nature as a metaphor for hope, he addressed the social and cultural problems erupting in the 1960s.

“Like a long lonely stream
I keep runnin' towards a dream,
movin' on, movin' on.

Like a branch on a tree
I keep reachin' to be free,
movin' on, movin' on...”

I first heard “A Place in the Sun” around the time I first attended Camp Hollis, but I didn’t associate the fun I had there with Stevie’s hopeful place; it was as an adult that I connected those dots. But something about the feeling I got from the song reminded me of camp. After all, Hollis was the place where I felt free and began to believe in myself. I often refer to the camp as “the place where I hit the only homerun of my life” and that’s true. I was an uncoordinated kid and terrible at sports, but the counselors at Hollis didn’t know that about me and they gave me the same chance to succeed that they gave every kid under their care. I also made self-discoveries in arts & crafts and on nature trails. And I made lots of friends, making my camp experience one of the thousands of success stories Camp Hollis claims.

I got extra lucky with Hollis, ending up on its summer staff during my college years. As a 19-year-old, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but after a few summers at the camp, where I worked alongside others who had chosen careers in teaching or social work, I decided I wanted to help people. By my junior year, I’d switched my college major to education.

While I enjoyed the challenges of teaching—I taught for seven years right out of college—I often found myself nostalgic about my place in the sun. Imagine my excitement in 1989, when I learned that Camp Hollis now had a fulltime position which oversaw the camp, and that the job was currently open. For the next 21 years, my place in the sun was my main responsibility, which gave me lots of opportunities to meet others who considered the camp their special place.

When the time came for me to retire from that job, I knew I wasn’t ready to fully let Camp Hollis go. Fortunately, along with the camp being a great place for children and adults, Hollis is also a beautiful place. Overlooking Lake Ontario, with its incredible sunsets, the camp has inspired staff members and volunteers to create a series of gardens and it’s now my pleasure to take care of them. Nowadays I stop by the camp once a week during the growing season to water and pull weeds. While doing so I listen to the sounds of happy children, many who are finding, for the first time, their place in the sun.

Though the camp program only runs for eight weeks each summer, it has a way of staying in the hearts of anyone who’s enjoyed their time there. Through the other three seasons, when the weather or life’s challenges can get me down, I reflect on the camp. Which brings me to my favorite part of “A Place in the Sun.” It comes at the end of the song, when Stevie offers one more reason why it’s important to find your special place. I like to sing it just like Stevie does, loud and confidently:

“You know when times are bad
and you're feeling sad
I want you to always remember
Yes, there's a place in the sun…”

"America" Simon & Garfunkel

Has there ever been a better song to accompany us as we embark on a life-changing journey than Simon & Garfunkel’s “America”? When Paul Simon wrote it and he and Art Garfunkel harmonized to it in 1968, I’m not sure what sort of pilgrimage Simon was singing about, but ten years later, when I boarded a bus that would transport me to a new life, his musical message of “America” was urging me on.

Before I tell my story, take a listen to the song and notice how Simon chose to start it: “America” By first humming and strumming its melody, Paul creates a comforting feeling—I’d call it meditative—which makes “America” a perfect soundtrack for someone more than a little nervous about heading off into the unknown.

I’ve never been much of a traveler. We didn’t go on a lot of road trips when I was a kid, but even as an adult I’ve always preferred the familiarity of my home. Despite that, something within me has always recognized when stepping out of my comfort zone is worth the risk. Like spring 1978, when, as a new college graduate, I was itching to find a school that would welcome my unconventional teaching philosophies. I found just such a place in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, 180 miles south of my hometown.

The Williamsport school was founded on principles I believe in. It provides an ungraded, child-centered educational environment that encourages its students, parents and teachers to learn at their own pace. I had lots of ideas of how I thought children learned best, so when I heard about the school and found out they were hiring, I jumped at the chance. But when the call came with an offer to interview, I wondered if I had jumped too far. I was 22 years old and had never been beyond my New York state borders.

My potential move might have been too scary to seriously consider if something beyond an innovative school wasn’t also nudging me to make a change. Along with not having seen the world, I also hadn’t seen all I could be. People knew me as the boy my parents raised who was voted class clown by his school friends. Like many who have longed to discover all that they are, I decided I needed to go somewhere else to find myself. Though Paul Simon shares his hopes with a girlfriend in “America,” it felt like he was singing for me:

“Kathy, I said, as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
Michigan seems like a dream to me now
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've come to look for America...”

Looking for America. Isn’t that one of the great things about our country? How we’re free to travel wherever we want, giving us plenty of room to figure out life. That freedom has inspired generations of Americans, and though it may have appeared that those seekers were heading off to dig for gold or claim a plot of land, in reality they were searching for themselves. Simon refers to this truth later in the song, again confiding in his girlfriend:

“Kathy, I'm lost, I said,
though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching
and I don't know why...”

With those words—empty and aching—Simon captures the challenge each of us face as we enter adulthood. Even when our parents and teachers have provided us with what we need to launch an independent life, we can only fully achieve it by stepping out on our own. I knew I had potential beyond being a funny friend and I believed that I could improve the lives of children, but I hadn’t yet left my comfortable world and tried. Something suggested that maybe I could find clues of who I was in Williamsport.

I was right. The parents of that school were welcoming, and by sharing their life stories they gave me ideas of how I might live mine. The teachers were working with educational philosophies I had only studied in college, modeling how to practice what I preached. The students were bright and engaged in their learning, inspiring me to do likewise. When I returned home after the interview and two weeks later got a call inviting me to teach at the school, I didn’t hesitate to accept the offer.

During the seven years I taught in Williamsport I made lots of trips back and forth between that city and my hometown. Shortly after moving there I acquired a Toyota Corolla, its four-cylinder engine working overtime to carry me back and forth between my new home in the Pennsylvania mountains and my past in Upstate New York. There was always music on those road trips and almost all of them included a listen to Simon & Garfunkel’s “America.” With each excursion, singing its chorus felt like my life was a little more attainable.

“All come to look for America
All come to look for America…”

Though I often saw myself as different growing up, I began to understand how much I had in common with everyone who’s ever embarked on a journey. Yes, moving to Williamsport was almost too far out of my comfort zone, but with Paul Simon as my role model, I found within me the courage to take the chance.

How Neil Diamond Rescued a Lonely Boy

I’ve been a Neil Diamond fan for a long time. He was one of the first singers I recognized on the radio because it was easy to tell his songs from everyone else’s. Neil’s vocal style is a cross between carrying a tune and carrying a conversation, and it was his talking that I liked best. I spent a lot of time alone in my childhood bedroom listening to music, so having someone like Neil share his thoughts with me was comforting.

Perhaps you’re wondering if I’m writing about the same Neil Diamond that you’re familiar with, the superstar whose biggest hits were singalongs like “Sweet Caroline,” toetappers like “Cracklin’ Rosie,” and ballads like “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.” Those classics are the ones you’ll hear on today’s oldies station, but it’s songs from early in his career that make me think Neil Diamond was, like me, a lonely boy.

You can hear hints of Neil’s solitary childhood in his first attempts at songwriting—he was composing hits for others before we ever got to hear his voice. Here are his opening lyrics from The Monkees’ smash, “I’m a Believer.” The song has a happy ending, but Neil starts it with this more somber philosophy:

“I thought love was only true in fairy tales
meant for someone else but not for me
Love was out to get me
that's the way it seemed
Disappointment haunted all of my dreams…”

During an interview after gaining fame, Neil said he felt a lot of pressure trying to write those radio-friendly hits for others. Pop music in the early 1960s was almost exclusively about falling in love, but Neil had other concerns on his mind. The memories of his youth, when his New York City family was often in poverty, were waiting to be expressed, so he decided to ignore the pressure of only writing about romance. And to ensure his biographical songs rang true, Neil sang them himself.

When he made his decision to transition to a singing career, later in the ‘60s, I was heading into my teens and just emerging from my lonely childhood. Though it didn’t make a splash on the music charts, one of Neil’s first recordings, “Brooklyn Roads,” introduced me to someone who found New York City as lonesome as my rural upstate New York:

“I built me a castle
with dragons and kings
and I'd ride off with them
as I stood by my window
and looked out on those
Brooklyn Roads…

I'm wonderin'
what's come of them
Does some other young boy
come home to my room
does he dream what I did…”

After a few of his reflective songs went nowhere on the charts, Neil had a little success with the song “Shiloh.” “Shiloh” had a catchy tune that helped its chances of being heard on the radio, but it was Neil’s words that caught my ear:

“Young child with dreams
dream every dream on your own
When children play
seems like you end up alone

Papa says he'd love to be with you
if he had the time
So you turn on the only friend you can find
there in your mind

Shilo, when I was young
I used to call you name
When no one else would come
Shilo, you always came
and we'd play…”

Just in case people weren’t listening closely to Neil’s personal lyrics, he spelled it out in the title of another early hit, “Solitary Man,” a song about the endless search for companionship. As Neil built his career album by album, many of which I collected, each would include a song or two alluding to his lonely younger years. I memorized them all.

Writing this essay about Neil’s influence has given me a chance to take a closer look at what I mean by the word lonely. Though most people associate loneliness with wanting to be with someone, as a kid I was missing something within me: an understanding of who I am. Without that self-acceptance and without truly knowing myself, it was hard to reach out to others. A lonely place.

It probably won’t come as a surprise to learn that music helped me figure out who I am. Over the years I listened to lots of singers, trying their style of music on for size. Among those that fit just right were rhythm & blues songs, a genre of music with a name that accurately described the intermingling of joy and pain inherent in those records. I liked how I felt as I listened to them and it seems the same was true for Neil Diamond. Along with his thoughtful ballads, he also composed rhythm & blues-inspired songs like “Brother Love’s Travellin’ Salvation Show,” “Soolamon,” and “Walk on Water,” all which featured a gospel choir in full voice, lifting Neil’s singing higher and higher.

Those stirring songs, found on the same Neil Diamond albums I was collecting, sounded like an anecdote to his lonely musings. He was guiding me musically. “Find comfort in the songs you love,” he seemed to be saying. “Find it within yourself.”

I took Neil’s advice to heart, moving my love of music to the piano, where I started recreating my favorite songs at the keyboard, playing them as if they were my own. I dabbled in all kinds of music, including some of Neil’s classics. One that I especially enjoy is also one of his biggest hits, “I Am I Said,” which included yet another reference to our lonely childhoods:

“…but I got an emptiness deep inside
and I've tried
but it won't let me go
And I'm not a man who likes to swear
but I never cared
for the sound of being alone…”

Well said, Neil. Well sang.

"Sunshine On My Shoulders" John Denver

This music blog often focuses on the lyrics of songs that have been life-changing for me. Ever since I started paying attention to pop music, at around 10 years old, I’ve studied the words to my favorite songs, analyzing them to help me make sense of what often seems like a confusing world. I believe that’s why I ended up as a writer, having long appreciated how the right words express exactly what I mean. But a song is more than words, and in order for it to reveal its full message I have to feel its melody. Today’s blog is about a singer who gave us both thoughtful words and enjoyable melodies. It’s also about a friend who showed me how to feel that singer’s music.

John Denver became hugely popular during an era when a guitar and a voice were all you needed to make hit songs. His lyrics were often about the natural world and his homespun melodies welcomed me into that world. John’s singing sounded like I was sitting with a good friend in front of a campfire.

I met one those good friends when I was in college. Like many taking their first steps away from home, I was itching to say goodbye to my youth and become a grownup. It was a time of self-discovery, and because we often learn through observation, I paid close attention to those I chanced to meet on my college campus. That certainly happened when I became friends with Bob.

After attending the same class and getting to know each other at some extracurricular activities, Bob decided I would be a good person to fill a vacant room in the house he and a few of his friends rented. At first, it seemed unlikely that our friendship had potential. Bob was athletic, while I had always thought of myself as uncoordinated and inept at sports. Deep down, though, I longed to experience the joys of being physically active, so when I saw Bob doing just that I knew I’d found the right role model.

It helped that all sports were fair game to Bob and he never played them competitively. He’d head out for a jog or to shoot some hoops simply because it was fun. The fact that he always had a smile on his face wasn’t lost on me, so when he asked if I’d join him for a round of tennis or a swim in the lake, I disregarded my childhood hang-ups and followed him out our apartment door.

Along with his obvious joy for sports, I noticed that Bob loved life in other ways. He seemed to fully embrace every experience. I’d see him first thing in the morning, grabbing an apple from the fridge on the way out to an early class, his smile as broad as his outstretched arms, inviting us all in for a hug. How Bob lived each day was unlike anything I’d ever seen.

Or heard. Bob also appreciated life with every fiber of his being by singing. He’d break out in song whenever he felt like it, his rich baritone filling our world with his favorite songs. More often than not, they would be John Denver tunes. Here’s his favorite:

“Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high…”

Much like I’d never thought of myself as an athlete, I never imagined I could sing until I met Bob. Soon he’d coaxed me into harmonizing on John Denver ballads. We’d be out for a jog and he’d break into “Rocky Mountain High.” He’d be cooking dinner and the kitchen would reverberate with “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Once he’d invited me, it felt natural to join in. And it felt good.

Bob and I stayed in touch for a while after college. Though he traveled halfway around the world when he signed up for the Peace Corps, he found a way to be one of the ushers in my wedding. Then, as friends sometimes do, we headed in different directions and years went by with only an occasional letter and an even rarer phone call. One day, out of the blue, Bob contacted me to ask if he could visit, and we spent a weekend talking about old times. When he got ready to leave, he handed me a shopping bag. “I thought you might like this,” he said. It was an album of John Denver’s greatest hits.

Bob’s gift reminded me of our once close friendship and I decided it was important to stay in touch. A few months later I called him to plan for another get together. There was silence when I asked the person answering the phone if I could speak with Bob. Finally, she said, “You better call his family.” It was Bob’s father who told me that my friend had died; he’d taken his own life.

Bob was the first person I’d lost in such an untimely and unexplained manner, and it deeply troubled me. Questions of why my joyous college friend would choose to end his life kept me awake for months. I never got the answers I needed and the hole that was left with his passing remains open, which makes listening to John Denver today a mixed emotion. On one hand, there’s the loss of a friendship that was only beginning to mature. On the other, there is my gratitude for having had a friend who showed me I have every right to feel.

“If I had a day
that I could give to you
I’d give to you
a day just like today
If I had a song that I could sing to you
I’d sing a song to make you feel this way…”

The Remarkable Voice of Karen Carpenter

Here’s a little experiment: Think about a singer or band who has had a lasting impact on you, particularly one you listened to as a kid. What’s it feel like today, as an adult, to hear them singing songs that once seemed to be written only for you? Do they still stir your heart? Do they continue to inspire you? Then, consider this: What if that singer you once idolized is now referred to as “only moderately talented” or “unworthy of legendary status”? Who’s right? You or the critics?

I’ve been pondering those questions after recent listenings to Carpenters: A 25th Anniversary Celebration. I bought the album because I’ve enjoyed Karen Carpenter’s singing ever since she and her brother Richard broke into pop music in 1970. Well-dressed and well-mannered, they were easy to like. It helped that they made good music.

Richard was the duo’s music arranger, keyboardist, occasional songwriter and background singer, but it was Karen’s way with a song’s lyrics that made the Carpenters special. Those of us with our ears glued to the radio back then could hear something in her voice that made their music satisfying beyond typical Top 40 standards. But right from the start, music critics were…well…critical.

They called Karen’s singing sugery sweet, too lightweight to adequately interpret a song’s message; some called her singing childlike. It didn’t matter that, while critics complained, her voice gave us memorable song after memorable song: 16 hits in a little over five years. It didn’t matter that some of those songs came to define milestones in our life. Weddings had “We’ve Only Just Begun.” Parents could offer their children “Sing,” from Sesame Street. Those lucky in love were on the “Top of the World” and those falling out of it were comforted by “Rainy Days and Mondays.” Today their songs still sound good, but back at the start of the 1970s, the Carpenters didn’t sound like anyone else in pop music.

Unlike the 1960s’ electrified guitars and thunderous vocals, Karen and Richard specialized in what was known as Easy Listening music, and, according to critics, those pleasing-to-the-ear songs were at the bottom of the heap in terms of respect. I enjoy reading books about music and when I started researching this blog I looked up the Carpenters in the dozen or so music-related books on my shelf. Only two mention them. In Fire and Rain, author David Browne covers a pivotal year in pop music, 1970, and called the Carpenters “a brother-sister duo from Southern California who looked like student council candidates and made polite music to match.”

The other reference to the Carpenters’ music is found in The Rolling Stone Album Guide, considered the ultimate critique of recorded music released since the beginning of the rock & roll era. The expansive book covers thousands of artists and deems their recordings with a five star rating. The Carpenters rarely earned more than two. I think the reviewer was trying to be kind when he wrote, “Richard Carpenter’s clean-cut arrangements and good-humored ditties were beautifully complemented by his sister Karen’s voice.”

At least that reviewer acknowledged Karen’s vocal abilities, because that’s what I focused on as I prepared to write this blog. After spending time with the Carpenters’ music, I began to see—or, better yet, hear—why I believe there is an enduring quality to their songs. It was something in Karen’s voice, something that went deeper than words.

It was big news when Karen died, in 1983, from complications of anorexia. No one talked about such a disease back then, which made her death something more than a show business tragedy; it became a topic to be reckoned with. Probably the best reporting of Karen’s struggles with the disease can be found in the book, Little Girl Blue, by Randy Schmidt. I’ll leave the discussion on the causes and lack of cure for Karen’s anorexia to others; what I want to share are the forewarnings of her illness that can be heard in her voice.

Karen normally sang as a contralto, but she had the rare ability to transition from that more typical female register to a much lower range—something she called her “basement.” Thanks to Richard’s songwriting and song selection, her basement voice was used masterfully on music that tended toward the melancholy, the “rainy days and Mondays always get me down” type of song.

Richard then carefully chose an instrument to underscore the loneliness in his sister’s voice: the solitary harmonica on “Rainy Days,” a pensive harp in “Superstar,” and the saxophone or piano on several songs. Added to Karen’s voice—always a little mysterious and distant—their songs were perfect for those times when we’re feeling alone or misguided or unlucky in love. Listen to what Karen and a piano created with the opening verse of Solitaire. There are moments like that on just about every song the Carpenters recorded.

Thanks to the Carpenter’s clean-cut image, none of us imagined what Karen’s life was like behind her remarkable voice. When she smiled for the cameras, nobody saw anything troubling. But I can hear it today, which, in my book, makes Karen Carpenter among the best blues singers who ever lived. Like others who specialized in singing about hard times, she didn’t talk about her pain; she expressed it. In doing so, Karen Carpenter somehow made my own troubles a little better.

Staying Home with James Taylor

This blog has always been about honoring the music that I associate with important events in my life. Since I started writing it, a year and a half ago, I’ve shared stories about the singers and songs that have been part of my half century or so of figuring out how I fit in the world. But today’s blog isn’t about a song from my past; it’s about the music I’m listening to today, while we’re all living away from the world.

Just when our shelter-in-place began here in New York State, I received a gift from a dear friend. She hadn’t sent it because of the pandemic; it just happened to arrive as we were all beginning to spend most of our time at home. Because this friend and I share a long history, I always consider a gift from her as meaningful. And that was the case when she sent me this: James Taylor’s latest CD.

James’ new album is called Standards and it’s a collection of tunes from The Great American Songbook, music that was written and first popular nearly a century ago. (It’s interesting that several songs on the CD are from the 1920s, when the United States and the rest of the world were recovering from the 1918 influenza epidemic.) My first thought when I received the CD was that James had sold himself out. It seemed like he’d joined the many singers who’ve decided to forego their own new music by recording an album of old songs. I wondered if James was just trying to make a little money, then I read what he wrote in the album’s liner notes:

“These are songs I have always known. Most of them were part of my family’s record collection, the first music I heard as a kid growing up in North Carolina…Before I started writing my own stuff, I learned to play these tunes, working out chord changes for my favorite melodies. And those guitar arrangements became the basis for this album.”

James’ guitar did make my first listen of Standards enjoyable. To hear him recreating the melodies of “God Bless the Child” and “Ol’ Man River” on guitar welcomed me into this new musical territory for Taylor. But even more precious was his voice, so familiar to me after fifty years that it sounded like a lifelong friend had stopped by for a visit. But this CD hadn’t come to reminisce about the good old days of our high school prom or my summers working at a camp or the birth of my two children. It came to start a new conversation, and after spending so much time at home, James’ CD has become a soundtrack of this unique time we’re all living through. When this pandemic is over, when these days are someday our history, I know that whenever I listen to Standards, I’ll remember the spring of 2020.

Years from now, when I hear James’ version of the comforting ballad “Moon River,” I’ll recall the first time I heard him singing it, sitting in my car outside a grocery store, preparing for the uncomfortable experience of putting on a mask. When I hear James on the fanciful “Pennies From Heaven,” I’ll remember wondering if I’d ever feel happy-go-lucky again. When he sings “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,” a song about cruel prejudice from the musical South Pacific, I’ll remember that some people tried to politicize this global pandemic. And I’ll never forget the irony of hearing James serenade us with the intimate song “The Nearness of You.”

When I look back on this experience of isolation, I’ll be thankful for how James helped me feel less alone. I used to belong to a group of music lovers who’d gather occasionally to join our voices in song. Some brought instruments to accompany us and we often met at the home of a woman who owned a piano. I was just learning how to interpret my favorite songs on the keyboard and I told her I admired her piano playing. She told me this: “When you learn to play music, you never have to feel alone.”

That’s what receiving the gift of James Taylor means to me. To have his trusted voice fill some of the emptiness of my days with beautiful music is perhaps the greatest gift I could receive right now.

Harry Chapin's Story-Songs

Has there ever been a better storytelling songwriter than Harry Chapin? Sure, every once in a while, a musical saga like Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” or Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” will come along to entertain us, but I never found those stories relatable. Harry, on the other hand, recorded dozens of songs that sounded like full length non-fiction books, and, as a teenager who spent a lot of time wondering what the grown up world was like, his songs gave me a glimpse of the truth that lay ahead. Come to find out, many of Harry’s songs were true.

Take one of his classics, “Mr. Tanner,” for example. It’s the story of a small-town guy with a decent singing voice who decides to give professional music a try. Harry got his idea for the song after reading a newspaper account of just such a man, and his musical version overflows with drama, cleverly weaving Tanner’s rendition of the Christmas carol “Oh Holy Night” into the song. As you might expect, things don’t work out for Tanner, and in the five minutes it took Harry to tell the story, he shared a biography of pain.

It took Chapin twice as long to tell another of his stories, “A Better Place to Be,” which he wrote after visiting an Upstate New York tavern. But he deftly used every one of those ten minutes to create a heartbreaking love story. Here’s how Harry set the scene, in the song’s first stanza:

“It was an early morning bar room
and the place just opened up
And the little man come in so fast
and started at his cup
And the broad who served the whiskey
she was a big old friendly girl
who tried to fight her empty nights
by smilin’ at the world…”

Harry had trouble getting most his songs on the radio because of their length, but he did succeed with “W-O-L-D,” the story of a radio deejay who once interviewed him. Harry must have asked some questions, too, because he used the deejay’s troubled marriage and fear of losing his career to younger music jocks to write another song of regret, which seem to drive the plots of many Chapin classics.

That doesn’t mean that all of Harry’s songs were sad. (Anybody familiar with his classic runaway truck song, “30,000 Pounds of Bananas”?) But his honest look at how hard life can be gave Chapin a strong, devoted following. As one of his admirers, I wanted to know why he adopted the longer, storytelling style of songwriting. I found a clue in Harry’s first career.

Chapin started out as a filmmaker, and, as might be expected, he focused on capturing true-to-life stories, even earning an Academy Award nomination for his documentary about heavyweight boxers, “Legendary Champions.” My guess is that when Harry shifted to the world of music, he brought his passion for storytelling with him.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that a few of Harry’s factual story-songs were about his life. “I Wanna Learn a Love Song,” was the embellished description of how he met with wife, Sandy, an older woman with children. Starring in the song as a young guitarist who makes a little money giving lessons, Chapin meets a married woman who’s looking for more than how to play romantic ballads.

His most famous song, “Taxi,” also has autobiographical roots. Before his success, Harry made ends meet by driving a cab. Around the time he was scrapping together a living making fares, he got word that an old girlfriend, who’d aspired to be an actress, had cashed in her career to marry a rich man. You’d think most of us couldn’t relate to such a story, but Harry had a way of taking a unique circumstance and turning it into something we all could understand:

“You see, she was gonna be an actress
and I was gonna learn to fly
She took off to find the footlights
and I took off to find the sky…

And here she's acting happy
inside her handsome home
And me, I'm flying in my taxi
taking tips, and getting stoned…”

Helping us understand the human experience went beyond Harry’s memorable songs. After achieving success, he turned his attention to world hunger, performing hundreds of charity concerts to raise money for the cause. Then, as only Harry could do, he wrote a song about it: “The Shortest Story.” I’ve avoided giving you links to Chapin songs in this blog, worried that you might not have enough time to give them a listen. (I highly recommend it, though!) But surely you’ve got 2 minutes and 26 seconds: “The Shortest Story”

I never got to see Harry in concert, but I’ve talked with those who have. Thousands gathered to hear their favorite “author” sing his best stories. Several songs were showstoppers, including “All My Life’s a Circle,” a friendly singalong about how life keeps returning us to the places and the people we love. One of the song’s stanzas always got a big reaction from the crowd:

“It seems like I’ve been here before
though I can’t remember when
And I got the funny feeling
that we’ll all be together again…”

Audiences were confident that last line was true, but Harry’s promise was cut short in 1981, when he died in a car crash. He was 38, which makes me wonder how many stories he never got to tell. However, instead of leaving you with the loss of Harry Chapin, here’s something to gain by his inspiring philosophy of life:

“Given this short opportunity we call life, it seems to me that the only sensible way—even if you have pessimistic thoughts about the 99 percent possibility that things are going wrong—is to operate on the one percent chance that our lives mean something.”

Guys Bands, Not Boy Bands

When I was in my teens, guy bands dominated the music scene. They were nothing like the sweet-voiced, air-brushed boy bands popular today. Guys cranking out hits in the ‘60s and ‘70s were…well…more masculine. A couple of my favorites were Gary Puckett & the Union Gap, and the Grass Roots, and for a few years their songs gave young guys tips on what it meant to be a man.

Though I’m a good half-century past my teens, I’ve noticed something about the enduring connection I have to those bands. Every so often I thin out my CD collection because I have this crazy rule that I shouldn’t own more than a hundred at one time. I decide which singers or groups I don’t think I’ll listen to again, but when I come to my Grass Roots or Union Gap CDs, I can’t imagine getting rid of them. There’s something about their music that defines my coming of age.

Those bands and others were role models for lots of us. After seeing the Beatles take over the world, many young boys taught themselves a few guitar chords or how to bang a drum. I took up the piano, which turned out to be uncool for our makeshift bands, but some of the luckier kids got to play at a school dance or two. Dedicated musicians caught a break and became regionally popular, playing their state fairs or opening for a nationally known group. Those with real talent might have drawn attention from a record label looking to launch the next music idol. I imagine that’s what happened for the Grass Roots and Gary’s Union Gap.

To survive in the hit-or-miss music industry, those generic guy bands needed something unique. For Gary Puckett and his boys, their hit song titles made it clear what they were selling: “Young Girl,” “This Girl is a Woman Now,” “Woman, Woman,” Lady Willpower.” Gary’s pop-friendly voice was laced with a touch of soul and he used it to serenade young females anxious to grow up. “Lady Willpower”:

“Did no one ever tell you the facts of life
Well there's so much you have to learn
and I would gladly teach you…”

Those suggestive songs were like instruction manuals for us teens. Other than one watered down lecture in health class, they were how we learned about sex. Hyper-curious about the mating game, it wasn’t uptight science teachers who gave us what we needed; it was song lyrics.

“This girl walked in dreams
playing in a world of her own
This girl was a child
existing in a playground of stone
Then one night her world was changed
Her life and dreams were rearranged
and she would never be the same again…”

Lots of girls took those words to heart, slow dancing to them, melting in their boyfriend’s arms. Though my interest in sex was different than most guys, from my perch on a bench along the gymnasium walls I could feel the seductive energy generated by Gary’s voice.

I was more inclined to hit the dance floor when the deejay switched to the Grass Roots, who offered a whole different message. With songs like “Temptation Eyes,” “Midnight Confessions,” and “Sooner or Later,” the Grass Roots led the pack of guy bands who specialized in high-octane tunes. If you’re not familiar with the Grass Roots, here’s a sample: “Sooner or Later”

There were eight or ten Grass Roots hits just like that one, and all of them had a single purpose: to work up a guy’s fever. Couples were dancing to those songs, too, but so were us solo boys, who used the gym floor as a launching pad, reaching for the ceiling. Reaching for something yet to be discovered.

Unlike the Union Gap’s sentimental lyrics, Grass Roots songs concentrated on the hard work of winning a girlfriend:

“All of the lonely nights, waiting for you to come, longing to hold you tight

But I’d wait a million years, walk a million miles, cry a million tears

I’d swim the deepest sea, just to have you near me…”

Add blaring horns, a pulsating organ and a driving drumbeat, and song after Grass Roots song ignited the testosterone in pubescent boys. Each one would build in intensity and then, finally, with the chorus—which was often just the song title screamed over and over—the tension was released. After achieving what sounded like a musical orgasm to me, the only place for the song to go was the next stanza, where it again built to the chorus.

Deejays who knew their business strung several high intensity songs together, working guys into a frenzy. When the time was right, they’d slip on a slow song and sweaty teens fell into each other’s embrace. Who knows how many babies were conceived after listening to the convincing messages of guy bands.

Somehow, in my own awkward way, I absorbed those powerful songs. They helped me understand who I was. Most days, I don’t think about them much, but every once in a while I need to hear a contemplative Gary Puckett ballad or a Grass Roots rocker. Without fail, they reconnect me to the invincible feelings of my youth. That’s reason enough to hold on to my guy band CDs.

"To The Morning" Dan Fogelberg

When I started this music blog, a year ago, I planned to make “To the Morning” my initial entry. It made sense to launch a blog that honors pop songs with the first one to effectively change my life. But my “To the Morning” story is complicated; it jumps back and forth over 42 years and its influence on me can’t be described as a single lesson. It’s taken me a year to figure out the best way to tell this story, which begins a few years ago, when I was on a journey 2,000 miles from home…

It’s a beautiful morning in Ouray, Colorado, late September 2016. I’m on a three-week retreat in a secluded cabin, finishing a book manuscript. Before each day of writing, I start with a morning walk, taking in the majestic mountains surrounding Ouray. Once the sun makes it way over their Alp-like peaks, it washes the town in golden brilliance. The view is breathtaking; the sort of beauty that makes me want to sing, and for some reason, “To the Morning” comes to mind. Because I haven’t thought of the song in years, I really have to dig to remember its lyrics, until finally, the chorus comes back:

“And it's going to be a day
there is really no way to say no
to the morning

Yes, it's going to be a day
there is really nothing left to say but

come on morning…”

Softly singing as my walk weaves along a mountain stream, I begin to cry. Now, crying isn’t something I easily do—I can’t remember another time when a beautiful landscape has moved me to tears. What’s going on? I wonder. Why do a few lines from a remembered song trigger such strong emotion? Kicking up gravel on the trail, I search for an answer. There’s no hurry; my writing back at the cabin can wait. When something happens as important as a song moving me to tears, I’ve learned to pay attention. I keep walking and let “To the Morning” take me back to the first time I heard it…

It was in Music Appreciation class, freshman year of college, 1974. I’d randomly chosen the class because it had the word music in its title. I had no clue how to choose appropriate classes for my as-yet-undetermined major—hell, I didn’t have a clue who I was. Eighteen years old, my life seemed like an endless series of wrong turns. I was only certain that I couldn’t get enough of music and was curious what a class in appreciation of it would be like.

The class didn’t disappoint me. We were expected, as a final project, to research some form of music that we deemed important. I opted to write an in-depth review of the latest Carole King album. Not very innovative, I know, but someone else in the class took the project to a whole new level.

Diane and I struck up a friendship from the first day of classes, largely due to our interest in the same type of music. So, I didn’t hesitate when she asked me to meet her in the library one evening for a preview of her final project.

When I arrived at the library, Diane waved me over to a study cubicle. On a table were a slide projector, record player and an album, Homefree, by someone named Dan Fogelberg. I wasn’t familiar with his unusual last name, this being just before he’d broken into fame. As I settled in a chair facing a blank wall, Diane darkened the lights and set the record player’s needle on “To the Morning.” Take a listen.

Fogelberg’s piano dreamily set the stage for what Diane had prepared. After a few seconds, she pushed a button on the projector and a photo appeared: the sun breaking over the horizon. At the same moment, Fogelberg’s voice, gentle as his piano, began singing:

“Watching the sun, watching it come,

watching it come up over the rooftops…”

Seconds later, another picture appeared: a hiker heading into the sunrise. A few seconds more, another. Diane had selected dozens of evocative photos to interpret Fogelberg’s poetry, creating, years before MTV upended how we listen to our favorite songs, a music video!

After my introduction to Fogelberg, I added Homefree to my record collection and “To the Morning” became my go-to song for those moments in life when I’m witnessing beauty. Like this day, 42 years after my first listen, tearful on a Colorado morning.

It took more than one walk to figure out the genesis of my tears. As I recalled more of the song’s lyrics, why “Morning” had deeply moved me became clear:

“And maybe there are seasons

and maybe they change

and maybe to love is not so strange.”

Feeling the warm light of an Ouray morning, age 61, that last line catapults me back to my 18-year-old self, sitting in a darkened library room, my comprehension of love also in the dark. Up to that point, everything I’d heard about love—the girl/guy hooking-up kind—I did not understand. But, as I watched the marriage of photographs and music, something stirred in me. Diane had opened a tiny window into the idea of another way to love.

As I matured, I found other examples of love. They were on a quiet path through the woods or in conversation with a friend or how words on a page can make sense of a confused life. Before I left that Ouray cabin I wrote my first observations of the powerful influence from a single song and started a list of other important music, easily coming up with a couple dozen songs that were pivotal for me. From them, this blog was born. Sharing their stories with you continues to inspire me. Thanks for joining me on this journey.

"Haven't Got Time For The Pain" Carly Simon

I can still see myself sitting in that college English class, listening to our teacher’s lecture on the book we were reading, The Scarlett Letter. He was asking us to imagine the suffering of the story’s protagonist, Hester, who was publicly humiliated for bearing a child out of wedlock. “What must that have been like for this woman?” the professor asked. Then, perhaps trying to appeal to his young audience, he added, “Poor Hester could have used the song ‘Haven’t Got Time for the Pain.’”

A few students laughed at our teacher’s joke, but my reaction was one of admiration. Someone with a PhD was acknowledging the value of Top 40 music, comparing a Carly Simon song to a critically-acclaimed novel! I’m sure our teacher didn’t give his reference to “Haven’t Got Time for the Pain” a second thought, but it’s stayed with me all these years, long after I’d sat in his classroom, silently holding in my pain.

I owned a few Carly Simon albums back in 1974, when “Haven’t Got Time” was a hit. I thought of Simon as a good singer with a talent for writing catchy choruses, like the ones in“You’re So Vain” and “Anticipation.” (That last one’s chorus was so infectious it was used in a TV commercial.) Carly often co-wrote songs with Jacob Brackman and while it isn’t clear which of them came up with the lyrics for “Haven’t Got Time,” the song seems to reflect her life in the early ‘70s: newly married to James Taylor, expecting their first child. You can hear the relief in her voice; a troubled, but finally contented, young woman: “Haven’t Got Time For The Pain”

“All those crazy nights when I cried myself to sleep
Now melodrama never makes me weep anymore…”

Freshman year of college was supposed to be my big break from small town drama. An hour and a half from home, I was hoping to take my true self out of hiding. Turns out I was nowhere near ready to be who I am and reading about Hester’s public shaming didn’t help my self-confidence. But secretly I was contemplating how to finally be free and “Haven’t Got Time” sounded like good advice. Again, it was Simon’s chorus, where she lists the reasons for letting go of her hurt, that makes the song memorable:

“No, I haven't got time for the pain
I haven't got room for the pain
I haven't the need for the pain…”

Letting go of pain was a new concept for me. Before hearing Carly’s declaration of freedom from it, I’d never considered being free of pain an option. As a child, I figured out how life works by watching grownups around me bearing their pain, as if it were an expectation: If I wanted to be an adult, I’d need to learn how to carry the weight of my pain.

“Suffering was the only thing that made me feel I was alive
That's just how much it cost to survive in this world…”

I never told anyone what “Haven’t Got Time” awakened in me while I was in college. Most of my friends were caught up in a different kind of drama, making valiant attempts to hook up. None of them were talking about pain, least of all how to let go of it. But when I was alone, maybe on a weekend drive back to the hometown I was trying to grow away from, I’d listen to Carly’s song. With car windows shut tight, I’d sing it loud, feeling the exhilaration of telling pain to take a hike.

Those top-of-my-lungs renditions actually made a difference. Like so many pop songs have done, “Pain” offered me a new idea: self-care. Music had already taught me how to be a good friend; songs like “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Lean on Me” took care of that. But taking care of myself—self-care—was brand new territory.

“You showed me how, how to leave myself behind
How to turn down the noise in my mind…”

I’m pretty sure the “you” that Carly refers to in “Pain” is a reference to her sparkly-new relationship with James Taylor. But with pop music’s version of falling in love looking unlikely for me, I started thinking of the song’s “you” as someone I could trust to talk with about my pain. A wise older friend. A counselor. A therapist.

I took my first venture into therapy after graduating college and landing a teaching job in Pennsylvania. But being even farther from home couldn’t shake my true feelings loose. I never told that therapist what was really eating away at me. That wouldn’t come until I’d been through my second, third and fourth counselor. But in between those attempts to reveal the source of my pain, I’d keep hearing “Haven’t Got Time,” analyzing a phrase here or there that made sense:

“Til you showed me how, how to fill my heart with love…”

That’s really all it would take, one therapist suggested. Fill your heart with love. To make room for it, let go of some pain.

There are lots of people I can thank for my full heart today. Along with family and friends, there’s Carly Simon, who thought to write a song about the joy of releasing pain. There’s my college professor, who raised that song to literary heights. There’s each therapist, whose careful listening brought me one step closer. And there’s me, who never gave up on a good song’s advice.

"Both Sides Now" Joni Mitchell

Although these days I primarily write non-fiction essays or books, in my heart I’m a poet. For reasons I’ve never fully understood, when something personal needs to be expressed, it comes out as a poem. It certainly wasn’t high school English class that inspired my lyrical writing; I found classic poetry as difficult to comprehend as a foreign language. Instead, I discovered my muse after the school day, homework unfinished on my bedroom desk, while I listened to the real poets: pop singers offering their verses from radio airwaves or my hi-fi.

I had no trouble relating to the singer-songwriters of my teen years. Neils Diamond and Young, Paul Simon, with or without Garfunkel, Jackson Browne, Cat Stevens and others, stirred emotions in me that my English teachers hoped I’d feel from their elusive poets.  If those teachers could have observed me studying my favorite lyrics I might have at least earned a little extra credit. One song in particular would have landed me an A.

Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now was the first song I heard as a poem. Though I didn’t know it at the time, Joni used a poetic technique known as metaphor to tell her Both Sides story. Metaphors are words or phrases that compare two things not normally thought of as relatable, and within the opening stanza of her song, Joni accomplishes this three times:

“Rows and flows of angel hair
and ice cream castles in the air
and feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way…”

Who among us hasn’t looked at the white shifting shapes above and seen something more than condensed water vapor? Now that was a poetic image I could comprehend. 

Throughout Both Sides Now, Joni relies on metaphor, expressing love as “moons and Junes and Ferris wheels and the dizzy dancing way you feel,” then imagines “dreams and schemes and circus crowds” as life. By building her song with those unique images, Mitchell does what the best writers always manage to do: they let us see the world in new ways.

Inspired by her uncommon vision, I started writing my own observations of the world. Ideas for poems started coming fast and furious, sometimes two or three a day. I stopped seeing significant events as if they were only newspaper headlines. Things didn’t seem black or white anymore, nor did I feel compelled to label them good or evil. Instead, I chose to think of them metaphorically, comparing my latest inner conflict with the signs of struggle found on a nature trail, or using observations of the birds at my feeder to describe acts of human kindness. It was a refreshing outlook and I had Joni Mitchell to thank. But there was more she would teach me.

About fifteen years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Mitchell’s latest CD, a retrospective of her long career. As you’d expect, Joni included Both Sides Now, but along with her original version she also offered an updated rendition. What I heard shocked me.

I hadn’t been following Mitchell’s career for a couple decades, but even though I expected her voice would have matured with age, it sure sounded like something beyond growing old had affected Joni’s. Her vocal range was dramatically lower. Aware that she’d been a lifelong smoker, I assumed this radical shift could be traced to too many cigarettes. Joni, however, claims the change is an unfortunate combination of vocal nodules, a compressed larynx and the lingering effects of polio, which she’d contracted as a young girl. Whatever the reason, Mitchell had slid from her famous soprano to a female tenor. Take a listen to her two versions of Both Sides Now back to back:

Both Sides Now 1969

Both Sides Now 2003

Once I got over the shock of her huskier voice, I began to appreciate Joni’s revamped Both Sides Now.  The song’s lush orchestration and slower interpretation made the song more believable. I’d always had trouble trusting that as a young adult—Joni was 24 when she composed Both Sides Now —she could have written such a wise perspective. How could a 24-year-old write about looking at life and love from two points of view? Hadn’t young Joni only lived one?

Here’s where Mitchell offered me a second poetry lesson. The new Both Sides Now was also more believable because I was entering the period of life kindly referred to as later-middle age. I was already composing poems that examined what I’d learned and lost, using handy metaphors like meandering creeks and insurmountable mountains. Once I heard Joni’s mature voice convincingly comparing two sides of life, I began to see her as an inspirational metaphor.

Throughout Joni’s career, rather than remaining typecast as a ‘60s folksinger, she ventured off to explore jazz, bebop and, with her reinterpreted Both Sides Now, symphonic music. I thought of her career choices as proof that we are not defined by our accomplishments, nor are we a reflection of our bank accounts or relationship status. By living like her best years are not behind her, Joni suggests a new way to ponder the end of my life.

As I move toward that end, I keep all my Joni Mitchell CDs close at hand. Some days I need the wisdom of her young voice; other times it’s her graceful dance with aging that ignites my imagination. Either way, Joni Mitchell never fails to send me to pen and paper, where I continue to write my version of a life lived from both sides.