Open Hands are Hard To Hold

30 Song Post #16 A Song I Used to Love but Now Hate: "At Last" by Etta James

come on. This is the love song to end all love songs. I have always been drawn to the classics, because back in the day, when they wrote a song it was because they had something to SAY! There aren't a ton of words, but damn it if she didn't sing the hell out of this song. It's been done well, it's been done mediocre, and it's been massacred. But IT. HAS.BEEN. DONE.

Growing up, I couldn't get enough of this song. It reminded me that the one for me was coming, and it would be worth the wait. It told me that it would be like nothing I had ever had before or that I would have again. When I found the one, I would know it!


"At last 
My love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song
At last
The skies above are blue
My heart was wrapped up in clover
The night I looked at you
I found a dream, that I could speak to
A dream that I can call my own
I found a thrill to press my cheek to
A thrill that I have never known
You smiled, you smiled
Oh and then the spell was cast
And here we are in heaven
for you are mine...
At Last"


And that's why I hate it now. I had it set aside. I am a planner, you see. I always knew what I would name my daughter, and I did!  I always knew what my first house would look like (white house, black shutters, red door), and I always knew what my wedding song would be. I got 2 out of 3 of those things.

I fell in love, he proposed, we had a child, and he was all for using "At Last". I had the wedding planned all the way down to a deposit on the venue (a castle, mind you) bought the dress, deposits at the caterers. And then one day, he "doesn't want to be a husband or a father".

Now every time that I hear that song, the joy is missing. It has become a funeral song for me. Of course, this was all years ago, I am married to a different man, and of course we have a completely different song. But unless you live under a rock, there is no getting away from this damned Etta James song. Every wedding, commercials, tv shows, the Presidential Inauguration! They all have used this song. When I hear it, I no longer hear the promise of an amazing love story, but I hear a soft-hearted woman that fooled herself into thinking that just because I meant every word that I said, that maybe he did too. What a shame.

She Cries Your Name

30 Song Post #15 A song that describes you: "the Nicest Thing" by Kate Nash

"All I know is that you're so nice
You're the nicest thing I've seen
I wish that we could give it a go
See if we could be something

I wish I was your favorite girl
I wish you thought I was the reason you are in the world
I wish my smile was your favorite kind of smile
I wish the way that I dressed was your favorite kind of style

I wish you couldn't figure me out
But you always wanna know what I was about
I wish you'd hold my hand
When I was upset
I wish you'd never forget
The look on my face when we first met

I wish you had a favorite beauty spot
That you loved secretly
Cause it was on a hidden bit
That nobody else could see
Basically, I wish that you loved me
I wish that you needed me
I wish that you knew when I said two sugars,
Actually I meant three

I wish that without me your heart would break
I wish that without me you'd be spending the rest of your nights awake
I wish that without me you couldn't eat
I wish I was the last thing on your mind before you went to sleep

Look, all I know is that you're the nicest thing I've ever seen
And I wish that we could see if we could be something
Yeah I wish that we could see if we could be something"

Single Ladies

30 Song Post # 14:  A song that no one would expect me to love: It Kills Me by Melanie Fiona

I don't do a whole lot of R&B, unless it's old school, but I can't lie, I LOVE this kind of song, and this one in particular is EVERYTHING. I know, I know, but if you listen hard enough, she'll say some things (in the words of Young Jeezy).

Oh yeah I've got trouble with my friends
Trouble in my life
Problems when you don’t come home at night
But when you do you always start a fight
But I cant be alone, I need you to come on home
I know you messing around...
...Ive gotta be out my mind
To think its gonna work this time
A part of me wants to leave but the other half still believes
And it kills me to know how much I really love you...


I am here to tell you , men complain about crazy women, but alot of them were sane and fine before someone that she gave her heart to played with it until she got this way. And the opposite is true, most of those men are messed up from being mistreated. Vicious cycle. Every.Single. Woman. has been crazy over some man, we just don't always admit it.

I am a proud woman, but I have been dragged through some MESS, okay? and it pushed me to the point where I felt like I couldn't admit defeat bc of all that I had fought for, which is crazy.

I think I like this song bc it's just so real. I know a million women that could sing this like an anthem, and that's a shame, but it's legitimate. When she says "so much I wanna Ooh ooh oooooooh", I get ALL of the feels. The frustration, the internal battle, it's palpable. "Should I be a lady?"

It's a decision every day to be a lady. There is not one woman that doesn't have it in them to be psychotic over her man, but we can choose to go the other way, even when we know that letting the beast loose would feel better. If we hold it in, we come out on top, but we pay a hefty price. When my hubby hears this one come on, he knows that it is time to smooth some stuff OUT! lol




You can enjoy it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8yZedKTXJ0

I Told You So

30 Song Challenge Post #13: A Guilty Pleasure Song: "I Know You Won't" by Carrie Underwood

Sigh. Okay, now let me qualify this answer just a little bit. I have gone back and listened to the album version of this song, and I am pretty bored. this is a perfect example of when live music MURDERS the recorded version.

When I first heard this song, it was when she performed it live at an awards show. Queen Latifah  introduced her, and I left it on as I was busy with something else. The lyrics are pretty bleak, all about a man that she tries to understand and wants to believe in, but she has finally gotten to the point that she knows without a doubt that she just can't believe a word that he says. How very typically country, but for some reason, this damned song has never left my brain.

When I fight with my husband, I sing this in my shower and it is so cathartic. Carrie is very quiet in the verses of this song, but the chorus is booming, soaring, beautifully declarative.

You say you'll call, but I know you
and you say you're comin' home, 
But I know you
You say you'll call, 
But I know you won't..."

and that is where she sold me. She just HOLDS it in such earnest.. I know you wont.....

How many times have we talked ourselves into something that we knew not to be true simply because we couldn't bear to look at what truth lied beneath all of the hope and compromise?
When you have a bad egg, you KNOW it, but by the time you know it, you are usually already in love and therefore locked in. I keep saying it, but it has never stopped being true: I will always respond greatest to a writer that can just say it. When she slips from her pretty serenade into the last leg of the song and lets that grit into her voice, you can feel that this is not a song written to fill album space (which is how the recording comes off)but that this is about a very specific somebody. there is a loss in that voice, a sound that says I am not quite over it. Unfinished. And frankly, maybe that's because she didnt write it ( written by Wendell Mobley, Neil Thrasher, McEwan), but she certainly sang it like she did!


I'm telling you, by the time it hits 3:56, it is full on GREAT!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5gwoFgOt9o

I'm Not the Only One

30 post song challenge #12: A song from a band that you hate: "Savin Me" by Nickelback

It is not so much that I HATE the band, they are just not really my deal. It's a little generic, a little bland, and super predictable. But then, like most things, if you listen hard enough in between all of the throwaways there are some very interesting lines. i like this song in particular because the lead in and fade out guitar riffs are slightly haunting. I am very much into anything that can give me the feels, anything that takes me to a place in my heart that I have been and cannot (will not) easily access.

This song could have been just another tosser if not for the line in the chorus:

"say it for me
Say it to me
And I'll leave this life behind me
Say it if it's worth saving me.."

I couldn't get that phrasing out of my head. He didn't just want her to say it FOR him, but to say it TO him. Looking back, I have given heart to people that said all of these wonderful things about me, and couldn't bring themselves to say it TO me, to declare it, to make it legit. Dancing around the hard topics can be enticing, the anticipation building until you reach a frenzy. It's the courtship of it all. but at some point, you have to put up or shut up. If you want me, if you want my heart, you have to have the courage to step over that line. SAY IT if it is worth saving me!

And from another angle...  I have a very good friend that is in quite the rough spot. I, along with the rest of his friends and family, are watching him drown. He is floundering, and not winning this fight. I get why he stays. He doesn't want to break his vows, he doesn't want his child coming from a broken home, and he lacks the confidence to turn his world upside down. People around him have hinted at wanting to help, but sometimes you have to SPEAK UP and say the hard things. SAY IT if it's worth saving him. I think of him every time I come across this song... Our friendship is in a treacherous position, as she knows that I won't stand idly by, and that threatens her very position. But I refuse to go to the funeral of a friend when I have things that have been left unsaid out of courtesy..

I will say it, because it's worth saving him.