[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 20: A Song I Listen To When I’m Angry

Whoops! Sorry — I’m a day late!

When I’m really angry, music doesn’t help. It’s too all-consuming for me; I’ve got some anger issues that a lot of therapy and some happy pills have done a good job on, and I mostly keep that eye-blurring rage from happening. When I’m more mildly angry, however, when I’ve got my righteous rage on, I’m pretty aware of how I feel, and I will even get a little self-referential. And I’ll play something like “You Oughta Know,” which is the best angry, lover-spurned, fuck you song ever. When it first started getting airplay in the summer of 1995, people in Boston would request it as “the angry girl song.” It’s so awesome to sing along to, especially if you have an axe to grind. I could have used it as Day 8 as well, since I know all of the words to it.

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[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 19: A Song From My Favorite Album

Is there a better album that Prince’s Purple Rain? The answer is “maybe, but probably not.” But whether or not it’s perfect or near-perfect or as perfect as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or OK Computer, it’s my favorite album. I think it came out at the right moment in my childhood to be embedded into my cognitive schemata for life. It rocks, it’s danceable, it’s dirty, it’s sublime. Every song is great, even the throwaway ones, like “Darling Nikki,” which is used in the movie Purple Rain as a sign that out hero is losing it. It’s also the first time that I noticed that my parents weren’t censorious. They had no issue with the word “masturbating.” Ha.

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[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 18: A Song I Wish I Heard On The Radio

When I saw Day 18, I immediately thought of “OFD (Originally From Dorchester)” by Bryan McPherson. My brother produced the album the song is on, Fourteen Stories, and when I heard “OFD” for the first time, I couldn’t resist jumping up and down and pumping my fist. The whole album is most excellent, a legacy of Bob Dylan and REM, and it’s a crime that it’s not heard by more people. You can listen to it in its entirety here, and also buy it via the handy links. “OFD” is track 11 if you want to scroll there now.

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[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 17: A Song I Hear Often On The Radio

In the continuing theme of the ridiculous and sublime, I am choosing two songs for this category. I live in Southern California, so I by culture and necessity, I drive a lot. I prefer listening to the radio when I drive over listening to my iPod, so I hear a lot of stuff on basically two formats, Modern Rock and Pop. The pop station I listen to is one of the cookie cutter Clear Channel stations that plays the same songs over and over again, with the top 10 Billboard songs getting even more play, which means if a song is #1, it’s on all of the time. So, this past month, it’s been all about Katy Perry’s “ET” and Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” which have both been #1. And since I also listen to two supposedly alternative rock stations, too, I hear Adele’s song even more. “ET” is absurd; it’s about hot sex, alien-style. It’s catchy and very, very stupid. “Rolling in the Deep” is brilliant — a moving, danceable, perfectly produced and hauntingly sung. But I turn it off whenever I hear the first few notes because I don’t want it to go the way of “Fuck You.”

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[30 Day Song Challenge] Day 16: A Song I Used To Love But Now Hate

Ack. Now I’m a whole day off!

Anyway.

I gave a Golden Teddy Award to Cee Lo’s “Fuck You” because it was a gleeful,, snappy, crazily catchy old school — as in 60s old school — pop song. But then everyone else agreed. But the ridiculousness of the FCC prevents the word “fuck” from airing on the radio, and Cee Lo saw $$$!, so he re-recorded the song as “Forget You.” The song lost all of its bite and became ubiquitous. I found it so annoying that I began to loathe even the original version. I’ll turn off whatever sound blasting device if I hear the opening notes.

Here are the videos for the two versions.

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