Ain’t never in a hurry…

If it gives you any indication of how well my brain is not functioning…

Time stamps tell me I created this draft July 12, 2025.

Only took a full year.

There are also, for some reason, more than 200 revisions. (Can’t leave well enough alone.)

It’s not the most revisions a post has ever had. That…honor? embarrassment?…still goes to the three-thousand-some-odd-word…review? word salad?…I did for Panic’s final album. (Which has gone up since it was first posted. Because why not?)

So. Yeah.

Right then.

I miss the old days of blogging (livejournaling?), before MEMEs were just low-quality jpegs of unfunny jokes. Instead they were surveys like The Friday Five or 20 Questions or A to Z or any number of questions that were All About ME.

Hence MeMe.

Thirty Day Song Challenge…

I’ve done the whole 30 posts in 30 days thing before. Twice.

It was excessive. We don’t need to do that again.

This is just a list of thirty songs. Or thirty-one.

I’ve seen a few different versions of the list make the rounds, so I Frankenstein-ed my own, picking and choosing which prompts I liked (cutting out the ones geared toward middle-schoolers), and one version had a thirty-first prompt, so I stole the idea.

I could have renamed it to the Thirty-One Day Song Challenge, but bonuses are more fun.

Or something.

1.) A song you like with a color in the title.

Your Every Color by Train

Why pick one color when you can have them all? Train is still one of my very favorite bands of all time, even if their albums have fallen a little flat for me since Jimmy Stafford left, leaving Pat Monahan as the last original member. Pat could still sing the phone book, and I’d listen the shit out of it though.

Honorable mention: Electric Blue by The Killers, originally by Icehouse. Also Green Light by Nine Days.

2.) A song you like with a number in the title.

Roll On 18 Wheeler by Alabama

Listen. This song could be the story of my family and I have loved it since I was very young.

Honorable mention: 32 Flavors by Ani DiFranco because the line I am 32 flavors and then some will randomly pop into my head at strange times. Though after listening to both I think the Alana Davis version might be the one that’s lodged in my memory after all these years.

3.) A song connected to an inside joke.

Star Boy by Panic! At the Disco

The original is by The Weeknd and I had never heard it before, and then one day Youtube was all, wanna watch Panic! cover this? And shut-up, Youtube, you don’t know me, but yes. Every time.

It’s the source of an inside joke pretty much just with myself, but an inside joke nonetheless, and it has given me literal DAYS of shameless amusement, especially in the insomnia hours.

4.) A song that reminds you of someone you’d rather forget.

Read My Eyes by Joey Lawrence

It’s not so much that I’d rather forget him, but this song had such a heavy association with him back in the day and it still strikes me decades later. I have mixed feelings about it all.

You don’t know
I guess you’ll never know
What I feel for you but never show

He never really did know and he never will considering it’s been over ten years since he died.

Time is weird.

Also, remember when sixteen-year-old Joey Lawrence had a music career?

5.) A song that needs to be played loud.

Why Can’t This Be Love by Van Halen

I have memories of Mike blasting Van Halen’s 5150 album and that opening…vibration…of this song rumbling through the house from the basement. My siblings had a hefty influence on the music of my youth.

6.) A song that makes you want to dance.

Safe and Sound by Capital Cities

I have no real emotional connection to this song, but not so long ago Youtube was like, remember this one? And I remembered it was a good dance track.

7.) A song to drive to.

Closing Time by Semisonic

Well there’s an obvious answer if ever there was one. The Car Anthem of 1998, hearing this song every single morning on the way to school for months during senior year.

Also, my midlife crisis started the first time I heard this song on the oldies station, sitting in an Arby’s on a lunch date with Bob. Thanks a lot, Lee Valsvick.

8.) A song about drugs or alcohol.

20 Dollar Nosebleed by Fall Out Boy (featuring Brendon Urie)

Poppy showtune about amphetamines. Because Fall Out Boy. Or Pete Wentz more specifically, I suppose. (I could do without Pete’s screaming at the end though.)

The first time I heard this song, I didn’t even realize it was two different people singing until about halfway through the song. Granted that was in the early days of obsession and my brain would probably not make that same mistake now after seven years and tens of thousands (literally) of collective plays of both bands.

9.) A song that makes you happy.

Anyway by O.A.R.

Something always comes from the music anyway
Came into my life ripped my blues away
Oh that stereo is my best friend every day
Something always comes from the music anyway

It’s also very fun to hear live. But every O.A.R. song is magic to hear live.

10.) A song that makes you sad.

Forever and Always by Parachute

The first time I heard this song I WAS NOT PREPARED to find myself weeping halfway through.

Honorable mention: Gravity, Breathe Again, and Poetry by Dead Men by Sara Bareilles as they have developed a heavy association with story characters who won’t leave my brain despite not writing anything for months.

11.) A song you never get tired of.

Collar Full by Panic! At the Disco

Listen. I have inarticulate, irrationally intense feelings about this song and the fact that it sounds like it’s from the soundtrack to a John Hughes Brat Pack movie is only the beginning.

Also, LIVE.

12.) A song from your pre-teen years.

That’s What Love Can Do by Boy Krazy

This song has some extremely potent nostalgia feelings attached to it that catch me off guard every time I hear it. I remember Boy Krazy performing this on the Mickey Mouse Club and hearing it on the radio all the time. 90’s pop music was an entirely different plane of existence from the stuff of later decades. (Decades. Plural. Am old.)

Honorable mention: Too Many Walls by Cathy Dennis and Every Heartbeat by Amy Grant for equally strong nostalgia feelings.

13.) A song you like from the 70s.

Living Next Door to Alice by Smokie

Joe had a compilation album (vinyl, of course) called Solid Gold Hits or somesuch. I listened to it on repeat constantly and this was one of the songs I always went back to. I swear I have a picture of the track list somewhere, but I’ll be damned if I can find it in the black hole that is my hard drive.

Also, unrequited love between friends is kind of my writing M.O.

14.) A song you like from the 80s.

That’s All by Genesis

This is another song that has strong nostalgia attached to it that I can’t quite explain.

Also, I have an inexplicably desperate need to hear O.A.R. cover this, but I’m pretty sure hearing Marc Roberge sing it would short circuit my brain from the ASMR of it all.

Honorable mention: Break My Stride by Matthew Wilder with more inexplicably powerful nostalgia.

15.) A song you’d love to be played at your wedding.

The Way I Am by Ingrid Michaelson

‘Cause I love you more than I could ever promise
And you take me the way I am

If we had had a traditional wedding reception with a dance, I like to think this would have been our first dance song. Clocking in under three minutes would have helped too, as we are very much not dancers nor do we like to be the center of attention at all. Hence the eight total people at our actual wedding ceremony and a backyard picnic for the reception.

Honorable mention: Falling in Love in a Coffee Shop by Landon Pigg. For obvious reasons.

16.) A song you like that’s a cover by another artist.

Million Miles Away by Ingram Hill

A song off their Cold in California album, originally by The Plimsouls. The original is on The Drive List. In equally shocking news, water is wet.

Honorable mention: Hum Hallelujah by Matt Nathanson, originally by Fall Out Boy. It was released on Matty Nay’s Postcards From Chicago EP, which Patrick Stump did some producing and duet-ed with him on another song from the list.

17.) A song from your favorite movie.

Don’t You Forget About Me by Simple Minds

The Breakfast Club will always be one of my very favorite movies of all time. I was far too young to be watching Brat Pack movies when they were new, but that’s neither here nor there.

Honorable mention: Feels Like Forever by Joe Cocker from The Cutting Edge. Which is also one of my all-time favorites.

18.) A song from your favorite video game.

1000 Words from Final Fantasy X-2

More like a favorite song from a video game because I wouldn’t say FFX-2 is my favorite game, but FFX and FFX-2 hold a special place because FFX was the very first game Bob and I played together. And as cheesy as FFX-2 is (and is supposed to be) this song is a good one.

Honorable Mention: Close in the Distance from Final Fantasy XIV. It’s such a good song, but the way they used it in game was such a heavy impact and it was a big contributor to why I cried through the whole sequence.

19.) A song from the year you were born.

Message in a Bottle by The Police

The Police were another band that seeped deep into my music consciousness at a very young age because of my siblings.

20.) A song that makes you think about life.

Bulletproof Picasso by Train

See: I love Train. This was the last album that still felt like a Train album.

Also, this one just feels like an anthem for life you sing at the top of your lungs.

Did you ever see the waves break
Into a million pieces
Or stay awake
With someone who was dying
You don’t need to tell me
Anything at all
I’m just glad you’re here
Glad you’re real
Are you real
—
We don’t need a reason
For anything we feel
We don’t need a reason
Picasso’s at the wheel
So roll this top down
Hell with this town
Leave our bags behind
We don’t need a reason
‘Cause I’ve got you
And you’ve got me tonight

21.) A song you like with a person’s name in the title.

Sara by Starship

Listen. No one said it couldn’t be MY name in the title. And it’s even spelled right. Most songs have the superfluous H in them.

Also, fun fact: my cousins gave me this single on a 45 back when it was new. Clearly a six-year-old could relate to the story. BUT MY NAME WAS SPELLED RIGHT. (Hearts of the World (Will Understand) was the b-side.)

22.) A song about sex.

Start a Fire by Ryan Star

Ryan Star’s 11:59 album was so damn good. I wish he was still making music.

Honorable mention: Holding Out by Andy Grammer. Because only AG could sing about loud, neighbor-distrupting sex and make it kind of adorable.

23.) A song you think everyone should listen to.

Be Easy by O.A.R.

Be easy and let it be tonight
Be lonely for the last time in your life
Be easy and let it echo through your mind
If a heart attack can’t bring you back
Then it’s a waste of time

If you learn nothing from your own experiences, what are you doing with your life?

24.) A song by a band you wish were still together.

Save it For Later by Splender

I remember Splender back when I Think God Can Explain was impossible to escape. But I did not retain anything about the members other than Waymon Boone and his bleach blonde hair. So imagine my utter shock when the bass player I had just seen with Gavin DeGraw months before (2016) posted an old picture of Splender on the Tonight Show and WHAT DO YOU MEAN JAMES CRUZ WAS IN SPLENDER. I should not have been as floored as I was (I dropped everything to go dig their albums out of my CD collection to verify in the liner notes), but that inexplicably rocketed the band into my top 10 most played artists of all time. And James is supposedly [finally] working on his own album, but the only real evidence of that was a 20-second clip of a song on an Instagram story in September 2024 and a handful of cryptic photo captions because he’s a fucking troll. What the hell, James?

~~I totally saved that video and listen to it periodically and curse James for not releasing more.~~

25.) A song you like by an artist no longer living.

Nine Times Blue by The Monkees

Okay Micky Dolenz is still alive and still trucking along, but Peter, Davy, and Mike are all gone. (And this is very much a Mike Nesmith song.) The Monkees were prominent in my formative years because of the show’s revival on Nick at Nite (oh, late night Nickelodeon, you were a gem) and MTV and VH1 every summer and I love this band so much.

26.) A song for your partner or best friend.

Sadness by Matt Nathanson

I heard this song for the first time when we saw Matty Nay play with O.A.R. back in 2018. He talked about how meeting his wife didn’t cure his depression, but she certainly gave it less space to exist in his life. Hearing him tell that story while standing next to the single greatest human to ever enter my life was a moment for the memory books.

I can feel you with me in the darkness
Reaching out a hand to pull me through
Sadness used to think that it owned me
Now sadness gotta share me with you

27.) A song that breaks your heart.

How to Save a Life by The Fray

Details are fuzzy all these years later, but I remember an interview back in the day with Issac Slade talking about this song and how it was inspired by working with troubled teens and how you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.

28.) A song by an artist whose voice you love.

Nantucket is Gone by O.A.R.

Marc Roberge could sing a legal brief and I would listen to it on repeat for days. Picking one song by this band is an impossible feat, but I love this one so much.

Also…live.

Honorable Mention: Pat Monahan, Matt Nathanson, Ryan Star, Brandon Flowers, Brendon Urie, Patrick Stump……also known as The Phone Book Album. As in—these guys could sing the phone book and I’d listen to that shit on an infinite loop.

29.) A song that reminds you of your childhood.

Come Sail Away by Styx

I don’t have a specific, singular memory tied to this song, other than loving it as a kid, and like so many others, I’m pretty sure I can blame Mike or Joe for it.

Honorable mention: Leader of the Pack by The Shangri-Las. My parents have a few vinyl compilations of songs from the 50’s and 60’s that I listened to A LOT and this song was one on repeat.

30.) A song that reminds you of yourself.

Unwell by Matchbox Twenty

This song hit me hard when it first came out, but I had no idea how much more it would mean hearing it live five years later, at a time when my life was in unprecedented upheaval. Matchbox Twenty was the first concert Bob and I went to together.

Hold on
Feeling like I’m headed for a breakdown
And I don’t know why
But I’m not crazy I’m just a little unwell
I know right now you can’t tell
But stay awhile and maybe then you’ll see
A different side of me
I’m not crazy I’m just a little impaired
I know right now you don’t care
But soon enough you’re gonna think of me
And how I used to be

31.) A song you wanted to put into the list but didn’t otherwise get to.

Star by Nine Days

I needed an official entry by Nine Days on this list. And this one has lodged in my brain since the beginning. Once upon a time during one of my many mental breakdowns over writing, this song was playing while I was in the thick of it and lyrics stood out to me.

But the heart don’t listen
To words of wisdom
I could never get myself to understand

Also…

And my head still skipping over lessons I’ve been living
I ain’t learned a single thing in all these years
And as the years roll by
Seems like I’m running out of time
But if I give up I’m afraid I’ll disappear

Because that, at its core, is how I feel about writing.