BaristaBabe's Contribution to The Singles Project

The first two were obvious, especially since I wanted to add them to my 25 album list somehow. I don't have really clear reasons for loving them, but I remember when I first discovered them both. I was 16 and a high school band played both at the talent show. Cheesy, I know. But the lead singer - who, poor guy, suffered me as a date to one of my proms (and I mean "suffer" in a very real sense, I was a god-awful date) - sang both of these amazingly. The two songs have been favorites of mine every since.

1. Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen
If possible, I play this song during every road trip (not that I take a ton of them). Growing up, leaving youth behind, uncertainty about the future, maybe a bit of regret about the past. All of that, and yet this song somehow lifts my spirits as well.
You can hide 'neath your covers and study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain for a saviour to rise from these streets
Well now I'm no hero, that's understood
All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey what else can we do now
Except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair
Well the night's bustin' open, these two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back, heaven's waiting down on the tracks




2. Angie - The Rolling Stones
No real explanation for this, but I love it. Love it, love it, love it. Maybe it was the opening few lyrics that caught me when I first heard it - right place, right time.
Angie, Angie
When will those clouds all disappear?



3. Elsewhere - Sarah McLachlan
I absolutely had to have a Sarah McLachlan song on here. Oddly enough, I haven't listened to her in ages. But Elsewhere immediately came to mind. If I were to dig up (and they exist somewhere, in storage) my high school notebooks, the lyrics to this song would be found written all over the margins and dividers. Well, any of those from 10th and 11th grade, I suspect. (Along with several other Sarah songs from Fumbling Towards Ecstasy - it was difficult to choose between Elsewhere, Mary, and Hold On.) I heard how I was feeling in this song. (In the entire album, really.) To say I was embracing my depression isn't exactly correct, but I was letting it consume me. I was owning it. I had become . . . comfortable in it, at least in the sense that it had become familiar, what I knew.
I believe
This is heaven to no one else but me
And I'll defend it as long as I can be
Left here to linger in silence
If I choose to
Would you try to understand?



4. 10,000 Days (wings pt. 2) - Tool
By far the most emotional song Maynard has ever written or sang. And you can hear it in his voice when he sings it live. The song gives me goosebumps and, particularly when live, makes me tear up. Especially around here:
You're the only one who can hold your head up high,
Shake your fists at the gates saying:
"I've come home now!
Fetch me the spirit, the son, and the father.
Tell them their pillar of faith has ascended.
It's time now!
My time now!
Give me my, give me my wings!"



5. Swan Dive - Ani Difranco
The album Little Plastic Castles was the first full Ani album I fell madly in love with. This quickly became my favorite song. It was one of those songs when - if I heard it live - I became happy. It's the sort of song I want to sing along to at the top of my lungs. I think, at least in part, I always wished I could embrace, adopt, become the attitude of the song. Courage, confidence, abandon . . . in life, love . . .
'cuz I don't care if they eat me alive
I've got better things to do than survive
I've got a memory of your warm skin in my hand
and I've got a vision of blue sky and dry land



Runners up: Dirty Diana - Michael Jackson (because it's simply an awesome rock & roll song, go for it and giggle at me); Peaceful, Easy Feeling - The Eagles (it makes me want to sing and dance around my apartment, given my usual demeanor this is something to be embraced); Hotel California - The Eagles (it's really all about the opening guitar solo