Yesterday was a great day, so it was fun trying to pick a song even if I’m not a love song person (I really wanted to use “Big Gay Heart” by the The Lemonheads, but I thought better of that). But today I could pick dozens of songs, because I am a breakup/sad/unrequited love/lover-done-wrong song person.

Here’s two of the best. “Samson” by Regina Spektor takes the wind out of me a little and “Bruised” by The Bens makes mad and sad. These are examples of the best way to write songs. Narratives and feelings.

This one is a little hard because I’m not a love song type of person. There’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” by Paul McCartney, but that’s probably my big one.

A better one is “Giving Up” by Ingrid Michaelson because it’s more where I am in life. I’ve been married to my husband for 22 years. There have been rough times and hard times. There has been sickness and health. There has been rich (okay, let’s not get carried away. There has been comfortable) and poor. But it has been love.

Here are the lyrics to “Giving Up” with the video. Enjoy.

There was no question in my mind that I’d pick Nick Drake for this one. He was ahead of his time with his indie music and it was beautiful.

This is “Northern Sky.”

For this one I stayed away from the obvious, The Beatles and R.E.M. Nope, I picked a big one, but not one you’d jump to. The Go-Gos’s are not give their due in music history. They were an all-girl band not a group, but a band, who wrote and played their own songs. They were not formed by some record label like a lot of girl groups are. They started as a punk band, but their hits are pure power pop. They disbanded and reconvened over the years, did a farewell tour in 2016, but hadn’t had any new music since 2001′ Go Bless the Go-Go’s.

Here’s my favorite, “Head Over Heels.”

There are a lot of songs I believe everyone should hear, but the main one is R.E.M.’s “Find the River.”

Firstly, there are 100 days left in 2019. Wow.

Come on a journey with me. I couldn’t think of a song for today until ten minutes ago and it was there all the while. I’ve loved this song forever. I fell in love with it in 1987 when I saw The Prince’s Trust Gala on HBO (which I taped and watched 100 times). The Prince’s Trust was a rock show with lots of big name musicians on the same stage.

I was already a huge Beatles fan, so when Elton John introduced George Harrison and Ringo Starr, I sat up straight on the couch, eyes and ears wide open. On stage with Sir Elton, Ringo, Jeff Lynne, and Phil Collins (ugh, why?), George started “Here Comes the Sun.”

Here is that very performance.

I went back and forth a million times in this one because Ben Folds has at least a dozen songs with names in the titles. “Zak and Sara” is a big favorite and I can’t get through “Annie Waits” much anymore can’t it makes me emotional. “Carrying Cathy” — can’t do that one right now.

So, I went back to my ultimate favorite band, The Beatles. “Dear Prudence” has always been a favorite. Especially after hearing the story behind it. Prudence was MIA Farrow’s sister. They were all in India learning Transcendental Meditation with the Maraharishi Mahesh Yogi and stuff got druggy and wacky.

This is what John Lennon said about it:

“A song about Mia Farrow’s sister, who seemed to go slightly barmy, meditating too long, and couldn’t come out of the little hut that we were livin’ in. They selected me and George to try and bring her out because she would trust us. If she’d been in the West, they would have put her away … She’d been locked in for three weeks and was trying to reach God quicker than anybody else. That was the competition in Maharishi’s camp: who was going to get cosmic first. What I didn’t know was I was already cosmic.”

Yeah, that’s crazy. It was later found out that the Maharishi was in it all for the Benjamins.

Enjoy “Dear Prudence.” It really is a beautiful song (and you’d never guess what it was about had you not read all of the above trivia). And do check out the Siouxsie and the Banshees version. It’s an 80s new wave take on it with a female singer, so it’s interesting. Here’s the original:

This song hit me when it came out. I cried. I had a lot of emotion about it for what it represents to me: former home, former town, former people

Here is “House” by Ben Folds.

I first heard this song in the opening of Big Little Lies and became a little obsessed with it. It says so much and it’s just so good. It’s one I hit “repeat” on when it comes up on my ipod.

“Cold Little Heart” by Michael Kiwanuka

I’m not a big fan of ’70s music because it’s not great in general, but I do love Elton John and I do love “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me.”

So, technically the song was released in 1974, but y’all know I can to better than that. Here’s the duet between Elton and George Michael.