"The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing."
"The greatest tunes are played on the oldest fiddles." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Oh that Emerson...he gets me every single time. Now that I officially turned thirty as of yesterday, I'm beginning to see just how true those words are. I've been itching to get out of my 20's for at least 4 years now and 30 was a welcome anniversary of my birth for sure. There's just something so tumultuous about your 20's. You're up, you're down...you're in, you're out. You're upside down and right side up and every position emotionally and mentally in between. It's the decade of growing pains without a doubt and for me, I've always felt that the 30's will be my decade of discovery.
While most of my friends are horrified at the thought of a third decade on the planet, I intend to embrace it with every fiber of my being. I intend to laugh more, love more and live more fully than I ever have before and view the world through wiser eyes and rosier hues. Thirty isn't an age to dread by any means...it is an age to adore. And so, with a confident spirit I've exorcised all the demons of my youth and can set about on the path of discovery and let it lead wherever it may.
So for anyone else who might be approaching a milestone year in the coming months, don't sweat it...just view it as a blessing. After all, it's a far greater gift than the alternative, no? I received a lot of gifts in the past week but I got a magnet from a dear friend that I absolutely love and it looks like this:
I can't think of a better way to sum up how I feel at this very moment so I'll just leave it at that. Well...that and some music! Here are some aptly titled (if not always necessarily appropriate in content) tunes to celebrate...
Loretta Lynn - "Happy Birthday"
Bright Eyes - "Happy Birthday To Me"
The Bird & The Bee - "Birthday"
Don McLean - "Birthday Song"
Expecting Rain - "Birthday Girl"
Flo Rida - "Birthday"
Steppenwolf - "Happy Birthday"
The Innocence Mission - "Happy Birthday"
The Roots ft. Patrick Stump - "Birthday Girl
Birthday Party - "Happy Birthday"
Caribou - "Every Time She Turns Round It's Her Birthday"
Some songs about the act of aging and all the angst and ecstasy that accompanies it and perhaps some gems about growing older gracefully:
John Mayer - "Stop This Train"
John recently made a rather spectacular blog post of his own that I recommend everyone read...spend five minutes with him here.
Blink 182 - "Dammit"
The Killers - "When You Were Young"
Soft Cell - "Youth"
Tracy Lawrence - "Time Marches On"
Neil Young - "Sugar Mountain"
Morissey - "That's How People Grow Up"
Fleetwood Mac - "Landslide"
Colbie Caillat - "Older"
The Alan Parsons Project - "Old & Wise"
Talking Heads - "Once in a Lifetime"
Dusty Springfield - "Goin' Back"
Mike + The Mechanics - "Living Years"
Jethro Tull - "Too Old To Rock & Roll Too Young To Die"
Bruce Springsteen - "Growing Up"
Dar Williams - "You're Aging Well"
Grateful Dead - "Touch of Grey"
John Cougar Mellencamp - "Cherry Bomb"
Julie Roberts - "Wake Up Older"
Paul Simon - "Still Crazy After All These Years"
The Who - "My Generation"
LCD Soundsystem - "Losing My Edge"
Ron Sexsmith - "Hands of Time"
The Beatles - "When I'm Sixty-Four"
Oasis - "Just Getting Older"
And just for fun and the sake of nostalgia, here are a smattering of songs that were big as singles in '78...and just like me so many of them have gotten better as the years have passed. Had I been more than just a wee tot in 1978, these are the songs I would have been blasting...
Bee Gees - "Stayin' Alive"
Bill Withers - "Lovely Day"
Dire Straits - "Sultans of Swing"
Joe Walsh - "Life's Been Good"
Exile - "Kiss You All Over"
Gerry Rafferty - "Right Down the Line"
Jackson Browne - "Stay"
The Ramones - "I Wanna Be Sedated"
Queen - "We Are the Champions"
The Police - "Roxanne"
Bonnie Tyler - "It's A Heartache"
Kansas - "Dust in the Wind"
Genesis - "Follow You, Follow Me"
Paul Simon - "Slip Slidin' Away"
Merle Haggard - "It's Been A Great Afternoon"
Player - "Baby Come Back"
Dolly Parton - "Here You Come Again"
Blondie - "Heart of Glass"
Foreigner - "Hot Blooded"
Nick Gilder - "Hot Child in the City"
Village People - "Y.M.C.A."
Billy Joel - "Just The Way You Are"
Rolling Stones - "Beast of Burden"
Van Halen - "Eruption"
Olivia Newton John & John Travolta - "You're the One That I Want"
John Conlee - "Rose Colored Glasses"
Bob Marley - "Is This Love"
Crystal Gayle - "Talking In Your Sleep"
Bob Seger - "Hollywood Nights"
Parliament - "Flash Light"
Eric Clapton - "Wonderful Tonight"
Kenny Rogers - "The Gambler"
- Georges Clemenceau
"Time and tide wait for no man but time always stands still for a woman of thirty."
- Robert Frost
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9 comments:
"Live and Let Die" by Paul McCartney and Wings:
"When you were young, and your heart was an open book/
You used to say live and let live/
You know you did, you know you did, you know you did ..."
Holy crap! Now THAT's a POST!
Happy birthday, and just wait until you hit 35.
This is the mother of all incredible posts. I appreciate all your hard work and inspired selections for us! You rock!
"Cat's In the Cradle" is by Harry Chapin, not Cat Stevens. Stevens did record a somewhat similarly themed song, "Father and Son". Johnny Cash recorded an adapted version of that song, called "Father and Daughter," with his stepdaughter some years ago, and, more recently, he recorded a true cover of "Father and Son" featuring Fiona Apple; Cash also covered "Cat's In the Cradle," so it's a relatively slight separation between "Cat's In the Cradle" and Cat Stevens, I suppose.
Anyway, thanks for posting this brilliantly diverse mix, and a belated happy birthday to you.
"There's just something so tumultuous about your 20's. You're up, you're down...you're in, you're out. You're upside down and right side up and every position emotionally and mentally in between. It's the decade of growing pains without a doubt..."
I just turned 20 a couple months ago, and that's exactly how I felt about my teenage years. Glad to know there's more of that ahead...
Happy birthday!
happy birthday! I will be 30 next year, and like you, I'm looking forward to leaving the moody, existential madness of my 20's behind me. thanks for the tunes.
-brianne
Happy belated birthday!!
Hope this will be your best decade yet!
Happy belated. Great post and great mixes. I've always liked your Grey's Anatomy ones, especially. In your 20s there is a lot of pressure to have everything figured out. I'm sure that bubbles away in your 30s and it'll get better from here.
Good words.
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