I was reading the blog of an acquaintance of mine, and she had gone through "The 30-Day Song Challenge". I believe the idea was started on Facebook, but its been making its rounds over the internet. Basically, the challenge is to refer to some song once a day with the given criteria:
- Day 1: Your favorite song
- Day 2: Your least favorite song
- Day 3: A song that makes you happy
- Day 4: A song that makes you sad
- Day 5: A song that reminds you of someone
- Day 6: A song that reminds of you of somewhere
- Day 7: A song that reminds you of a certain event
- Day 8: A song that you know all the words to
- Day 9: A song that you can dance to
- Day 10: A song that makes you fall asleep
- Day 11: A song from your favorite band
- Day 12: A song from a band you hate
- Day 13: A song that is a guilty pleasure
- Day 14: A song that no one would expect you to love
- Day 15: A song that describes you
- Day 16: A song that you used to love but now hate
- Day 17: A song that you hear often on the radio
- Day 18: A song that you wish you heard on the radio
- Day 19: A song from your favorite album
- Day 20: A song that you listen to when you’re angry
- Day 21: A song that you listen to when you’re happy
- Day 22: A song that you listen to when you’re sad
- Day 23: A song that you want to play at your wedding
- Day 24: A song that you want to play at your funeral
- Day 25: A song that makes you laugh
- Day 26: A song that you can play on an instrument
- Day 27: A song that you wish you could play
- Day 28: A song that makes you feel guilty
- Day 29: A song from your childhood
- Day 30: Your favorite song at this time last year
Don't worry, I'm not going to strictly do this and nothing but this for 30 days, for several reasons.
I suppose the alleged reason for people doing this is that it gives the reader insight into the blogger, lets the blogger jog through certain ideas that can be reflected and expanded upon, yada yada. But come on, let's face it. Talking about music you like or posting clips of it from YouTube is really just a mental masturbation exercise. You have music that you love, and you expect other people to realize just how awesome your favorite music is, while at the same time you're probably not interested in seeing it from the reader end.
Then again, I'm of the opinion that there's absolutely nothing wrong with self-indulgence, so long as you acknowledge it for what it is.
So I am going to do this for the sheer fun of it. Rest assured, I have no desire to turn APlaceForMyStuff.org into nothing but a music-lover babbling blog for the next 30 days. But you'll see every one of the 30 song challenges mentioned in various blog posts over the next few weeks, sometimes multiple ones in the same day.
Let's start with the first few. Challenges easy to state, but pretty hard to narrow down: your favorite song, and your least favorite song. I could spend hours and hours contemplating this, but for now I'll just throw out the first that come to mind.
Favorite: "Public Animal #9" by Alice Cooper. WHY this song was never a huge hit, I have no idea.
Least favorite? Well there's a funny thing about least favorite songs. A lot of them, at least in my experience, are catchy and stay stuck in your head for days. And that's why you end up hating them. One song like this that comes to mind was from an obscure 1990s computer game called "Total Distortion". When you'd die, this is teh song that would play:
And finally, I'm going to combine song #3 (a song that makes you happy) with song #17 (a song that you wish you heard on the radio). Because besides making me happy, this song SHOULD have been a hit, damnit:
