I’m pretty sure I started singing as soon as I learned to talk. I had my first performance at age 5, and although it’s been a while since I’ve stepped on a stage to sing I will always know that music is a part of my being. There are a handful of songs in my life that I feel were written for ME. Some of these songs are because of the melody or the feel of the music, and others are because of the underlying message.

I don’t remember the first time I heard this song, but I know that EVERY TIME I hear it I feel inspired.

I’d like to hope that the majority of us ambitious types fall into this group of people that Nichole Nordeman talks about who want to make a difference and “leave a legacy”. I know I do.

We all need an ‘Atta boy’ or ‘Atta girl’
But in the end I’d like to hang my hat on more besides
The temporary trappings of this world
I want to leave a legacy
How will they remember me?

And so here’s a pretty deep question for the beginning of the week… what kind of Legacy do you want to leave?

It’s Friday. It’s raining here in Texas. I’m rockin’ Pandora while I’m workin’ away and this song just came on. I heart cover songs. And I’ve always LOVED this song so I thought I’d share this awesome version from Adele. Adele just happens to be a twenty-something (born in 1988) so she’s certainly GenPink material.

I’m pretty sure I have 7 versions of this song on my iPod. Wanna see what music I like? Music taste tells a lot about people, I think. Here’s my Pandora (haven’t been using it long) and Last.fm (had since about ’07 and it autoupdates from my iPod so lots of randomness). Share your music linkage if ya like!

I have a special connection with the music world. I’m not sure if my iPod is psychic or if there’s a DJ fairy that lives in my apartment. But, I am convinced there must be a not-so-logical explanation for why it is that any time I find myself in a mood that I can’t put words on, that all I have to do is hit “Shuffle” on my 2003 iPod and the words I was searching for fill up my room.

Tonight those words came in the form of Sara Evans, I Keep Looking.

***
Just as soon as I get what I want
I get unsatisfied
Good is good but could be better

I keep looking, I keep looking for
I keep looking for something more
I always wonder what’s on the other side
Of the number two door
I keep looking
Looking for something more

Well, the straight haired girls
They all want curls
And the brunettes wanna be blonde
It’s your typical thing
You got ying you want yang
It just goes on and on
They say, hey, it’s only human
To never be satisfied
Well I guess that I’m as human as the next one
***

I wonder if it’s a generational thing? Are we a generation of “always wanting to know what’s next”? Or is it a gender thing? Maybe females are the dreamers who need to reach for the next star? Or… maybe it’s a personality trait that a select few have? Which ever it is… this song spoke to the words in my heart.

At this moment in time I love what I have with my family, and lifelong and newfound friends, my better-than-I-could-imagine relationship, job that challenges me everyday and the moments in between.

I also changed my hair from blonde to strawberry blonde, am looking to move AGAIN, need a new computer, plan to redesign this blog, am tired bored with the movies I’ve seen lately and should get back to the gym in this decade.

But “good is good but could be better.”

I don’t know exactly what that “better” is yet. Whatever it is I’m ready.

ps: I wrote this post from my iPhone in bed because I can’t sleep. Yet another trait of the “unsatisfied”.

I’m starting a new series – real life twenty somethings in the world. I’m not sure how often this series will run or who all will be featured but I’d like to start this off with a fabulous musician I found a few months ago.

Name: Alison Sudol aka A Fine Frenzy
Age: 22
Location: Los Angeles, California
Occupation: Singer/Songwriter

A little snippet of her bio: A Fine Frenzy is the music of 22 year-old Alison Sudol.

Born in Seattle to dramatic-arts teacher parents, Alison moved to Los Angeles at the age five. With her newly single mother, Alison moved frequently around the city. She developed a strong love for the fantastic literary worlds of CS Lewis, EB White, Lewis Carroll and Charles Dickens, while becoming a passionate author in her own right.

The music speaks for itself:

Like most social-network powered twenty somethings she can be found in various places all over the web: Official Website, Myspace, Last.fm, Twitter, & Flickr

At the ripe old age of 22 Alison (think I can call her Alison?) could very well be the source of my envy if I were the jealous type. She is beautiful, she has an amazing voice, she is making huge strides in her career, and she even has an online book club. What more could we ask for from this Gen Y girl?

I figured for Fun Friday (technically it’s Thursday night) I’d do the iTunes meme that I have seen several places. Because well, I love music and this week has been crazy stressful and this is a great destressing thing to do.

MEME Rules:

1. Put Your itunes/ music player on Shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER WHAT

After you’ve answered all of the questions, tag 5 other people and then let them know they’ve been tagged to do the meme themselves!


IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY?
“In the Vicinity” – Alison Krauss
(I guess this works – after reading a few others of these I am so surprised how many of the songs make sense with the questions)

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
“Butterfly” – Corinne Bailey Rae
(Is my personality like a Butterfly? I don’t know, what do you think?)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
“Cowboys” – The Fugees
(You would think this would make sense since I’m a Texas girl but I’m not really into Cowboys, sorry mr. ipod try again)

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
“The Game of Love” – Santana featuring Michelle Branch
(hmm I’ll have to think on this one, I wouldn’t say that’s how I feel today necessarily)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
“Thankful” – Kelly Clarkson
(ohh I love this one! I am very thankful for everything and everyone in my life)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
“At the Beginning” – Richard Marx – from Anastasia Soundtrack
(Yes I love songs from Disney movies. The chorus of this song works for a motto for me:

And Life is a road and I want to keep going
Love is a river I want to keep flowing
Life is a road now and forever
A Wonderful journey

I’ll be there when the world stops turning
I’ll be there when the storm is through
In the end I wanna be standing
At the beginning with you)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
“Free” – Elliott Yamin
(I’ll take that …

You’ll be free
Nothing’s impossible
Free (alright,alright)
You’ve achieved the unexplainable
Free
I believe that miracles
Happen to those
Who refuse to be told
They can happen when we least expect
So we let ourselves be free)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
“Love Me, Just Leave Me” – Jewel
(I’m not so sure about this one, I don’t want my parents to leave me but seeing as they are no longer married maybe this is how they felt about each other.)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
“Famous People” – Brad Paisley
(I don’t think of famous people very often at all in fact. I do know some people who do.)

WHAT IS 2+2?
“Whatever You Do! Don’t! ” – Shania Twain
(Apparently my iPod does not want me straining myself so much to come up with the answer to such a difficult question)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
“Crazy” – Patsy Cline
(Ha! I’m sorry but apparently my ipod is not very nice today. I don’t really think any of my best friends (yes there are multiple) are crazy, well at least completely)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
“When I Fall in Love ” – Nat King Cole
(In the words of Michelle "I SWEAR I did not rig this")

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
“Wasted” – Carrie Underwood
(This survey/meme whatever you want to call it is really making me think. I would agree that the lyrics to this song are fitting for my life. I try to make sure I don’t let the time go by wasted.

Cause I don’t want to spend my life jaded, waiti’n to wake up one day and find
that I let all these years go by, Wasted)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
“Angry All the Time” – Tim McGraw
(I definitely don’t want to be angry all the time when I grow up. Maybe I will be saying this to people when I grow up – I don’t know why you gotta be Angry All The Time. ps – aren’t I already grown up?)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
“Smack That” – Akon
(Ok seriously I am sitting in my living room by myself laughing hysterically. LMAO for real! My ipod is my new best friend because apparently it/he/she has a great sense of humor.)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
“Slow Down” – India Aire
(I know for sure that this is not what my parents think of me, I am miss cautious take a long time to do anything

Slow down baby
ya goin to fast.
You got your hands in the air
With your Feet on the gas.
You ’bout to wreck your future,
Run from your past.
You need to slow down before you go down baby.)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
“See Me Through” – Rascal Flatts
(As much as I love Rascal Flatts this is not the song of theirs I’d want at my wedding)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
“Surprise Surprise” – Celine Dion
(I really don’t like this one at all. The title sounds ok but the lyrics are surely not fitting for a funeral

Just when you think you’ve
got me figured me out
Just when you think you’ve
got me figured me out
Surprise, surprise)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
“Unsung” – Vanessa Carlton
(This would be the opposite to my hobby/interest – all my songs are SUNG thanks you very much)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
“Must Get Out” – Maroon 5
(At one point in time this was a secret of mine, but everyone knows now that I did get out.)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
“Let’s Get Retarded” – Black Eyed Peas
(Haha seriously we do a get a bit silly/crazy/retarded when we are all together. Oh how I love my girls. PS – We love to shake our booties to Black Eyed Peas)

WHAT SHOULD YOU POST THIS AS?
“Stupid Girls” – Pink
(if you say so master psychic ipod)

And just for my entertainment I pressed next again one more time to see what it said and I got "Let’s Get it On" – Barry White haha! And that ladies, and occasional gents, is how you achieve relaxation after a very stressful week.

No tagging for me this time around – I wasn’t actually tagged. Tag yourself if ya like. I am going to suggest, notice not tag, Andrea and Courtney because these ladies are music ladies. Send me a link in comments if you do this or have done this meme because seriously this thing makes me laugh a lot!

Reason #849 that I love music … sometimes there is a song that I swear was written for me. A song that says everything I am feeling/experiencing at that moment in time. That song for me right now is Anyway by Martina McBride.

The lyrics to this song sum of how I choose to live my life right now.

You can spend your whole life building
Something from nothin’
One storm can come and blow it all away
Build it anyway

You can chase a dream
That seems so out of reach
And you know it might not ever come your way
Dream it anyway

God is great
But sometimes life ain’t good
And when I pray
It doesn’t always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway
I do it anyway

This world’s gone crazy
It’s hard to believe
That tomorrow will be better than today
Believe it anyway

You can love someone with all your heart
For all the right reasons
In a moment they can choose to walk away
Love ‘em anyway

God is great
But sometimes life ain’t good
And when I pray
It doesn’t always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway
Yea – I do it anyway

You can pour your soul out singing
A song you believe in
That tomorrow they’ll forget you ever sang
Sing it anyway
Yea, sing it anyway
Yeah, yeah!

I sing
I dream
I love anyway

Love Martina. Love her voice. Love the message behind that song. Love the video as well …

Today is Thursday which means the continuation of our Twenty Something Advice series. My goal with this advice series is to cover many different topics. After doing my regular blog hopping I wound up at Courtney’s blog with the tagline “Happenings and musical thoughts direct from the river of dreams.” Her passion about music quickly reminded me of my own love for music. Since I can remember, I have used music as therapy. Music can get you out of the mood of a frustrating day at work and it can also pump you up before you hit the clubs with the girls. I sent Courtney a quick note asking her if she’d be interesting in doing a guest post.

So, today’s Twenty Something Advice is a guest post by Courtney of til the river runs dry. She has been involved in music since she was seven years old, starting with piano lessons, eventually voice lessons, band, jazz band, choir, and vocal jazz ensembles. She has written songs, acted on stage in plays and twice as the lead in a musical. Courtney is currently a senior in college studying music industry with an emphasis in business.

* * * * *

For my 20th birthday, though I’d always said I never would, I got together with my best friend, and both of us got tattoos. One day, a light bulb illuminated over my head, and I just knew I needed one and exactly what it should be. It’s one word. Purple. Scrawled along my foot, beneath my ankle. Perfect. “Sing.”

Music is air to me. I can’t take a five minute walk without headphones. Silence is torture. Music is survival.

Elysa asked me to do this “advice” column and I thought long and hard about how I could twist my musical “expertise” (ha!) into advice. I don’t want to sit here and tell you what to listen to, because everyone has different tastes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t want to tell you how to learn to play an instrument or to sing, because let’s face it, it’s time consuming and, in a lot of cases, expensive. So, what should I advise?

Just enjoy it. That’s the most important part.

For quite awhile, all the scientific folk out there doing studies and experiments and other science-y things asserted that ART MUSIC IS BEST MUSIC. Listening to Mozart will make your baby smarter. Beethoven will relax you. Copeland will make you crave steak (“Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.”) And you know, if that’s truly the kind of music you enjoy, all of that may be true. Well, except for the part about Copeland because I’m betting that we all think about beef when we hear Copeland’s Rodeo (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, go here and click on track 12. You will). However, I fully believe that music is what you make of it, and the most important part of enjoying music is making your own decisions about it.

When you need to relax, what do you listen to? When you need to pump yourself up? When you need to cry? When you want to remember a certain time in your life? Music is so much more powerful when YOU CHOOSE what you listen to. You have learned to love the things you love for certain reasons… because you were very responsive to a certain sound or the way a lyric was delivered, and all of that has to do with personality, where you were at that point in your life, what you were going through. Why try to relax with music somebody very different than you told you to listen to? There’s no comparison.

Of course, always be responsive to new music. One of my biggest pet peeves is people who just refuse to listen to new stuff because, of course, nothing beats Led Zepplin. PLEASE. If you are the kind of person who keeps growing and changing, your tastes in music should and probably will as well. Nothing says that you have to completely grow out of your old music (though I don’t honestly remember the last time I even LOOKED at a Backstreet Boys album, though I still own a few… somewhere…) but why not keep an open mind? Today’s music builds on yesterday’s. Your current opinions are built on the things you were taught, or that you went out and learned yourself. Nothing stays the same. Music itself evolves… there’s extensive proof. Why should you be stubborn and listen to the same three bands for your entire life?

What do I listen to? Mozart. Reba McEntire. Frank Sinatra. Jason Mraz.
Colbie Caillat. Rhonda Vincent. Kelly Clarkson. Debussy. Augustana.
John Mayer. So many more. It just depends on what I’m in the mood to choose.

* * * * *

I want to thank Courtney for taking the time to share with us.

For all of you that love music and are on a continual search to find new artist’s I highly recommend last.fm.

I will be checking out several of Courtney’s favorites over the next few days and I’d love to hear from you guys? What ways do you use music in your life?

Previous Twenty Something Advice:

• Twenty Something Advice: Don’t plan your life based on what other people expect
• Twenty Something Struggle: Why Can’t I Be Happy?
• Twenty Something Advice: Educate Yourself on Politics

I love music therefor I *heart* last.fm. I sit at a computer for at least 40 hours a week. I keep my sanity by listening to music while I work. I found last.fm several months ago and I have been in love since. I use last.fm to discover new music and to keep up with my favorites.

My favorite feature is you can type in an artist and listen to a "station" of similar artists. The past few weeks I have been listening to Colbie Caillat, Joshua Radin & John Mayer.

You can add fun widgets to your blog or myspace of the latest songs you listed to. Here is my most recent played list. I have this widget in the music section of my myspace profile.

And that my friends is this weeks Tuesday Technology tip from your resident blonde computer nerd.