Better late than never! Here are the songs for December 2015. I didn’t have internet or cell service for most of December and I’m not even mad about it. I started this posted a few days ago, but finally have respectable wifi/internet to post it today. I hope everyone had a great NYE and that 2016 is filled with Universal light love and magic for you all!
Enough babble, here’s the songs of December.
“Best Days” by Eric Hutchinson
This would kick off December and be an indication of how December would be even if I didn’t know it yet. December held some of the best days of my life to be exact and some of my favorite moments of my life. These lyrics sum it up: “And as I’m struggling on my own, I have to think I’m not alone. Give and take, we catch our breaks. We all learn to survive…Living the best days of our lives. These are the best days of our lives…”
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“Footloose” by Kenny Loggins
Simply put: “8 hours for what? Tell me what I got? I got this feeling that time is just holding me down…” We do life wrong in the States. We live to work and work to live instead of just living.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltrMfT4Qz5Y&w=420&h=315]
“Break Down Here” by Julie Roberts
This song I sang to myself a lot on the Overlanders Way. “…it’s another 50 miles to the nearest town. Everything I own is in the back in a hefty bag. I’m out of cigarettes and I’m down to my last drag. I’d sure hate to break down here. Nothing up ahead or in the rear view mirror. Out in the middle of nowhere. I’m in trouble if the wheels stop rolling. God help keep me moving somehow…” I was often in the middle of nowhere with no sign of life except a few trees and maybe a bird or two. It would be hours until I saw another vehicle ahead of me or behind me. I definitely didn’t want to breakdown anywhere along that drive but I completed the trek from Townsville to Tennant Creek and got to see the Queensland Outback and it was part sadly beautiful and part fantastically inspiring. A swirl of both in the cup of life that is Australia.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrG1NUZa5Bs&w=560&h=315]
“Kite” by U2
I don’t remember the exact feeling of why I had to put this song on my December list, but I marked it and now going back, lyrically, I can understand why. Maybe my subconscious knew something, I wasn’t aware of yet. “Something’s about to give. I can feel it coming. I think I know what it is. I’m not afraid to die. I’m not afraid to live. And when I’m flat on my back, I hope to feel like I did…Who’s to say where the wind will take you. Who’s to say what it is will break you. I don’t know. Which way the wind will blow.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uXitB-FfOQ&w=420&h=315]
“Can’t Go Back” by Love and Theft
Hour after hour of being in a car by yourself two things usually happen: you start talking to yourself/car/Universe or you go fucking stir crazy. Luckily, I did the first of the two. I don’t mind endless hours in a vehicle looking at landscapes or watching the kilometers or miles rack up. I started my solo journey in Sydney and somewhere in the Queensland Outback, my soul had a few epiphanies and the thought of going back to my old life scared me. I can’t go back. I don’t want to go back. And this song sang the thoughts…”I’m still running from the shadows and the flames. Searching for a place where someone knows my name…I hear in the desert a distant voice singing, Son, you can’t imagine the trouble that you’re in. This whole world’s gone crazy…”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMQgRtPw-rk&w=420&h=315]
“Lifts You Up” by Beth Hart
At the end of the song “Leave the Light On” from Live at the Paradiso she says, “who here has had life kick their ass? It hurts but then it turns around and gives you a big ole’ smack man. Lots of loving. You never know what tomorrow will bring.” As a believer of the Universe, I put a lot of faith and belief in it and I just needed this reminder that tomorrow is unknown and that all we have is the moment we’re standing in. Good or bad. Right or wrong. We have just now. “It lifts you up it puts you down. Then it feeds you life then it let’s you drown. While it holds your heart then it slowly tears you apart…”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC7XlRWXVXM&w=560&h=315]
“Hey Hey Hey” by Michael Franti & Spearhead
These lyrics.
That is all.
“When I wake up in the morning all I do is pray for some guidance and protection…No matter how life is today, there’s just one thing that I got to say, I won’t let another moment slip away…There’s a crack in the gutter where a flower grows, reminding me that everything is possible. Yeah, reminding me that nothing is impossible. You gotta live for the one that you love you know. You gotta love for the life that you live you know…Don’t let nobody ever tell you that it couldn’t be done…I hold on, I’m trying to hold on…”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFPobQ-ewiA&w=560&h=315]
“Daydreamer” by Adele
Adele gets 2 songs on the December list. There wasn’t a huge language barrier between Tanguy and I and we could converse easier than we probably both expected but music was sort of what easily connected us. I gave him my iPod, the map, and guidebook and said you’re the captain of fun. I have a lot of crap on my iPod and I’m sure he’s not heard 99.9% of it. He picked Adele and when this song came on, I kind of pictured him in this story and that some crazy beautiful French girl was singing this song about him. He is living his dream of traveling and exploring new places and this song seemed to fit the daydreamer in him.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q_z2WkSKTc&w=560&h=315]
“Chasing Pavements” by Adele
This could be exactly how I feel at this very moment in my life: “should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements even if it leads no where…” As 2015 came to an end, I faced the reality that my dream of living a life in Australia may be just that, a dream. It is soul crushing to realize that a dream may crash and burn and there’s nothing you can do to sustain the viability or the life in it any more…and I can’t decide if I keep chasing pavements or just let the dream go like a feather in the wind.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08DjMT-qR9g&w=560&h=315]
“Paper Planes” by M.I.A
This song was kind of like the “hey we have music in common” moment between myself and Tanguy.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewRjZoRtu0Y&w=560&h=315]
“Airplanes, Part II“ by B.O.B featuring Eminem and Hayley Williams
iPod on shuffle. When this song played, I was having a whoa is me mental moment and the lyrics were what I was feeling: ”Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars? I could really use a wish right now…”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn6-c223DUU&w=560&h=315]
“La Belle Vie” (The Good Life) by Alonzo
This is a French rap song. I have no clue about the good life the rapper is singing about but I liked the beat and the flow of his voice. Rap is definitely better in French. I have to thank Tanguy for this song and for turning me onto French rap. Unlike the American versions, there is something more fluid about rap while in French. It seems to sing vs assault your senses like I find that American rap does. Maybe it’s because the vulgarity of the song is in a different language and not directly in your face. I think it’s like the meme I’ve seen for Rammstein: sings about rape, sex, violence without cuss words (or something like that. I can’t remember the exact meme and I sure as hell can’t find it without cell service).
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsR8vw19IEg&w=560&h=315]
“Alive” by Sia
Another shout out to Tanguy for being Mixmaster and playing this song. Fell in love with it the moment I heard: “I found solace in the strangest place. Way in the back of my mind I saw my life in a stranger’s face and it was mine. I had a one-way ticket to a place where all the demons go. Where the wind don’t change and nothing in the ground can ever grow. No hope, just lies and you’re taught to cry in your pillow, but I survived. I’m still breathing. I’m alive.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2NgsJrrAyM&w=560&h=315]
“Downtown” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
Just a fun song to “turn up to 11” and drive through the windy coastal roads of Australia (or the windy roads of a mountain in Australia). Either way, you don’t want no beef boy!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGhoLcsr8GA&w=560&h=315]
“The Trouble with Us” by Marcus Marr & Chet Faker
The 70s style disco bass has me hooked. I can’t get enough of this song. It’s just fun and a great summer song.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAd–mEjcco&w=560&h=315]
“Counting Stars” by One Republic
Somewhere in the mountains of South Australia, this song came on the radio and clicked with my soul. “Lately I’ve been, I’ve been losing sleep. Dreaming about the things that we could be…Said no more counting dollars, we’ll be counting stars…Old but I’m not that old. Young but I’m not that bold…Every thing that kills me makes me feel alive.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT_nvWreIhg&w=560&h=315]
“Perfect” by One Direction
This is where I face-palm myself for even admitting I like this song but hey, it’s catchy and I really love the lyrics: “And if you like midnight driving with the windows down and if you like going places we can’t even pronounce. If you like to do whatever you’ve been dreaming about…” That’s the kind of relationship I want to have. I don’t need diamonds and a jet (yes, that would be nice) but a what I really just need is a guy who will be my partner in crime that will do “Goonie” shenanigans with me or camp under the stars or in the case of Australia wake up to the birds as the sun rises. My parents forever doomed me with their fairytale love story so until then I drive around with windows down and visit places I can’t pronounce (which is basically every Aboriginal given name in the wonderful land of Oz).
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho32Oh6b4jc&w=560&h=315]
“All the Kings” by Editors
This song has haunted me since November but somewhere between Melbourne and Glenworth Valley it connected with my soul and brought tears to my eyes. “Loneliness forever. Holding back a river. All the kings are coming, marching to the sound from your rib cage…the beat of your heart is alone in the dark…”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz0zdNa2kSE&w=560&h=315]
“TNT” by AC/DC
The last song I heard in 2015. Even if it was a EDM remix, it was the best song to end 2015. “Cause I’m TNT, I’m dynamite. TNT and I’ll win the fight…”