"A Wild Card Up My Sleeve"

When I thought about the music that got me through this crazy and surreal year 2020,I had to smile and even chuckle some. In my mind's eye I saw my 3-year-old grandson singing and dancing to PinkFong's "Baby Shark", Drakes "The Tootsie Slide", anything by Drake for that matter!, Brelands "Don't Touch my Truck", both Keshawns and Ricky Desktops version of "Chicken Wing", and Blanco Browns the "Git Up" to name his favorites!

Now the boy has rhythm and he doesn't miss a beat when it comes to the words. I don't know how many times I was corrected by a firm "No Grandma it goes like this...!" to which I would reply "Well excuse me for messing with your flow!" and he would just simply say "Your excused" and keep right on singing and dancing! He brings joy and lights up my life in many ways. Music provided a way for me to smile and to enjoy the innocence of his childhood, something that I worry about him losing too soon. With all the uncertainties of 2020, my level of concern has heightened, to say the least.

Music has always been my outlet, for me its therapeutic, my escape from the world, and if I ever needed to escape it would have been the year, 2020. Family is most important to me and I have to keep it together for those I love, the only thing that remained the same in my world is music, the familiar songs, like good friends, providing comfort and a sense of normalcy in a world that had gone crazy!

I'm from the days of Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Sly and the Family Stone, ELO, and the likes. I could go on! And to be truthful most of the time, I find it hard to listen to RAP, there are a few artists I like but for the most part, missing the old-school rock and roll! I found myself listening to artists from the 70's that I hadn't listened to for a long time in 2020, this gave me a feeling of security, familiarity, when everything feels so strange and disconnected taking me back to a time when, as crazy as the 70's were, life was less constrained, a time when this music, was as familiar as my lasting friendships and cherished memories that I hold dear to this day. Oh, the good old days!

This is not to discredit the current artists that I listened to daily. 2020 is the year I discovered Julia Michaels, I love the rawness of her voice. And I loved her song "Heaven"! Oh yes, "all good boys go to heaven but bad boys bring Heaven to you". Right ladies? I mean come on, I'm old, but I'm not dead! lol! In addition to my oldies, the songs that got me through and made me feel good all over are pretty much new country. I enjoy songs that make me want to get up and dance or sing along as if I don't have a care in the world (I'm 100% tone deaf so this is done in the privacy of my car or bathroom LOL!)

But my grandson doesn't mind he joins right into David Lee Murphy & Kenny Chesney's "Everything's Gona Be Alright" as we sing out "Nobody's gotta worry about nothin, don't go hitten that panic button, things aren't quite as bad as they seem!" and his favorite part, of course, is "and whatever monkey that was on my back, he jumped off just like that, right into the deep blue sea!" This seemed like such a fitting song for 2020 I made it my ring tone!

Some of my other go-to, feel-good songs are Jordan Davis's "Singles You Up", Old Dominion's "Break Up with Him", Darius Rucker's "Wagon Wheel", Thomas Rhett's "Look What God Gave Her", I love that one, Oh, I wish I was that girl! Maddie and Tae's "Die from a Broken Heart", Keith Urban's "Blue's Not Your Color" and I love Chris Stapleton's rendition of "Tennessee Whisky" the guitar makes me crazy the whole song makes me crazy! And then there's Old Dominions "One Man Band" I love this song but for some reason, I cry every single time I hear it and I mean every time, I can't help it, hard as I try. I guess I hunger for the love of my younger days...

Alicia Keye's "Girl on Fire" was my anthem for 2018 and 2019 and yes at times it was my ring tone! However, the one song that sums it all up for me in 2020, and I call it "my song", is Miranda Lambert's "Bluebird", why? Because I am a keeper and I like lemons in my drink, and I really do have a wild card up my sleeve... he's about three feet tall and he makes awesome music with me!!