"Belong" - Cary Brothers

Cary Brothers
"Belong"
Lyrics

Source: www.americansongwriters.com

Do you ever get the feeling you don't belong?  It could be that you're in a group of people from which you appear significantly different.  It could be you're in a foreign place and you don't speak the language.  Or maybe it's just that you walk in the room and you feel their empty greetings, their empty stares and you just know.  It's not spoken.  If it is, it's behind your back most of the time.  Maybe it's hard to take because once upon a time, you belonged.  But now you don't.  Just walk by.  Just walk on by.


The best songs in my opinion are not ones about bitter love.  Those are fun in the cases when you're feeling better and you just need to belt out. The best ones are ones that address larger issues - issues that affect us deep within.  The best ones are ones that talk about not only the fact that we are disrespected, but why being disrespected hurts us.

Cary Brothers is an alumnus from my own Northwestern University, where he was an English major.  He writes songs specifically for TV shows, such as ABC's Grey's Anatomy and movies, such as Garden State (2004). His first of two albums, "Who You Are," was released on May 29, 2007.  Brothers released his second album, "Under Control," on April 6, 2010.  It premiered at #1 on the iTunes Singer-Songwriter Chart.

The thing that hits me about this song is more than Brothers' soothing yet piercing voice.  It's the fact that Brothers is so regretful, yet so sure that he doesn't belong.  He's almost urging us all to accept that we are not going to belong everywhere.  Sometimes we just don't.  And we have to believe that not belonging is okay.  We can't do anything if we try over and over again to be more than civil, caring from the bottom of our hearts and we're only greeted with scorn.  We can't help if we release our feelings in random bursts of affection and then are shut down by conditions that we don't even realize why they're in place.  It's more than thoughtfulness when we reach out.  It's more than sharing.  And we want more than appreciation and thought.  We want acceptance.  We want acceptance from people who have scorned us.  We don't want to be burned down into the ground forever.  Because maybe we are all loners, but it sure damn sucks to be loners in our own homes.

What do we do in these situations - situations in which we strive for acceptance but just can't seem to get it, even while sincere?  What do we do when we feel our guards crashing down, wanting to be vulnerable but we know that if we do we'll get hurt?  Do we push them up again?  Do we become closed?  Doesn't that make us just like them - the people who are shutting us out for their own mysterious reasons?

We can pretend it doesn't matter.  We can all pretend that we find it okay not to belong.  What use is their company anyway if they don't want ours?  But the thing is - it's hard when you just don't know what you've done.  You don't know what part of your natural personality could be so despicable that it causes people to perpetually hate who you are?

The truth is, nobody is liked by everyone.  You're not going to belong everywhere.  I guess for me, I just wish I knew why - why don't I belong?

"Better Than Revenge" - Taylor Swift

"Better Than Revenge"

Taylor Swift

Lyrics

Source: www.starjerk.com

I hate to use Taylor for a second time, but the truth is, I really don't hate it.  When you're really angry - when you're really passionate about something, Taylor is the one to whom you should turn.  She spills out her life in front of you with no restraint.  She gives you something to hold onto - something that stems directly from where she's been.  Some will say that this is a bad thing.  Why should you spill out your life for everyone to see?  Doesn't that make you vulnerable?  Doesn't that encourage people to talk behind your back?  After all, what could be worse than that?  How will you go on if a group of defensive, insecure people refuse to like you no matter what you do?  The answer is:  you learn to deal with it.  You learn to walk by.  Maybe it hurts you for a few minutes because you are a good person and you want to reach out.  You wish you weren't hated.  But you are.   And hey, you're faced with a choice:  Are you going to change for their benefit, or keep charging forward for your own?

I don't have to give you a bio.  You can look down to the previous post if you're curious.  Instead, I'll make this post solely devoted to the song about which it speaks - a song from Taylor's new album, "Speak Now."  The song talks about Taylor's feelings towards a girl that steals her boyfriend faster than she "could say sabotage."  During the verses, she describes the situation and addresses the other girl.  During the choruses lie Taylor's last pleas to her boyfriend.  She hopes that he will see the truth:  That this girl is not a saint.  She's not what he thinks. She's an actress, and apparently, a pretty good one.

Now this song doesn't only have to apply to those types of sleazy girls that steal your boyfriend.  There are people who can break down romantic ties without being romantically involved themselves.  There are people so brilliant that they can insert small bombs into your guy's belt.  He doesn't know it, but he's carrying an implemented weapon of your destruction.  And all you can do is sing about it, because you've tried over and over to rip that belt off and he just won't let you remove it.

Sometimes words just don't work.  You can't address your audience in the way you wish unless you travel to a larger plane.  Maybe that's why people disapprove of Taylor.  Maybe that's why you have enemies who hate you enough to keep trying to bring you down.  You have to talk on this level.  You have to let those people who love know that they're inserted in the middle of a useless battle.  It's a battle in which you don't even want to be involved.  But it's one that won't end, regardless of how desperately you fight for peace.  In the end, you have to know that even those who you thought loved you most can be dragged away from you.  And this is a risk you take being as twisted and dynamic and complicated as you.

But here lies the chorus.  Why does it seem that people you love always choose the other side?  Why does it seem that they are reluctant to trust you?  What is it about your life that causes you to make enemies right and left just from breathing the air you breathe?  And what is it about certain people that gives them the impetus to torture you indirectly?  What would lead them to place a bomb in the belt of the person you love?  They steal their identity from you because they know that you'll see through the plan.  It's a twisted relationship based on hatred and mutual respect.  You acknowledge each other's brilliance.  And yet you cannot reach a truce.

So what do you hope to gain from stealing more of my ego?  From stealing more of my loyalties?  What do you hope to gain from making me more lonely?  Does it make you more whole?  Does it make you happy?  Why can't you just stay out of my life?  If it affects you, that means I affect you and you'd never admit to that.  So it's either or.  Either admit or resign.  Because the more you destroy me, the stronger I get.  The more you chip away my happiness, the less I settle for being weak.

Because in the end, that bomb may go off.  In the end, you may catalyze something beautiful.  You may ruin something that everyone involved worked super hard to achieve.  But you know "I'll always have the last word."

A crazy rant...Taylor style.

"Hey Stephen" - Taylor Swift

"Hey Stephen"
Taylor Swift
Lyrics

www.thelatestnews.in

It's not easier once you win. It gets even harder when you have done so to secure victory.  You have to maintain your status.  You have to prove every day that you're still the worthy person you are.  It's still just as much of a challenge.  It's even more of one, because you're in the limelight now.

 Just because you're happy doesn't mean that others stop craving your happiness.  They crave it even more in fact.  It's that sick little voice inside every human's head that gets more satisfaction out of stealing than working or waiting to win the proper way.  Some people have trained themselves out of such impulses with time.  Others still fall prey to it once in a while.  And many live off it without even realizing it.  It's hard to compete with others who consciously or even subconsciously have made your insecurity their lifestyle.

Taylor Swift knows all about winning.  But she did it the right way.  Taylor released her debut single "Tim McGraw" in 2006, but she'd been writing songs way before then.  She used them from an early age as an outlet for the frustration she felt over not fitting in at school.  Though she lived in Pennsylvania, until age 14, Taylor made frequent trips to Nashville, Tennessee hoping to get a record deal and writing and recording songs with local artists.  Eventually, after her family moved to a Nashville suburb in order to support Taylor, she was signed onto Big Machine Records.

Taylor has released three albums so far, the first being "Taylor Swift" (2006), the second being "Fearless" (2008) and the most recent being "Speak Now" (2010).  She writes all her own lyrics and isn't shy to express her emotions directly.  Taylor claims that if she lined up her ex-boyfriends and asked them which songs pertain to them specifically, each one would know.  Taylor's songs apply so well to audiences because she projects her adventures and failures, mainly concerning love, for the world to hear.  "Love is a tricky business," Taylor explains.  "But if it wasn't, I wouldn't be so enthralled with it.  Lately I've come to a wonderful realization that makes me even more fascinated by it:  I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to love.  No one does!  There's no pattern to it, except that it happens to all of us, of course.  I can't plan for it.  I can't predict how it'll end up.  Because love is unpredictable and it's frustrating and it's tragic and it's beautiful.  And even though there's no way to feel like I'm an expert at it, it's worth writing songs about--more than anything else I've ever experienced in my life."

Taylor seems not to be afraid of winning or losing in love because she has a larger power to which she yields.  Victories and heartbreaks both give her the power to write songs.  They both allow her to express what she's feeling.  When she wins, she can flaunt it.  When she's heartbroken, songwriting is her weapon so that no douchebag can get away with what he's done.

Taylor suggests that all of us should just hope for the best - innocently charge forward because who says we know any better not to?  Sure there are "girls tossing rocks" at the window of any nicely furnished house.  They might whine about irrelevant losses or set you off ease when they publicly flirt about should-be professional matters.  But what can you do?  You won.  And you have to own it no matter what they do.  Because if they win, all you do is write a song and be done.  And you know it's worth all the unease because you've been "holding back this feeling" that's more wonderful than you've ever pictured.  You "can't help yourself."  And now that you're "believing that you don't always have to be alone", you can't let them get to you.  Because soon, you've got to believe that no matter how manipulative, how smart and involved others are, you are worth it.  You're worth it without playing games, without joining that sorority.  You would be just as worth it as you are.

Because like Taylor says, you have to be sure of your victories otherwise you'll never secure what you need - the courage to say:

"I could give you fifty reasons why I should be the one you choose.  All those other girls, well they're beautiful, but would they write a song for you?"  ;)

"Uncharted" - Sara Bareilles

"Uncharted"
Sara Bareilles
Lyrics
Major Influences: Norah Jones, Ben Folds, Bjork, Counting Crows

It's pretty standard to feel like you're sticking to your routine, coasting through life like you always have.  Maybe you are resistant to change.  You want to be you.  You want to stay you.  Why would you become someone else?  Those times you've tried haven't even benefitted you that much.  Maybe you, as a vegetarian, tried to eat meat for a day and then snapped back the next.  Maybe you went on a hardcore diet for a week, thinking you could make it last, but eventually caved into the appeal of binging on chocolate pie.  You realized how ephemeral changes are, and what kind of unnatural spark need be inserted to make such a radical change become a reality.

Sara Bareilles is a fascinating character.  Hearing her recorded music is enough to get a sense of her eclectic nature.  But seeing her perform live is a totally different story.  You see her face cringe in pain as she sings the beautiful, searing, climactic note of "Gravity."  You hear her husky voice sway across the stage as she talks, saying some crazy line that you won't even remember.  But you remember how she said it.  Maybe it's along the lines of the starting sentence of her website's bio, "Hi.  It's me, Sara.  As I've said before, I don't do those fancy bios.  So sue me."  


She was born in Eureka, CA and refers to her childhood self as being "borderline normal."  She studied communications at UCLA and eventually met her manager Jordan Feldstein who led her onto bigger, brighter things.  Her first album, "Little Voice", was released on July 3, 2007.  Her second album, "Kaleidoscope Heart", to which this song "Uncharted" belongs, was released on September 7, 2010.  Several die-hard fans, one of them being myself, were eagerly awaiting Sara's second run.  Before the release, Sara described her outlook on the album: "I took risks, and pushed myself both as a player and vocally, and I followed my gut wholeheartedly for the very first time. And I can’t wait to share it."  


So how far do you think, are you able to change yourself permanently?  How deep do you have to reach into "uncharted" territory to make a lasting mark?  How much gut does it take to say that you "won't just hang around", even though part of you must know that you're "getting nowhere, when you just sit and stare"?  


You can't spend your whole life sitting and watching others ride on their paths to success while you self-indulge in the multi-tasking lifestyle that once brought you glory.  Those days are over.  And you know it.  You "can't stay in the middle of it all."  Because if you do, you're veering from track to track and you'll never reach the end of one.  You can't waste time, even subconsciously, "comparing where you are to where you want to be."  You just have to dive in and do what you need to, what you know you've done before.  There is an element of you that is already changed as you want to be.  If there weren't, you wouldn't be "already out."  


We all desire for security, for consistency.  It's part of our nature.  But isn't it also part of our nature to long for excitement?  To go on adventures?  There are many adventures we can't handle.  So maybe it's worth considering that we might just find them where we'd least expect them - in tasks that we thought to be cold, mundane, boring.  Maybe that's where the excitement lies - hidden under our preconceived notions.  We might as well assume that to be the case, because we've searched everywhere else.  And now that this inkling of a "foolproof idea" is coming to life, we might as well waste no time to "get started.  It's all Uncharted." 

"Collide (Acoustic)" - Howie Day

"Collide (Acoustic)"
Howie Day
Lyrics

It's impossible to ride smoothly through life without hitting a wall.  Metaphorically or literally, you will fall.  Sometimes, you just have to accept that you're not yet at your full potential.  You're breakable, as you always will be.  And you still haven't yet reached the point in that certain area where you at least feel invincible.  You still haven't sunk into that rhythm you need to succeed.  Because that rhythm takes time to instill within you.

American singer-songwriter Howie Day began his career in the late 1990s, but became widely recognized for his debut album "Stop All The World Now", which was certified gold in 2005.  His two biggest singles, one being "Collide" and the other "She Says" come from this album.  Before signing onto Epic Records in 2002, Day 'invented' his own avant-garde method of recording songs. "I thought I was a genius when I figured out that I could record something on one tape player, and then record myself playing along to that type on a second tape player," Day joked.  "It was my poor-man's version of multi track recording."

Day's music has touched the world.  And his simple yet poignant acoustic version of "Collide" teaches us that we can indeed rise from anything.  Everyone - even those that we might consider "the best falls down sometimes."  And it can be so damn confusing when "the wrong words seem to rhyme."  We're tempted to cut ourselves down.  We're tempted to bar ourselves from the parts of our lives that are going well because we feel we don't deserve them.  We define ourselves as victims of our own success and reapers of our failure.  But no tactic helps because the reality is still there to haunt us no matter where we turn.  All we can do is pick ourselves up and run with a new wind.  Because in the scheme of life, any failure can be condensed such that we can view ourselves, not as abandoned, but "close behind."

We are incapable of possessing a clean record in most areas of life.  Of course there'll always be one area that tends to run smoothly.  For some, emotional heartaches are standard but rejections from schools and desired programs are sparse if at all existent. Others experience academic rejections and no emotional ones. You never know when or where you're going to get lucky.  And you can never fathom how your life path is going to build.  All you can hope is that you gain the wisdom and experience that will allow you to shape each important area of yourself the way you want.  And you must hope that these various areas will cease to combat with each other and rather somehow reorganize and moreover, "Collide."

"Older Chests" - Damien Rice

 "Older Chests"
Damien Rice
Lyrics

usonica.com

So many people write songs about time.  Generally speaking, those songs are the most powerful.  After all, don't we all feel as if time is our major competitor?  We are always racing it.  We are always victims of it. Sometimes we feel as if we are able to divide it for ourselves. We are quite happy to cut it into many small useful pieces.  But often we cut it too sharply and deeply.  And we realize that we in fact have no time at all.

Damien Rice is an Irish singer-songwriter who has released two albums - "O" in 2002 and "9" in 2006.  Both his songs and lyrics are simple, but they speak with an deep honesty that is almost painful to hear.  His songs speak like stories, in which there are no lies.  And when he talks of "older chests" to convey the passage of time, we hear more than just time passing in his rhetoric.  We hear loneliness, regret, and most importantly, hope mingling between, attempting to drape over everything else. 

Don't we all worry about consistency?  We want things to "stay the same" so that we know in some ways where our life is headed.  Perhaps we can't beat time but we can ride with it if we know how to ride.  If we maintain some constant motion in our lives, our growing pains hurt less.  The problem is that we can't always acquire that constant motion.  Sometimes we are too aware of what we lack.  We leave friends behind, not intentionally, but because of convenience.  We give up on elements of ourselves that we don't have time to nurture any longer.  It is then that time becomes our worst enemy.  It detaches us from things that we love.  It takes us away from what we need.  But in a way doesn't it also show us what we need?  Doesn't it also implement itself where it belongs?  Maybe we seek to replace vital elements of our lives that convenience has taken away from us momentarily.  And we lash out at time for prohibiting us from doing so.  But maybe these things can't be replaced.  Maybe time is our advocate in that it sets us in our place.  We can't always be satisfied.  We can't expect all of our needs to travel with us when we venture into darker waters.  If we do, we are being ungrateful.  We are closing ourselves off.  We are surrendering to impatience instead of paving our own paths.  We are indulging in self-pity instead of finding a way to win.

To others, we might insist that they should "pass us by" because "we'll be fine."  "Just give us time."  But in doing so, we are prolonging our problems.  No. We are not fine.  We're alone.  We're not fine.  We are lacking what lies now in the "older chests" of our existence, kept safely away until the time comes again to unlock them.  But can't we be okay with being lonely?  Can't we realize that we will always be lonely in some respects?  After all, in believing ourselves to be lonely when we are surrounded by everything we always wanted, aren't we alienating ourselves in a different way?  Aren't we offending what we are lucky enough to have?  People try to understand, but it's hard to accept that their presence just isn't enough.  Maybe it's not.  But it should be.  And they know that, so why can't we?

After all, "we always seem to need the help of someone else to mend that shelf."  But maybe that's our problem.  Maybe we're scared of instability, or of being alone.  But how can we create something stable if we're too afraid of failure?  We have to have faith that despite our lack of "older chests" we can indeed form new ones.  And we can have the patience to do so, accepting that we won't right away.  After all, anything worthwhile, in some manner, "starting small and growing in time."

"Open Your Eyes" - Alter Bridge

"Open Your Eyes"
Alter Bridge
Lyrics

muenmagazine.net

Don't they always say that being a leader means being alone?  That is the common saying.  And it makes sense.  To lead is to have a vision.  And to have a vision worthwhile is to have something that no one else has - to stand out - to be different.  And to be different, as we all know, is often to be alone.

Sometimes it's easy to wish that everyone else would just "open their eyes."  We know it would be much simpler if they just "realized we are one."  How different are any of us really from the next person?  We all want the same things.  We want to be accepted.  We want to be appreciated.  We want to feel as if we belong, not only in a community, but to the world.  We want to feel as if we are making a difference.  We want to believe, above all else, that "our day will come."

Alter Bridge is a band with four members: Myles Kennedy, Mark Tremonti, Scott Phillips, and Brian Marshall.  All four collaborate extensively with Kennedy and Tremonti working as the major songwriters and every band member working as an arranger.  "We knew Myles was an amazing singer.  That's why we hired him," explains Tremonti on the band's website.  "What we found out when we toured the first record was that he's also an incredibly gifted guitar player and songwriter as well as a vocalist.  It would have been a crime not to utilize all that talent."

Kennedy agrees. "Mark and I really compliment each other, especially when you juxtapose his powerful style with my dark and emotional approach.  On top of that, we have a common goal, to find the best melody possible."

Most of Alter Bridge's music has a sociopolitical tone.  Kennedy indicated on the website that he wants listeners to be asking themselves the following questions: "Have you reached your potential? Are you doing everything you can to make a difference?"

Making a difference is difficult.  It takes perseverance and moreover, it takes the willingness to view yourself as apart from normal society.  Being human, this is a tantalizing place to be in.  We long to make a change but at the same time we have the same emotional needs as all of our peers.  We want to be like them and be accepted by them.  But how can we truly fit in if in the back of our minds, we are seeking to change them, knowing that they are living with closed eyes?

"It's hard to walk this path alone.  It's hard to know which way to go."  We're always questioning our efforts, hoping that our isolation ends in victory.  We love what we do, but we can't help but wonder, "Will I ever save this day?  Will it ever change?"

But the truth is, we can't choose who we are.  We can change how we act to a certain extent.  We can modify some of our needs and wants.  But if we are different, we are different.  If we are less inclined to fit in with the usual crowd of people, then that is the case.  But like with all things, we have to hope that our differences were given to us for a reason.  And maybe we can't change people.  But we can try, with all our might, to "open their eyes."