Tonight, when the clock strikes 11:59 PM on New Year’s Eve, I’ll be sitting by myself in my bedroom on the third floor of our townhouse, looking outside at the dark sky, and listening for a song.
What song? you ask.
The song that wants to be my Song of the Year.
When I hear it, I’ll write down it down in my journal. Then when the clock moves past midnight, I’ll play the song aloud and let it seep into me as my Song of the Year. I learned this ritual from the always interesting and insightful Theresa Reed the Tarot Lady.
I did this ritual a year ago, and the year before that, and wow, was each song spot-on for the rest of those respective years! So spot-on, it kinda spooked me.
On December 31, 2019, I heard Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie play in my ear. Have you listened to the lyrics lately?
People on streets.
People on streets.
It’s the terror of knowing
What this world is about.
Watching some good friends screaming,
“Let me out!”
I don’t know why I heard that song on that dark night on the last day of 2019. But later, when the COVID-19 virus spread quickly across the world in the winter and Seattle went on lockdown by March, I thought about the people on the streets. I thought about the people dying. I thought about all of us being under pressure.
The last part of this song always gets me.
Can’t we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can’t we give love that one more chance?
Why can’t we give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?
‘Cause love’s such an old-fashioned word,
And love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night,
And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves.
This is our last dance.
This is our last dance.
This is ourselves.
Under pressure.
Under pressure.
Pressure.
What can’t we give love one more chance? *
Sheesh, still gives me chills thinking about it.
A year goes by. I survive. Marcus survives. Most of my friends and family members survive. I am grateful. And on December 31, 2020, I hear another song play in my ear.
This time, it’s Revolution by The Beatles.
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We’d all love to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We’d all love to change the world
Wasn’t 2021 a revolutionary year, both in good ways and bad? To me, the pandemic has caused a revolution. It has fundamentally changed the way we live, the way we work, the way we socialize.
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out
Amen. You can count me out. I’m for evolution, not destruction. I’m for helping people and protecting people’s health, and not about asserting my personal preferences.
Throughout 2021, the chorus of this song gave me some solace that we’d make it through the second year of the pandemic.
Well, don’t you know it’s gonna be…alright
don’t you know it’s gonna be…alright
don’t you know it’s gonna be…alright
Thank God, many of us made it through. Here in the U.S., vaccines for COVID-19 were created and disseminated at an incredibly fast rate. I’m so grateful to all the scientists that worked on the vaccines and to all the health care professionals that administered them.
So, what will I hear tonight when the clock strikes 12:59PM?
What earworm will crawl in and play at different times throughout 2022?
Will it be as spot-on as my songs for 2020 and 2021?
I have no idea. That’s the exciting part. You’ll have to wait until one year from now to hear the answer. Until then, I’m wishing you a beautiful night and a new year full of hope, good health, and peace. ✨
* My God, Freddie Mercury and David Bowie, I miss you both so much.
Peg Cheng is the author of Rebel Millionaire, a guide for how to retire as a millionaire even if you make a modest income, and The Contenders, a novel that asks, can enemies become friends? She is also the proud owner of Plaid Frog Press with her husband Marcus Donner. Born in Southern California to Taiwanese parents, Peg currently lives in Seattle, Washington.
Photo by Eric Nopanen
That’s spooky, how spot on those songs can be. Could you say more about the selection process? How do you choose which songs to audition? Or is it partly random?
It’s well past New Year, but last month I fell completely in love with a song, which hasn’t happened to me for years. Some sample lyrics:
What will you do?
With the rest of your day?
With the rest of your life?
You don’t know the sun will rise tomorrow
And isn’t it feral
That we don’t know how
And we don’t know when?
The end’s the only thing that we can count on
Isn’t it heaven
We can start again
Anytime anywhere?
Oh, I just want to lose this standing water
“Get My Bearings”
Joan As Police Woman
That might be my song of the year. It’s complex, and dark in places, so it’s probably not a great anthem in the usual sense, but it works for me. The music is extraordinary: it creates a kind of wide, dark space, like an empty stage where anything can happen. I think it’s partly due to the jazz inflected drumming–think of the drumming on Bowie’s Blackstar. Anyway, my friend Michelle and I geeked out on the song, and exchanged long emails about it. It felt like we were in our 20’s again.
Anyway, here’s to a great new year for you and Marcus!
I can always count on you, Edgy, to reply back to any posts I write about music. I figured you would reply with something pithy and deep, and indeed, you have.
I think these lyrics from “Get My Bearings” are good ones for 2022. We don’t know if the sun will rise tomorrow. We don’t know if the sun will shine on us tomorrow. We might be gone tomorrow. We need to live in the now. That’s actually one of my resolutions this year (it was also one last year and the year before…): to live in the present and stop ruminating so much about the future and lamenting about the past. Thanks for sharing this one.
In response to your questions, the songs come to me on New Year’s Eve night and I just let them in. Mainly, I try to get real quiet and see what earworm crawls in. That’s it. I will reveal my song for 2022 on December 31. Stay tuned. In the meantime, thanks for the well wishes and I’m hoping you and Tess have a marvelous new year too!
You know me too well. So, you just tune into your inner radio–that makes sense, I know you have a vast library of songs in your noggin. Still, it’s impressive–you certainly put the “I” in INFJ!
You might even be more impressed to know that I’m actually ENFJ. 😉