Feeling meemish

Carly has tagged me with a new meme: Name five to ten songs that affected your life.

I hadn't ever thought about it before, and I had to take a few days to think about it, but there are in fact a number of them. (More than ten, actually.)Here are the ones that spring to mind:

Irish Lullaby. This is the first song I remember hearing. My grandmother used to sit on the edge of my bed and sing it to me when I was very small. It made me feel safe and warm. Her mother probably sang it to her, and I sang to my babies when they came along. I hope they will remember it, too.

The Girl That I Marry, by Irving Berlin. I recall Robert Goulet crooning this one on TV, and my mother and I singing along, all misty-eyed and mellow: "The girl that I marry will have to be ... as soft and as pink as a nursery. A doll I can carry, the girl that I marry must be." The message stuck with me, that this was how women should be. It did not serve me well.

Cherish, by The Association. It was the quintessential love song of my adolescence, the slow dance number of any special event. First loves, raging hormones ... you get the picture.

Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog, Old Time Rock and Roll, and Sweet Home Alabama. There are few black moods these songs cannot lift. I keep 'em on hand the way some people keep Prozac.

Proud Mary. When I first saw Tina Turner blast this one out, it broke the spell of the whole woman-as-soft-pink-doll thing. I wanted to be a Tina, and if men didn't like it, well, tough.

Michael Jackson songs. The beat is perfect for me for aerobics. I lost a lot of weight to A Smooth Criminal, Thriller, etc.

Imagine, by John Lennon. Before this song, I had never looked at the world this way. Once I had, I could never go back.

Harry Potter Theme. The first time I surfed to the movie website, and those haunting, music box notes filled the house, my husband and sons were drawn to it like moths to flame. That led to interest in the movie, which led to the books, which led to my husband becoming a reader. Which is something I had always wanted to share with him, and has become a new bond between us.

Unwritten, by Natasha Bedingfield:

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

This one gives me hope. At this point in life, there is a lot more time behind me than there is ahead. And yet, today is where the future begins. And the possibilities are still endless.

P.S. Want to play? Name five to ten songs that made a difference in your life. Pass the meme along to five other people, with a link back to your own post and this one as the original. I don't think I actually have five people who like being tagged, so I'll just leave this as an open invitation. If you post, leave me a link in comments, OK?