The heat has finally arrived in the Pacific Northwest, so I can now truly empathize with all my friends who have been dealing with it for a while, now. Since we don’t have central air, we’ve been strategically using fans and opening and closing windows as the sun moves around to keep cooler air moving through the house. We even put a box fan in one of the kitchen windows blowing out, and that seems to be doing the trick quite nicely.

I do believe it also helps that our house was built in 1930, as they used to build houses way better back then (better construction materials, better insulation, etc.) and the fact that we’re on a hill that helps us get a good cross breeze through the house. Of course our master bedroom gets the blazing hot afternoon sun for hours – so I did buy a window A/C so we could sleep better at night. So far, so good! How are you all handling the heat?

Meanwhile, it’s Monday, and Monday means music! This month’s Honorary Conductor is Michelle of Musings and Merriments with Michelle! Her theme choice for this week is “Songs with NUMBERS in the title”. Grab your favorite tune(s) and dance along with us, won’t you? Let’s get this party started!

First up, this artist sings of the conflicted emotions of being aged 22 on this collaboration with Swedish producers Max Martin and Shellback. She was quoted as saying:

“For me, being 22 has been my favorite year of my life. I like all the possibilities of how you’re still learning, but you know enough. You still know nothing, but you know that you know nothing. You’re old enough to start planning your life, but you’re young enough to know there are so many unanswered questions. That brings about a carefree feeling that is sort of based on indecision and fear and a the same time letting lose. Being 22 has taught me so much.”

“I wrote [the song] about my friends, like finally I’ve got this amazing group of girlfriends and we tell each other everything, we’re together all the time. And I think that was kind of the marker of me being 22, like having all these friends and there’s all these question marks in your life, but the one thing that you have is that you have each other.”

The song’s music video sees the artist hanging out poolside on a beach with her friends, including former Gossip Girl actress Jessica Szohr. It was shot in Malibu, and artist said she’d never had this much fun shooting a video, because her friends in the video are actually her real life best friends. She dedicated the song to two of her close friends, actress Dianna Agron and singer/actress Selena Gomez.

Give a listen to the talented Taylor Swift with “22”:

Next up is a country duo – one hails from Pennsylvania, the other from Arkansas, they met in Nashville in December 2013 and hit it off immediately. They began writing together and quickly turned into performing as a duo.

This song about a short summer week spent with a new lover is the lead single from their debut album, and had 59 first week adds at Country radio, the biggest first week by a new duo in Country Aircheck History. About how the song came together, one of the duo was quoted as saying:

“We were sitting around and talking, we wanted to write a love song and use our own personal experience to tell that story. We were just sharing our stories about meeting girls in the summer and that summer love that you had.”

Give a listen to Dan + Shay with “19 You + Me”:

Next up is a song that follows a similar theme to Paul Simon’s “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover,” though in this instance it’s the narrator’s pride that has been hurt as he looks for excuses to tell his friends why she’s disappeared from his life.

Though the song’s title claims there are 50 ways to say goodbye, I was only able to find 11 lies about his farewell the protagonist tells, all involving his former beau’s demise. They are:

  1. Went down in an airplane.
  2. Fried getting suntan.
  3. Fell in a cement mixer full of quicksand.
  4. She met a shark underwater.
  5. Fell and no one caught her.
  6. Caught in a mudslide.
  7. Eaten by a lion.
  8. Got run over by a crappy purple Scion.
  9. Dried up in the desert.
  10. Drowned in a hot tub.
  11. Danced to death at an east side night club.

The song’s melody has been compared by some reviewers to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera.”

Without further ado, here’s Train with “50 Ways to Say Goodbye”:

Last, but certainly not least, is a song that originated from a simple line the artist had written down: “let’s get crazy, let’s get fifty-one-fifty”. He was quoted as saying:

“I was telling it to a friend of mine and he said, ‘What does that mean?’ And I told him it was Van Halen; it’s California police code for criminally insane. The next day, he was singing, ‘5-1-5-0, somebody call the po-po.’ I just started laughing because I thought that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. And he said, ‘I’m tellin’ ya, my kids cannot stop singing that.’ I said, ‘I don’t know, man.'”

A couple of days later, the artist was writing the song with The Beavers Brothers and he still had the line stuck in his head so he said to them, “Let’s write it and be done with it.”

So what does the title actually mean? The artist said:

“People don’t really know what it means but who really knew what ‘867-5309’ meant? I remember when that song was out [sings], ‘867-5309? Is that a real number? Is that an area code?’ So, maybe it’ll do what ‘Sideways’ did. I don’t think people really used that term before that. We’ll see.”

The song was the first ever all-numerical titled #1 in the Country chart history.

Get ready to dance and sing along — and have this song stuck in your head all day long — here’s Dierks Bentley with “5-1-5-0”:

That’s a wrap for this week – have a great Monday, see you on the dance floor!

Now on to the particulars of Monday’s Music Move’s Me:   PhotobucketI have the supreme honor and privilege of being a co-host with the inimitable Xmas Dolly and our musical cohort, the awesome Cathy from Curious as a CAThy, and while our beloved Callie of JAmerican Spice is taking a break, our friend Michelle from Musings and Merriments with Michelle is helping out with hostess duties! And, for the month of July, Michelle is also our Honorary Conductor and Spotlight Dancer!

Want to join in the fun? It’s easy – just find a tune that rocks your boat, post it and link up – don’t forget to grab Xmas Dolly…er, um, I mean her button…over at her place here. Check out Xmas Dolly’s sidebar for the random themes we sport each week – and you can always ask for a specific theme of music you like, too. Check out the other music lovahs and let’s jam!

INTRODUCING OUR “SPOTLIGHT DANCER” and Honorary Conductor for the month of July:



13 Comments

  1. Look at you girlfriend… ROCKIN’ THE HOUSE ALREADY! WOO HOO! Luvin’ your tunes! You really know how to pick them… but I think maybe you’ll save me a dance for in the a.m. right? I’m pooped. Between the Batavia Festival where we saw a great band called HI Infildelity & we ate at a new Burrito place.. great food! Now we’re goin” to bed early cuz Dave starts his new job in the a.m.! WOO HOO! YOU ROCK BABY GIRL!!! HUGS!

  2. Stacy,

    I wish we had central heat and air in our home. The window ACs aren’t enough on these hot & humid days. Our next house will definitely have an HVAC system. You introduced some new tunes to me. I got a kick out of Train’s “50 Ways to Say Goodbye”. Thanks for sharing the dance floor with me, my friend. 😉

  3. The Best investment for this heat is a heat pump! omg the difference in our electric bill for the winter and the cooling in the summer is perfect. 🙂

  4. I love the 5-1-5-0 song by Dirks Bentley. It has been hot here, but this year in the new house we have central air. First time ever for that, so it is kind of novel.

  5. I think I was a lot older than Taylor Swift when I turned 22. I don’t remember it being all that much fun. Of course, I was out of school, married and working full-time by that time.

    Dan and Shay brought a little too much angst to their song. I liked the Train song and Dierks Bentley’s. Van Halen also has a song “5150” but they aren’t anything alike, and yes, I checked.

    Good set!

  6. Nothing like central ac. I think I’d have died without it these past few years. I’d never heard of any of those. Thanks for sharing.

  7. We have a swamp cooler and AC…if we did not have it would be heat stroke here!
    Your country numbers were all awesome and of course new to me.
    I was bouncing with them.

  8. Don’t have central air but we did get some window units several years ago. It can be really hard when you are in an area where it rarely gets hot. So, out of these – I enjoyed the Train song the most (the mariachi band really made it!) but Dan and Shay really have some good harmony going. What great voices! 5150 might just be earworm worthy – we will see. Hope you had a great week!

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