I love your top five! Had the pleasure of seeing Wilco in Iceland in 2023. And somewhere in a desk drawer is a guitar pick that one of the guys handed to me after a taping of ACL in… 2000, maybe? 🤔 Thx for reminding me to add them to my extended morning tea list!
Great lists, you two! Thea, we've got a lengthy feature on Jeff Tweedy and his boys in this Tuesday's Tune Tag with Peter C. Baker of "Tracks on Tracks"! Jeff's lads are musicians, too, as I'm sure you know, and Spencer also has a Substack, like his Daddy! See ya Tuesday!
Love this one! Going to have to go listen to the songs you guys came up with!
Black Coffee in Bed by Squeeze was the first one that came to my mind. It’s just a great song about coffee!
This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) by the Talking Heads. I woke up one morning with this song stuck in my head, which led to revisiting the band and becoming obsessed for months. But, this song is a great morning song, and I have woken up with it stuck in my head a lot.
Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani. I’m a single mom of four children. Mornings are not their jam. I spend an hour or two going from door to door waking kids every school day morning. And that shit is bananas! 5-6 years ago, I said that to myself one morning, and then played this song really loud to try getting the kids up. My oldest (who is in his first year of college and oversleeping a LOT!!) had his bedroom in the basement, and I would run down there with my cell phone held up to a megaphone and sing and dance. After a week of this, he asked me to stop because it was traumatizing him, and making him hate the song. Not the most chill morning song.
Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield. I was playing each song as I was writing this, and the song that played after Hollaback Girl reminded me of this one - I’ve heard it a few times recently. It’s a “go get the day” song, and I should just make it my morning song from now on.
Saturday in the Park by Chicago. I sing this song every Saturday morning when I realize it’s Saturday.
Amen, sister! We taught my son by age 3 that he had to stay in his room and play until his clock said 8:30 a.m. (he had a bathroom). Then, he learned how to grab cheerios, feed the dog and turn on the TV and watch Scooby with the dog. That gave us until 9:30 am. 😄
I love the range of moods in that list. It also makes me think of "Waking up " by Elastica.
"Waking up and getting up has never been easy / Oh woah ah, I think you should know / Oh woah ah, I think you should go / Make a cup of tea, put a record on"
Great concept and selections! Rain is one of my favourite Madonna songs. The entire Erotica album is just spectacular (close second, for me, to Bedtime Stories).
Taking Thea's premise of moments of seasonal reflection accompanied by a hot beverage of some sort or other:
At the onset of Spring, the light changes. If you own a chameleon, as I have several times in the past and will again, they sense it before you do and become more active. They are creatures made of light. The widening poles of dawn and dusk are cold and crisp in a way that is different to the creep of Autumn, when you are headed towards a decline; a period of dormancy. Perhaps there is a morning when there is time to sit for a moment and acknowledge the brightness; to feel the world as it gradually awakens and comes alive once more with potential. On such an occasion, a man of my general physical proportions and musical tastes might choose to listen to any number of songs by The Harmony Ridge Creekdippers. I have chosen 'When School Begins', not only because the title nods its head towards new beginnings, but because the band itself is sleepy and incohesive, as if they are waking up after an extended period of hibernation. The chiming opening notes of a piano are bookended by Victoria Williams' and Marc Olsen's vocals, all three beginning within a few seconds of each other and never quite coming together on a song that has the quality of a lucid dream that you drift in and out of.
Summer. The optimistic outbound tourist expeditions on foot through the meandering streets of unfamiliar European cities, to cafes recommended in guidebooks or online, are fated, past noon, to have evolved into sore-footed forced marches over flat cobbles in the returning direction of a hotel or Airbnb. 'In Verona' by Lael Neale is an extended meditation on the bitter end of a relationship that is mentioned only in passing. A gently rising piano refrain accompanies the barest lyrical glimpses of an Italian city infused with Catholic imagery. Every so often the piano holds on the same repeated note – a prelude to a chorus that takes the form of a question: How will I ever find my holy way through these stone streets?
The plunging notes of a double bass, loosely packed in looped vinyl crackle; brittle spokes of broken sound going round and round, unattached to anything. The Guillemots' 'Southern Winds', ironically taken from a concept album based on Spring, is nonetheless my choice for Autumn: A song that is both emotionally and musically bereft, parred down; half-starved in places, lent gravitas by a wordless passage of impressionist minor piano notes, where the melody sounds like it's been hollowed out; one of those button pushing moments that immediately conjures a mental image of dark cloud shadows racing over desolate moorland.
The opening to 'Alone' by The God Machine scrolls despondently back and forth like the winter surf of a nondescript tide, running up and down a dreary beach. Thermos weather. Sipping tea from a plastic cup, with a tiny finger-pinching handle, that doubles as the lid of a flask, while perusing monochrome skies that will have completely darkened by mid-afternoon. The band were gone by this point, broken beyond repair by the sudden death of their bass player Jimmy Hernandez. Knowing this only adds to the desolation laid down in the opening lines - “The trees are bare and the sky is grey, like veins in the side of a mountain”. Even when the song gathers enough stored momentum to raise itself from the doldrums and rage at the unfairness of life, it's a run at nothing that peters out.
A hinging double piano note counting away the seconds, dropped in among any other markers of time that you might have scattered around you, forms the core of 'The Days Of Our Lives' by The Blue Nile – a montage in three verses; three different people – the women who lives in London waiting in her dressing gown for her children; a man driving through the provincial towns of great Britain; church bells and wedding days in the middle eight; another man, this one displaced, moving from city to city, wearing somebody else's clothes, perhaps homeless. “An ordinary miracle is all we really need,” sings Paul Buchanan. The kind that one might observe during a quiet moment over coffee, on an otherwise ordinary day.
I love your top five! Had the pleasure of seeing Wilco in Iceland in 2023. And somewhere in a desk drawer is a guitar pick that one of the guys handed to me after a taping of ACL in… 2000, maybe? 🤔 Thx for reminding me to add them to my extended morning tea list!
Great lists, you two! Thea, we've got a lengthy feature on Jeff Tweedy and his boys in this Tuesday's Tune Tag with Peter C. Baker of "Tracks on Tracks"! Jeff's lads are musicians, too, as I'm sure you know, and Spencer also has a Substack, like his Daddy! See ya Tuesday!
Right on!! 👍🏻 I’ll share with my fellow Wilco fans.
Roger, Wilco….over and out! Thanks, Thea!
Love this one! Going to have to go listen to the songs you guys came up with!
Black Coffee in Bed by Squeeze was the first one that came to my mind. It’s just a great song about coffee!
This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) by the Talking Heads. I woke up one morning with this song stuck in my head, which led to revisiting the band and becoming obsessed for months. But, this song is a great morning song, and I have woken up with it stuck in my head a lot.
Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani. I’m a single mom of four children. Mornings are not their jam. I spend an hour or two going from door to door waking kids every school day morning. And that shit is bananas! 5-6 years ago, I said that to myself one morning, and then played this song really loud to try getting the kids up. My oldest (who is in his first year of college and oversleeping a LOT!!) had his bedroom in the basement, and I would run down there with my cell phone held up to a megaphone and sing and dance. After a week of this, he asked me to stop because it was traumatizing him, and making him hate the song. Not the most chill morning song.
Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield. I was playing each song as I was writing this, and the song that played after Hollaback Girl reminded me of this one - I’ve heard it a few times recently. It’s a “go get the day” song, and I should just make it my morning song from now on.
Saturday in the Park by Chicago. I sing this song every Saturday morning when I realize it’s Saturday.
Single mom power! Morning tea is the only reflective time you probably have. Enjoy and thank you for reading.
Yes! On weekends, I do NOT wake kids up because I enjoy those stress free quiet mornings to myself!
Amen, sister! We taught my son by age 3 that he had to stay in his room and play until his clock said 8:30 a.m. (he had a bathroom). Then, he learned how to grab cheerios, feed the dog and turn on the TV and watch Scooby with the dog. That gave us until 9:30 am. 😄
I don't know how you did that, both my 8 and 4 year old are up at 5:30 am 7 days a week. They make as much noise as possible thereafter, haha.
Whew! That’s too dang early for this night owl. 🦉
My kids were ages 10+ when they finally stopped getting up at the crack of dawn!
Love the inclusion of Hollaback Girl, hahah!
I love the range of moods in that list. It also makes me think of "Waking up " by Elastica.
"Waking up and getting up has never been easy / Oh woah ah, I think you should know / Oh woah ah, I think you should go / Make a cup of tea, put a record on"
Going to give that one a listen! I think I’ve only heard Connection.
I think it's quite funny in the image of Rock & Roll laziness.
So, I asked Alexa to play this song, and then surprisingly it played the whole album, which was actually pretty great! Thanks! 😊
Great list.
I love the juxtaposition of Lagwagon and Allman Brothers.
Weekday list
1. Eighties, Killing Joke.
2. Gothic Girl, The 69 Eyes
3. Joan Crawford, BOC
4. I want to conquer the world, Bad Religion
5. Machine gun blues, Social Distortion
Weekend list
1. Southern Cross, CSN
2. Driver seat, Sniff n the Tears
3. Rock you like a hurricane, Scorpions - acoustic aversion, 2001.
4. Layla, Derek and the Domino's
5. Miracles out of nowhere, Kansas
Great concept and selections! Rain is one of my favourite Madonna songs. The entire Erotica album is just spectacular (close second, for me, to Bedtime Stories).
Sooo good. It was a pinnacle of her career. Of course, she’s had so many pinnacles. 😄
Taking Thea's premise of moments of seasonal reflection accompanied by a hot beverage of some sort or other:
At the onset of Spring, the light changes. If you own a chameleon, as I have several times in the past and will again, they sense it before you do and become more active. They are creatures made of light. The widening poles of dawn and dusk are cold and crisp in a way that is different to the creep of Autumn, when you are headed towards a decline; a period of dormancy. Perhaps there is a morning when there is time to sit for a moment and acknowledge the brightness; to feel the world as it gradually awakens and comes alive once more with potential. On such an occasion, a man of my general physical proportions and musical tastes might choose to listen to any number of songs by The Harmony Ridge Creekdippers. I have chosen 'When School Begins', not only because the title nods its head towards new beginnings, but because the band itself is sleepy and incohesive, as if they are waking up after an extended period of hibernation. The chiming opening notes of a piano are bookended by Victoria Williams' and Marc Olsen's vocals, all three beginning within a few seconds of each other and never quite coming together on a song that has the quality of a lucid dream that you drift in and out of.
Summer. The optimistic outbound tourist expeditions on foot through the meandering streets of unfamiliar European cities, to cafes recommended in guidebooks or online, are fated, past noon, to have evolved into sore-footed forced marches over flat cobbles in the returning direction of a hotel or Airbnb. 'In Verona' by Lael Neale is an extended meditation on the bitter end of a relationship that is mentioned only in passing. A gently rising piano refrain accompanies the barest lyrical glimpses of an Italian city infused with Catholic imagery. Every so often the piano holds on the same repeated note – a prelude to a chorus that takes the form of a question: How will I ever find my holy way through these stone streets?
The plunging notes of a double bass, loosely packed in looped vinyl crackle; brittle spokes of broken sound going round and round, unattached to anything. The Guillemots' 'Southern Winds', ironically taken from a concept album based on Spring, is nonetheless my choice for Autumn: A song that is both emotionally and musically bereft, parred down; half-starved in places, lent gravitas by a wordless passage of impressionist minor piano notes, where the melody sounds like it's been hollowed out; one of those button pushing moments that immediately conjures a mental image of dark cloud shadows racing over desolate moorland.
The opening to 'Alone' by The God Machine scrolls despondently back and forth like the winter surf of a nondescript tide, running up and down a dreary beach. Thermos weather. Sipping tea from a plastic cup, with a tiny finger-pinching handle, that doubles as the lid of a flask, while perusing monochrome skies that will have completely darkened by mid-afternoon. The band were gone by this point, broken beyond repair by the sudden death of their bass player Jimmy Hernandez. Knowing this only adds to the desolation laid down in the opening lines - “The trees are bare and the sky is grey, like veins in the side of a mountain”. Even when the song gathers enough stored momentum to raise itself from the doldrums and rage at the unfairness of life, it's a run at nothing that peters out.
A hinging double piano note counting away the seconds, dropped in among any other markers of time that you might have scattered around you, forms the core of 'The Days Of Our Lives' by The Blue Nile – a montage in three verses; three different people – the women who lives in London waiting in her dressing gown for her children; a man driving through the provincial towns of great Britain; church bells and wedding days in the middle eight; another man, this one displaced, moving from city to city, wearing somebody else's clothes, perhaps homeless. “An ordinary miracle is all we really need,” sings Paul Buchanan. The kind that one might observe during a quiet moment over coffee, on an otherwise ordinary day.
What lovely vignettes— I can picture each so clearly in my mind. Listening to your pairings this weekend! Thank you for sharing.
I don’t think I know any of the songs featured here but I love the reasoning behind them all and I’m now going to go and have a listen.
For me this category is about relaxation and reflection so I’ve gone for songs that I find beautiful and calming:
Sweet Music Man - Kenny Rogers.
It’s a gorgeous song but also takes me straight back to the Sunday mornings of my early childhood when my mum would play this album on repeat.
Endgame - REM.
Kokomo, IN - Japanese Breakfast
Windmills - Toad The Wet Sprocket
Silk - Wolf Alice