Musical playlists have been around since as far back as I can remember, for me, growing up in the 80’s it was simply called a “mixed tape.” A place to store songs that we love, some we even dislike, but we still can’t help singing along to it or dancing to it, when we think nobody is watching.
I’m a huge fan of music, I’m not educated in music beyond knowing how to play the clarinet and reading sheet music, but I enjoy music from hip-hop to rock to country to even some musical tunes from Broadway and Movies.
As music has begun streaming over our devices, computers, cell phones, and MP3 players, and social media has taken off a new form of game if you will has started among fan fiction writers and teenagers alike, the challenge is simple, put your “playlist,” on shuffle or random, pick song 1, 7, and 12, and write a story that connects each song in the order of which they were played with the characters you are writing about.
Now for this Night Owl we will not be doing the “song fic writing challenge,” but I thought it might be fun to do a similar bit, simple place my playlist, I use Spotify for my musical playlist needs, and then post the video or film clip of the song and give you some information about each song.
As I already randomly picked 1, 7, and 12. Those are the numbers I’ll be using.
1. Photograph by Ed Sheeran
Hot 100 Billboard: Entered the charts in 2015, peaked at #10 was on the Hot 100 for 30 weeks.
Ed Sheeran is a UK born singer/songwriter, who co-wrote the song with Johnny from Snow Patrol. He told Capital FM that it took the pair about ten minutes to write the sing, “I just started singing loving can hurt, loving can hurt” and then the song just kinda fell out within about ten minutes.”
The artist was sued by two songwriters who claimed Sheeran lifted their melody, rhythm and more from one of their original songs for this song. Song Facts states that in April of 2017 the parties had come to an agreement over the lawsuit.
To date Ed Sheeran has won 4 Grammys.
7. When I was Your Man by Bruno Mars
Hot 100 Billboard: Entered the charts in 2013, peaked at #1 was on the Hot 100 for 35 weeks.
Bruno Mars is a US singer/songwriter born in Honolulu, Hawaii who promoted the personal song about loss and regret via twitter
@Melaniee_27 The hardest song to write was when i was your man.. Just because it was a sensitive subject #SensitiveThugTweet
— Bruno Mars (@BrunoMars) November 20, 2012
Soon you guys will hear a song I wrote called When I Was Your Man. I've never been this nervous. Can't explain it http://t.co/nhUzns7O
— Bruno Mars (@BrunoMars) December 2, 2012
Songfacts states this was only the second piano and vocal only tune to top the Hot 100 following Adele’s 2011 hit song, “Someone Like You.”
To date Bruno Mars has won 11 Grammys.
12. Soldier by Gavin DeGraw
Hot 100 Billboard Entered the charts in 2013 peaked at #26 was on the Hot 100 for 15 weeks.
Gavin DeGraw is a US singer/songwriter who said of this song, via Songfacts, “I remember when we were tracking ‘Soldier,’ in the second verse I was digging in hard, the groove was so good and everyone was jelling. I heard Butch go, ‘Woo!’-a primal scream that said, ‘This feels so good.’ You can’t fake that. We kept it because you can’t re-create the performance that makes you do that.”
In 2013 DeGraw was nominated for a Grammy, but he didn’t win.
Question of the night, what’s on your playlist?
