What was the last song you listened to, and what does it mean to you?

Can't believe I didn't see this topic sooner!

The last song I'd heard, to my memory, was "The Light Was Already Here" by Alex Preston. Keeping the fact that he's my friend's boyfriend and is kind-of going to win American Idol this year aside, I genuinely love this guy's artistry. It's all very Damien Rice meets Jason Mraz meets Ed Sheeran -- a winning ensemble, really. This song in particular speaks to me, like:

Don't take the past for granted. Use past experiences with love to shape your future. You'll never "move on" in the way other songs stereotype it to be -- it's never that easy. You'll always remember the breakup period and it'll always hurt when you look back on it, but you're supposed to take those moments and make a better person out of yourself. You've been searching for your light after that moment when the light was already there. Accept it, find solace in it, become it, move past it, allow yourself to enter something new, repeat. Despite the serious message there's a more hopeful edge to the chorus' final line that indicate "the one" is right in front of your face. A real "thinker's" track.

 

"Nirvana'd" by The Deer Run Drifters

It doesn't mean a whole lot to me right now - I just had listened to it for the first time today! However, I think it's a stroke of genius what a bluegrass band ended up doing for the bridge on this song, especially given the title of the track. Give it a listen, if Americana is your bag, and/or if you have a little knowledge of Nirvana's catalog, because it's super neat.

 

[video=youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx3snj0pC7Q[/video]
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Patrick Carroll - "Bulletproof"​

Patrick Carroll was part of the Traverse City, Michigan independent music scene, which is incredibly vast in its scope and full of many vibrant souls both young and young at heart. One of my best friends is part of a relatively well-known band in the area and she was friends with Pat before his death, having admired his music quite a bit. I'm not quite sure of the disease that had taken his life at only 25 years of age anymore, but this song stands as a palpable reminder of his wearing his disease on his sleeve; he found courage in not hiding from the fact that he was fearful of what was to come, and wrote the most beautiful songs revolving around his final days on his final album, 2012's Glow in the Dark. "Bulletproof" is just one of many songs from off of the LP that I feel reflect this; in another, you can even hear the ventilator he was on and the doctor who had been treating him speaking something illegible somewhere close-by. That he was writing and recording music quite close up to the literal end astounds me. This song is a true gift.

 

[video=youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ena9FWBIWdc[/video]​

Bob Dylan - "That Lucky Old Sun"​

I couldn't find the studio version from Shadows in the Night anywhere, but just know that the arrangement of this song that had made it onto the record is far more akin to Frank Sinatra's version than this live performance. Though each are great in their own right, it's the studio version that strikes a larger chord with me for a variety of reasons. Bob Dylan is a songwriter whom my father and I mutually respect and have each been listening to avidly starting around our early teens, with Sinatra being more of a link to the my mom who was raised on his kind of music by her family and was the first artist I'd ever seriously given a listen to, as well as my most favorite music artist of all time. "That Lucky Old Sun" is vying for my #1 favorite song of Sinatra's, so I was especially excited to hear Bob Dylan's arrangement.​

I'd ended up picking up Shadows in the Night, upon which Dylan's rendition is present, shortly after the passing of my grandfather earlier this year. We were just leaving San Diego a couple of days after his funeral and headed back to Arizona when my dad had heard this version of the song with me at the time. He was instantly transported decades back to car trips he'd have with his own father singing along to the Sinatra version of the song on the radio - one of the few fond memories of his father that he has after what I can only describe as years of unfortunate choices that the man has made thereafter (to the point that he has been excommunicated from our family). That was touching to me that it could help him recall one of the few good times with a man who should have been there for him in the way that my dad is for me, but I'd noted that he may not be the man he is today without having faced adversity and won. A couple of favorite artists, a favorite song of mine, and a new rendition of said song, all sewing together my parents and I a little closer through some sort of odd, cosmic fate.​