On Facebook, you can opt to have your birthday show up as a notification on your Facebook friends’ Home Page on the day it is your birthday. Most people then just usually write something short, and frankly, a little meaningless from how generic it often is.
The person whose birthday it is, then, gets like a ton of notifications of these greetings. They may or may not go through them all, as most are the same old plain “Happy birthday!” variation. But what do you expect of mostly shallow “friendships” that come with most of most people’s Facebook “friends”?
However, some people go through all the comments so they don’t miss something they may want to respond to, or should acknowledge to avoid embarrassment of not having read it when someone took the time to write it… and asks about it later.
What I’m proposing is that if you want to be a little more genuine, and break the person’s routine scroll through all the relatively meaningless wishes a bit, add a little song link, like from YouTube. A lot of songs can be found there.
For all the people who came to visit my site. 🙂
What a delightful little ditty! And one with a double contraction at that! I mean, how many double contraction songs do you know of?
But as delightful as Eileen Barton’s version of the song might be, what might be even MORE delightful is this 1969 Sesame Street skit of the song with Ernie and Cookie Monster…
Most people do not hear most of the songs they know for the first time in the year the song was released. If anyone did, I would feel very sorry for them for missing out on all the great songs of the past from before they were born, or even great songs each year they lived they would have missed.
What most people don’t do is reflect each year on the best songs they heard for the first time that year. I’ve blogged some of mine, but not all so this is my entire collection for 2010 which could fit on a CD if I made one.
After several years of discovering a ton of jazz and older music, then tunes from musicals, so that they made up most of the songs in my list for recent years (2009 list), I am back with an eclectic set that reflects my true musical tastes and philanderings across genres. I even have not only one song from the current year, but two! A song from the year of the list was something I didn’t have for several years. I did find newly released songs I liked a lot in those years, but they didn’t compare to a variety of jazz and musicals standards I discovered in those years.
But before I share my list, let me ask you the same question as I answered to write this post. What were the best songs you heard for the first time in 2010?
I’d love to know so please do leave a comment. I can add the links to videos so people can hear what you’re talking about, if you would like. But if you don’t want to do it here, maybe write a blog post like this if you have a blog, or a Facebook note or something like that on a social media platform account you have. It might just be one of the more thoughtful notes to your friends all year.
Here is my list, in no particular order of preference, with videos streaming the songs. You will need to click on the YouTube link for some videos with some weird copyright condition that only allow them to be viewed on YouTube. I hate Grown Up Corporate YouTube that’s become a wussie and lost all its edge.
I came across this song at the end of May 2010 via one of those YouTube recommendation feature (enough to blog about it). The feature where because you watched something, its algorithms think you might like something else. Every now and then, it’s good, but this was something I really liked. I just think it’s a cute song, that’s all… and I don’t even have kids. OK, maybe I was influenced by the fact it was Ernie singing it since Ernie has always been my favourite Sesame Street character. But I like the song a lot, nevertheless, and I think lots of people will, too.
I thought when I first heard that song that it’d be a great lullaby for kids, but if you play the guitar or ukulele, you can now pull it out to accompany yourself with that lullaby. Or just sing it for fun like I do.
Ernie, from Sesame Street
The hardest thing about this song is the syncopation. The breaks in the lines are a little bit awkward in places. That’s why all the dashes and commas in the tabs. If those breaks don’t feel natural, then just take a little time to learn them and try not to think about them afterwards when you play. Trust your instincts after you’ve learned where the little breaks are in the lines.
These tabs all fit on one page to avoid the inconvenience of page turns. However, the letter size tabs (8.5″ x 11″) may be too small for your eyes. If so, you can either enlarge to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) using an automatic enlarge feature on many photocopiers, or download the tabloid sized versions for printing. The tabloid size tabs can be inserted into a typical letter sized binder on the 11″ size, and folded almost in half to fit. You just open each tab to use it.
Another challenge to this song is that there are lots of up stroke chord changes, denoted by the / in the tabs. Read left to right, the line goes up like your strumming motion does. If you’re not used to this, it’s not hard to pick it up. Try it and then try not to think about it is how I’d advise you learn. Just go with the flow.
I hope you, your kids, or someone else’s kids (good for entertaining), like this song!
Here is a Happy Earth Day song for you to sing to anybody you like!
The tune is set to Happy Birthday with Earth Day being a natural rhyme for birthday (no pun intended on natural). If you are not familiar with the tune (cause maybe you’re not familiar with English or English speaking culture that sings this), just play the video below of Ernie singing it to the letter U on Sesame Street. However, I suggest slowing it down a bit. Put a little drama and vibrato into it. And maybe jazz it up a little bit.
Happy Earth Day to you,
Happy Earth Day to you,
Happy Earth Day dear …
Happy Earth Day to you!
What are you going to do,
To keep sea and sky blue,
To reduce your C-O-2,
To be green the year through?
I made my Earth Day pledge yesterday. Will you be making one and, if so, what?
Digital Citizen 