#44: Why Would Anyone travel without moving?

🎵 The March playlist is heeeere

Here are six more songs to celebrate the last Friday of March. I am very ready for spring in my hemisphere.🌱🐝 BRING ON THE LIGHT!

I enjoy putting together these playlists, because I love music, lyrics, and sharing little treasures and moods. So many songs talk about love and lovers, what other people want and what we want from them, rather than about our own drive. So I get genuinely excited when I find those snippets.

Sometimes my inner nitpicker says: This isn’t real work! I’m not a music critic or a DJ! This isn’t smart or edgy! Those songs are not exactly about intrinsic motivation, as self-determination theory would call it! I didn’t interview the lyricists to know if what they meant matches my superficial interpretation!

Still, I have fun. The same fun I had prepping .mp3 playlists for house parties, planning nifty transitions and sharing the joy of dancers jumping and swaying. The same fun I had burning a compilation CD with a specific listener and mood in mind, or receiving one from a friend, with just the right mix of familiar and new.

It’s like travelling in time and space, from my laptop. Hop aboard!

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As always, you’ll find the single songs as YouTube videos below, and the expanding playlist on Spotify:

If you enjoy this selection, find previous ones here and sign up below to receive the next instalments by email:

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Drifting Along · Jamiroquai

From his album Travelling Without Moving, which I played incessantly in 1996.

You know I'm drifting along (drifting along)
Can't see where I'm going
I will get to my destination

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Hang On Little Tomato · Pink Martini

Back in the 1990s I called a radio station and won tickets to see China Forbes, Thomas Lauderdale 🎹 and the rest of Pink Martini on stage and it was YUMMY.

And so I hold on to his advice
When change is hard and not so nice
If you listen to your heart the whole night through
Your sunny someday will come one day soon to you

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Les Envies · Tété

This whole album is 💕💕

I cut them short for a long time
Conscientiously
I thought it didn’t suit me
But they said it looked more proper, ya know
My life is a lot more fun than before
And much prettier, too
Oh yes, much funnier now than before
And much prettier since
I’ve been letting my desires grow out

The original in French:

Je me les suis coupées pendant longtemps
Consciencieusement
Moi je trouvais que ça m'allait pas
Mais eux disaient que ça fait plus propre sur soi t'sais
Ma vie est plus drôle qu'avant maintenant
Et bien plus jolie aussi
Oui bien plus drôle qu'avant maintenant
Et bien plus jolie depuis
Que je me laisse pousser les envies

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Make your own kind of music · Cass Elliot

I heard this song most recently on the Free Guy soundtrack. Elliot, the voice of The Mamas and the Papas’ Dream a Little Dream of Me, released Make Your Own Kind of Music as a solo artist in 1969. (It was also covered by Paloma Faith for a car advertisement campaign with a somewhat incongruous message of self-expression.)

But you gotta make your own kind of music
Sing your own special song
Make your own kind of music
Even if nobody else sings along

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What’s The Pressure · Laura Tesoro

Oh look, another Eurovision song from Belgium (see Part 1)! This one was composed by Selah Sue (🖤) and reminds me of Fleur East’s Sax. I recommend that bass line to get you moving in the midst of sedentary online days.

I see massive walls weighing down the people all around
They don't seem to mind at all
And I will try to stand my ground
Won't be bound
And bring out the best in me

What's the pressure?
You will grow
You will know in the end
That this is fiction
It's in your mind
Live your life instead

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You Want My Money · Lilly Wood and the Prick

I’ve been playing the pair’s punchy anti-consumerist [this is a link to the official video, which is probably PG-13] / anti-conformist ear-worm on repeat. (You might know them from their song Prayer C? Robin Schulz’s dance remix was a huge hit in 2014.) The video below is from a live performance on French TV:

I wanna look like what they want me to look like
Drink what they say is right
Wanna live in a house just like that
Live by the rules 'til I die