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Discover Challenge

Song

Tell us a story about a piece of music that stayed with you.

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  • Want to participate? Each Tuesday, we’ll provide a theme. Publish a new post — in any genre or medium — in response to the theme. Create a pingback to this week’s challenge to share your post with the community. Learn More.

Music gives shape to so much of our daily lives, whether it floats around us as background noise or streams directly into our ears from our various devices. We constantly attach songs to people, places, and moments, and modify past associations as our relationships and personality evolve. Our mental archive of songs is an ever-expanding, complex network of memories and emotions (peppered with some badly remembered lyrics, for comic effect).

What remains constant, though, is the thrill of exploration — those unexpected moments when you first hear a song that stays with you. I recently chatted with J. Edward Keyes, editorial director at Bandcamp, a platform where emerging musicians share their work with curious listeners. It was fun to think once again about the serendipitous paths songs find into our lives:

Back in the days of record stores, the thing that excited me most was going through the stacks, finding something that I knew nothing about but had a cool cover or interesting title, buying it, and discovering a new artist or label that way. We’re operating by that same principle, emphasizing the joy in discovery.

For this week’s challenge, tell us the story of your special connection to one song (or another discrete musical composition, from a jazz tune to a techno track or opera aria). When did it start? How has it changed over time? Does the song’s meaning reside in the melody, the lyrics, the performer’s voice — or some other intangible element?

Need a refresher on adding media to your post? This support page includes all the resources you’ll need for both uploading and embedding video and audio files.

We recently encouraged you to experiment with mutlimedia-heavy posts, and this challenge invites you to continue down that path. You could embed music videos into an essay or piece of memoir, share a collection of images that are connected to a song, or even share a YouTube or SoundCloud playlist for a true mixtape experience.

I look forward to reading — and singing along with — your posts.

To help other participants and new fans find your response in the Reader, tag your post #DiscoverWP. Not sure how to add a tag? Learn more.

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    1. We publish a Discover Challenge every Tuesday — it’s not radically different than a Daily Prompt, but usually involves a more detailed introduction and more specific ideas on how to interpret it, whereas a prompt is just a one-word invitation to write.

      Liked by 2 people

  4. As you wish:
    A “multimedia heavy” post for a song: i used a gif (graphics interchange format,) as background and header, here — where about 23 images were animated to form an auto-play loop of a scene in motion: This gif, by Marvel Studios used non-commercially for academic purposes, illustrates the theory that space and time can be folded up.
    Dare i put some text on what i think of whether our species would eventually succeed in building the technology to bend time and space… you won’t be able to read it because of the gif (it’s moving) but that’s all for the better because i speak bleak — enjoy the song 🙂 the animation, and the impossibility of limiting imagination…

    at:

    https://marichulambino.com/2016/11/02/postaday-wordpressdotcom-discovery-challenge-song-in-multimedia-heavy-format/

    Liked by 1 person

  9. ‘It’s nice to be alive’ by Ball Park Music. It was featured in the movie Blended with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. The song has special meaning to me as my son introduced me to on the way home from having chemo one day. I said I loved it from behind dark sunglasses to hide the tears. I did love it and he took his last breath to this song at the age of 20 after fighting a year with Ewing’s Sarcoma. Some days I can sing along other days it’s way too painful. The power of music & lyrics.

    Liked by 2 people

  15. Thumbs up!! ^O^ I’m recently listening to an album, entitled “Wings” by a Korean BoyGroup which is the BTS. From 3rd to its 9th tracklist, it was written by each member that talks about their own experiences and emotions. It’s written in Korean so I searched for the meaning and lyrics. I was amazed and touched about it because they really put effort and emotions on their songs. Each of them has unique stories. I hope you’ll listen and like it. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  17. Music is a language you don’t need to know how to speak. It can make you feel happy,sad, calm. wake you up or help you fall asleep. It can take you to a happy place or a sad one. As an old soul, I love Stevie Wonder, Eagles. And appreciate John Mayer, 90s rock. But there are days I feel so happy and put on some dance music 🙂 What would the world be without beautiful sounds?

    Liked by 2 people

  18. For me it has to be ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ by Journey. The song gives me hope and inspiration in a way that nothing else can give me. I listen to it daily to remind myself that I have to ‘Hold on to that feeling’!

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    1. The photos portray feeling homesick and the lyrics I wrote under the photos are the lyrics that stuck out the most into my heart.

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    2. We’re currently experiencing a pingback issue that requires us to manually approve them — so all pingbacks will show up (yours already does!), but after some delay; we’ll do our best to approve these as fast as we can.

      Liked by 1 person

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