If each decade of your life was represented by a song, what would they be?

Hmmmm… somehow, I thought this was going to be an easier post than it ended up being.

Surprise!

It’s not.

Okay, so songs representing each decade of my life.

Let’s see…

0-10 Um…this is a hard one. This was the time of Wildly Inappropriate Lullabies, and innocence and loss, and I’m not really sure what song would represent all that. Actually…wait. I do. Susan Mckeown’s “A Mháire Bhruinneall”. I never heard this song when I was a kid, and I’ve no clue what the lyrics mean…because Irish. But the whole vibe of this song feels like innocence and loss and freedom.

Oh, or this one.”My Mother’s Savage Daughter” nicely sums up this decade and then some.

“I am my mother’s savage daughter, the one who runs barefoot cursing sharp stones. I am my mother’s savage daughter. I will not cut my hair. I will not lower my voice.”

11-20: Gotta give it to “Safety Dance” from Men without Hats. This just perfect sums up my high school and college life with my friends. Probably not coincidentally, I discovered ren faires around this time, too. No one is surprised.

21-30: Ah, the childbirth and and learning how to mom years. Shriekback’s “Cradle Song” is definitely the song for this decade. It manages to perfectly encompass the the beauty and terror of parenthood.

31-40: Um…let’s call this fuck the patriarchy years (which will never stop, btw) and we’ve got two songs by the same artist for this one because I couldn’t decide which was more fitting.

“Little Plastic Castle” and “32 Flavors” by Ani Difranco

40 – 50 Soooooo many choices here, but I’ll try to narrow it down to a few.

“The Blessings” by Dar Williams

“And the blessings were like poets that we never take time to know, but when time stopped I found the place where poets go. They said, “Here, have some coffee, it’s straight black and very old, and they gave me sticks and rocks and stars and all that I could hold.”