30 Days of Indie Travel Project: Music

Day 3 of the 30 Days of Indie Travel Project* is about music.

Music and travel memories often go hand in hand. A song can inspire our explorations, or it can take us back to a specific place and time. Tell us about your travel playlist and what it means to you.

I would never call myself a big music person.

I don’t attend a lot of concerts, listen to the radio or follow a lot of singers or bands.

But, I definitely have songs that I love and songs that bring back great memories every time I hear them.

I am a sucker for good, meaningful lyrics (or at least ones that I find meaningful) – I even have a tendency to work a few into my blog posts every now and then. So of course I have to do so in a post about music, right?

We were rolling through the Rockies. We were up above the clouds, when a station out of Jackson played that song.

And it seemed to fit the moment. And the moment seemed to freeze, when we turned the music up and sang along…

I have always loved that song by Trisha Yearwood and I feel like it can apply to any moment.

We’ve all had those moments.  Those moments when a song comes on and suddenly we are transported back to another time and another place. A time and place that we may not think of very often, if at all.  And maybe we hear that song and we want to hit the dance floor.  Or sway along in place.  Or just smile.  Or cry.

Whether it has been while traveling or at home, I have had a lot of those moments – and a lot of those songs.

I might be out for a run, listening to my iPod, when suddenly I am back on a Contiki tour bus circa 2001, my first trip to Europe.  Our tour manager is blasting this song I’ve never heard of but will soon be belting out every day at the top of my lungs:

Do you really like it? Do you really like it?

We’re lovin it, lovin it lovin it, we’re lovin it like this!

(by  a British act called DJ Pied Piper and the Masters of Ceremonies – brownie points if you’ve actually heard the song and were not on the tour with me!)

Or I might be out at a bar and someone puts Don’t Stop Believin’ on the jukebox.  And I can see myself sitting in a booth at Pizza Luce in Minneapolis around 2:00 a.m. on a Saturday night.  Together with the others around me, I slowly start singing along and the next thing we know the entire restaurant is singing the chorus with us.

I hear John Denver’s Country Roads and I am back in a bar in Austria, arms around my friends, dancing in a circle and singing along to a crazy techno remix.

Katy Perry’s Up and Down and I am in a small nightclub in Berlin.

Piano Man and I am in a piano bar in Las Vegas (of course).

Move Along and I am approaching mile 19 of the 2008 Chicago Marathon.

Livin’ on a Prayer and I am singing karaoke in a bar in Budapest.

Who the F*ck is Alice and there I am in Austria again.

YMCA and I am in my first nightclub in Paris, horribly disappointed that I’m hearing YMCA in a club in Paris.

More recently, the song stuck in my head is Sky Full of Lighters by Bruno Mars and Eminem. I heard it for the first time at Lollapalooza this summer and then heard it again probably twenty more times as I drove from Chicago to Minneapolis and back, moving all of my belongings to my parents’ house before departing on this trip.

This one’s for you and me, living out our dreams

We’re all right where we should be

Seems fitting, doesn’t it?

*Throughout the month of November, BootsnAll is inviting bloggers from around the world to join them in a daily blogging effort – the 30 Days of Indie Travel Project –  designed to reflect on how our travel experiences over the last year – or whenever – have shaped us and our view of the world. Bloggers can follow the prompts as strictly or loosely as they like, interpreting them in various ways and responding via text, photos or video posted on their own blogs.