Year 48: 2020

 

Good News by Mac Miller; Starting Over by Chris Stapleton

If you followed this blog from the very beginning, you may recall that I mentioned there was one year where I couldn't narrow it down to just one song and it may surprise you that it was the year 2020 (it surprised me, actually).  It's even more astonishing for me when you consider the genres where these songs come from-one song from a genre I despised much of my life (country) and the other from a genre that didn't exist in my world when I began falling in love with music in my late elementary school years (hip hop).

So, why these two songs?  Well, they come from two extraordinary talents, one of whom (Miller) is sadly no longer with us, having died in 2018 due to a drug overdose. I'll start with him and his song.  That it was released posthumously in 2020 fit perfectly-the year of COVID lockdown, when the days became indistinguishable from each other and our collective mental health was stretched to its limit.  I listened to this song often that year and was simultaneously struck by the naked honesty of Miller's lyrics and internal struggles, while mourning his loss. Another talent lost too soon in the musical world.

Regarding Stapleton and his song, well, I can't imagine it was his intent, but it spoke to me, right down to the vein, about the now several occasions that Marianella and I have experienced in stepping into the unfamiliar, from our wedding to Peru to Bangladesh to China to parenthood to back to Peru.  She is my lucky penny and I do believe I'm her four leaf clover (I have the tattoo, after all ;-)).