Skip to main content

Thursday, May 16th Sing-along Café Review

It was a lovely evening with lovely people! 

Home and Family is such a good theme! We really sang a lot and it was a good end to our season. We'll return in September, and hopefully the room won't be so hot. Maybe we'll aim for later in September? Stay tuned. My Singing Night will return, and the Sing-along Café will serve up more wonderful music to sing together.

Here's what we sang and listed to on May 16th (not in this order):

  • Home by The Piano Guys
  • Home by Phillip Phillips
  • Home by Michael Bublé
  • Home by Chris Tomlin
  • Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver
  • Take Me Home by Phil Collins
  • Take the Long Way Home by Supertramp
  • Our House by Madness
  • If I Had $1,000,00 by Barenaked Ladies
  • Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd
  • She's Leaving Home by The Beatles
  • We Are Family by Sister Sledge
  • Family Affair by Sly Stone
  • Father and Son by Johnny Cash  (2003)
  • Somewhere Out There by Linda Ronstadt & James Ingram
  • Cat's in the Cradle by Harry Chapin
  • Count on Me by Bruno Mars
  • I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womak
  • Wish You Pain by Andy Grammer
  • The Seal Lullaby by Eric Whitacre Singers
  • Homeward Bound by Simon & Garfunkel
  • Homeward Bound by Peter Hollens
  • Supermarket Flowers by Ed Sheeran
  • Hey Jude by The Beatles
  • Hymn for a Woman by That Woman 
Home and Family was a perfect theme for the end of this season. We started out early this year with lots of talk about love songs and Christian songs being about wanting to be seen and understood and safe. God is Love, and we are grateful for knowing that we are always loved, known and seen. We wish for that from our families too, and we're grateful for our loving and secure homes, loving parents, beautiful children and grandchildren. We want home to be a safe place where we're loved, where people light up when we walk in. It's not always like that, so often friends become family, friends become home. And, some people fall through the cracks.
It was upsetting but fitting, apropos of our theme, to see a homeless person sleeping on the sidewalk near the church door. How sad that they don't have a home! What went wrong? How did the streets become safer than home? We did feel a little uncomfortable singing some of the songs too. Home was not a good place in some songs. The song Family Affair reminded us that some awful things were/are kept private with the excuse that they're 'just' a family thing. We can't take our peaceful, loving homes for granted. I'm so grateful for knowing that I was loved very much and seen and safe in my family home. I worked hard to give that to my children too. 
That last song, Hymn for a Woman, we didn't finish because the lyrics were too small to read, and there were so many verses (just like some hymns, right?)! I recommend you listen to it and read the words, because it's really special. My daughter Victoria recommended it to me for Mother's Day, for you, us. That Woman is the woman from the band Oh Wonder. I love them, and we've sung their Hallelujah here before. I'm going to add it to the Home and Family playlist because it's about parents and children. 
We shed a few tears listening to Supermarket Flowers by Ed Sheeran. I also recommend this one highly. We sang it after listening to Chris Tomlin's Home, a Contemporary Christian song where going Home is going to Heaven. So, it was especially powerful, although Ed Sheeran's beautiful melodies and lyrics are already so strong. Get the tissues ready.
We ended the night with Hey Jude, with all the na-nas. Perfect.
We talked a little about ending the season now, and it made sense because it's getting hot, but also, busy, and some of us have reasons for missing a bunch of Thursdays coming up, and we are so few already.
Keep singing. There are hours and hours of music still on my playlists, and I've started a few new ones (Songs with sailing and flying, songs with food themes, heaven and angels, equality/diversity). I'll keep working on them, so that we can continue in the fall with lots of choices. Of course, I think we'll want to repeat some of the themes (la-las) and sing some of the best songs again too. So, if you haven't been joining us in person, but just through these reports, don't worry; we'll sing them again with you.



"I sing for you because I need to." This lyric from Sing You Home resonates with me. I need to sing my big emotions and thoughts. Thank God for music! We didn't sing this partly because I couldn't find a version with the lyrics. Here's a musical gift for you. So powerful. Tissues ready...


I'll sing for you because I need to Right now this is all I know You always said you wanted me to So I will sing you home I will sing you home

I'll sing for you because I need to Right now this is all I know I sing so we will not forget you I will sing you home I will sing you home



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sing-along Café 2025-01-23

Our café last night was so nice! I baked the most wonderful blueberry muffins, with a nice crunchy golden-brown top and juicy blueberries. Everyone wanted the recipe, so I'll include it at the end. Nibbling our muffins was easy, as a few of the songs we sang had very long instrumental interludes.  Our theme was Disney movie music. It was interesting to hear how different eras sounded different, from the 1940's to the present. It was partly the technology developing, but also the styles of music and the kinds of bands and orchestras that were popular. We don't hear a lot of twittering birds in the more recent Disney musicals, or coloratura singing with lots of tremolo. There were a few princesses whose singing we couldn't match.  Listening to and singing all those movie songs, we remembered times we watched them in the theatre or at home on our televisions when we were small and when our children were small. I had a memory from when I was 6 years old, and lots of stories...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sing-along Café 2024-09-05

Our theme was fun! September and School, and Summer too. I'm not going to list all the songs, but you can find them in my Apple Playlist, which you can access here. I had fun making this week's playlist, and we can keep using it for school-themed songs and for summer and fall, and even new beginnings. In fact, we'll use it next week again. We didn't listen to some key songs, so we can do them first (See You in September, She Blinded Me With Science) The fist song, the one that started the list, was September by Earth, Wind and Fire. Later, I found another version which I absolutelty adore. Lots of songs with a school theme came next, and we noticed that most of them had a negative or rebellious tone. School for me was fun and interesting and I loved it. I didn't break rules, I loved them, and thrived among rules and patterns and details. I'm not a rock star. Another thing that stood out in the school theme was love stories, and a focus on the opposite sex (most...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thursday, April 18 Sing-along Café Review

The theme for the evening was: Songs with La-las (and other nonsense: ooh, doo-dah, na-na, scoobie-doobie, bum-ba-bum, hey!). I call all of these little non-word lyrics la-las. They're often my favourite part of a song. Everyone can sing those words, usually. With scat singing, not usually, and with yodeling, not everyone. But, think about the Beatles song Hey Jude. At the end, everyone can sing along with the na-nas and some of us even like to harmonize with them. When my daughter was writing songs, I urged her to put some nonesense la-las in her songs. Don't worry about finding beautiful, powerful words for all the verses, or all the lines of the chorus. Sometimes, the lack of words makes a melody more powerful.  Here's the list of songs we sang and listened to: Can't Get You Out of My Head   by Kylie Minogue Everything   by Michael Bublé Those Were the Days   by Mary Hopkin Hey Jude   by the Beatles Tom's Diner   by Suzanne Vega &DNA De Do Do Do, De ...
Post a Comment
Read more