fling93 loves fishies

Songs about Breathing

This past week was the week from hell. I got a terrible flu or something — fever up to 103.5 — starting last Thursday night and running through the weekend, spoiling two planned social events as well as killing the time I had planned to work on my mountain of homework for my Statistics class as well as study for my final in that and in my Microeconomics class and write up that long blog post I haven’t finished yet (shyeah, right!).

And of course, that was topped by the fact that, despite still running a fever of 102, I was going to try and tackle some of the homework on Sunday when I found out that our home PC didn’t boot anymore. Instead, I heard the hard drive doing this:

“scritch scritch scritch scritch”

(pause)

“scritch scritch scritch scritch”

(pause)

This repeated over and over again before I finally got a message that Windows couldn’t boot because some important file was missing or corrupted. Not good. And a Windows XP reinstall (which I performed despite a temperature of 102) only worked temporarily before I got the same problem again (yeah, it’s gotta be a bad drive).

So… no, it was not a good weekend at all. But still, there was a bright side.

Thankfully, all of my digital photos are on an external drive, and most of my writing notes as well as all of my MP3s are on the iBook. So at least there’s that. But the PC had been my primary photo-processing and workflow machine, which is why my Flickr account is suddenly dormant after months of obsession.

But still, things weren’t all that bad, and they did get better. I only lost a couple of problems worth in my stat homework, and was able to get enough of it done via paper and pencil to get most of the credit, and I think I did well enough on the finals to ensure solid A’s in both classes (I probably could’ve failed the econ one and still gotten an A). So my night classes are now done, and I have but one more week left of full-time work there. Yay for some breathing room!

And yes, after another several days of lingering coughing and congestion and barely being able to talk, I can finally physically breathe freely again today (although my voice isn’t completely back yet). Ahhhhh… Such a relief.

So I think this calls for a celebratory Top Ten list of songs about breathing. I’ve been in the playlist creating mood for a few months now, with Rich’s End of Year Mix CD exchange coming up and also after brainstorming some airplane songs. Also, this playlist idea was actually something I’d actually been putting together for a while. I’ll add links to the iTunes Music store and other places later. Anyway, here we go…

10) The Silent League - Breathe

If you’ve seen my last.fm profile (formerly Audioscrobbler), you know I’ve been working through last year’s SXSW songs that were made available via BitTorrent here. This is one of the keeper songs I found, and it happened to have “breathe” in the title, and so here it goes. That’s all I have to say about that.

9) Shania Twain - It Only Hurts When I’m Breathing

From Up! (Red Album), but this is the only song I own off of it. Okay, this song doesn’t really fit my situation so much, but the song is so pretty and so is Shania.

9 redux) Melissa Etheridge - Breathe

From Lucky, and again, this is the only song I own from it. Geez, are Melissa and Shania singing the same song? I mean, the chorus to this one is “I’m alright, I’m alright. It only hurts when I breathe,” and from the music it sounds so upbeat and happy. Furthermore, I think both songs were released around the same time (which was the impetus for my thinking up this playlist). Crazy world. This is why I’m cheating and counting these both as #9.

8) Anna Nalick - Breathe (2 AM)

From her debut album, Wreck of the Day, but again, this is the only song I own. She might seem end up being a one-hit wonder, and none of her other songs I sampled caught my ear, but since she’s a fan of Tori Amos, I have a feeling she’ll be around for more some time. In any case, I like this flowing song as well as the video, and it fits this list quite nicely.

7) Michelle Branch - Breathe

Geez, it’s about time I got to a really upbeat one. From her second album, Hotel Paper, from which I only own a few selected songs. I am a sucker for Michelle Branch, and although this is not her best song and was probably somewhat overplayed (I don’t listen to radio much, but the fact that I heard it at all is some indication), it’s still as catchy as heck, cuz I’m also a sucker for extended high notes with the chords changing underneath, as she does in the chorus.

6) The Prodigy - Breathe

From Fat of the Land, which I’m sure you already own (and should, if you don’t). This was the band that finally got me to drop my snobbish snubbing of all music that did not feature a human drummer (well hey, I’m a big Rush fan), and I don’t think I’d have given psytrance a chance otherwise. This song was a big hit, so I probably don’t need to say much about it.

5) Sia - Breathe Me

From Colour the Small One and Six Feet Under, Vol.2: Everything Ends, neither of which I own. I was thinking of putting this on my 2005 Mix CD, but as I’m thinking it’s not going to quite make the cut, I’ll give it consolation status by including it here. Yes, this was the song used at the incredible montage ending of Six Feet Under while Claire is driving. I do have to say, the song is not quite as powerful without the visuals, but any fan of the show has got to have it if only because it reminds you of that amazing ending. And it’s a pretty darn good song, too.

The iTunes Music Store is poopy about it, only offering it if you buy the whole album (not a palatable option for me since I already owned a lot of the other songs). So I bought it at All of MP3. You prepay $15 (I had problems trying just $10) and can download songs at the encoding of your choice (various bitrates of MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats are available) at only $0.05 to $0.10 each, depending on the file size which is just really cool (and legal, as far as I know). And a surprisingly decent selection.

4) Dream Theater - Just Let Me Breathe

From Falling Into Infinity. Being a classically trained pianist (albeit one who let his skills rust badly), I’ve always been a fan of progressive rock from the likes of Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Yes. It’s such a rush (pun intended) to hear technical brilliance of multiple players melded into a complex, yet cohesive, musical mix. And it’s so cool to have a great band like Dream Theater soldiering on, melding the sound with a hard metallish edge. John Petrucci is just an amazing guitarist, and this song just rocks.

3) Frou Frou - breathe in (Watkins Vocal mix)

From their excellent debut album, Details. Since Frou Frou is all about Imogen Heap’s breathy vocals (combined with Guy Sigsworth’s studio skills), they’re a perfect fit for this list. While I do appreciate the laid-back version of this song on the album, I’ve always greatly preferred this uptempo remix. Check it out.

2) Bush - Machinehead

From Sixteen Stone, which I will probably never buy. What, a song without some from of the word “breathe” in the title by a band that shares the name of our President and is little more than a generic Nirvana wannabe? What, is fling smoking crack? Does this mean he’s retracting his 8,000-word essay criticizing Bush? Um, no. Chill out, this is just a list of songs, and let’s remember that the beginning of this song (yes, by an unremarkable band with a bad name) features a memorably rhythmic “breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in.” And it’s the part that makes the song, in my opinion.

Well, if I’m going to include a song without “breathe”, I might as well pull a Spinal Tap and crank this Top Ten list up to eleven for that extra push over the cliff and include…

1) Radiohead - my iron lung

A great rocking song from a great band and from The Bends, a great album. Not so much about breathing, but since I can’t seem to work in a Tori song, I gotta work in a Radiohead song somehow. It’s freakin’ Radiohead. Nuff said!

Argh, eleven whole songs and I didn’t work in Tori Amos like I did the last time I did this (gosh, that was a long time ago). I mean, the best fit is probably “China” from Little Earthquakes which features the lyric, “I can feel the distance as you breathe” but that just wasn’t enough for me to squeeze it in.

Oh well. I was going to suggest anybody else who wants to come up with their own lists of songs about breathing to go ahead, and to also offer a burned CD of this to anybody who might possibly want one (um, assuming it fits), but as you know, Tori Amos not being featured #1 on a fling music list can mean only one thing: the universe is about to cease to exist. Which is too bad, now that I can finally breathe again and was about to embark on a new life journey, and I just know I was surefire bound to attract Natalie Portman’s attention any time now.

Oh, wait! I’ve just received word that I was mistaken! The universe isn’t ending, as I previously feared. It’s just that hell is freezing over. Well, that’s actually way cool. I’ll just learn how to play hockey down there. And then create a list of songs about hockey…