Welcome to What’s It All About?
First of all I think I should make it quite clear that although this is a music blog, it isn’t really about music per se. Instead it forms an anchor for me to go on and write about other things – I am an enthusiast, but do not profess to be an expert on any of it.
At the start of 2016 I decided to get into the discipline of writing regularly and with a blog you have a good chance of doing that. I have always loved rock & pop trivia, so my plan was to write about a random song heard in the course of the day. Just about everything conjures up a memory if it’s an older one, so I thought it would be a good means of revisiting the song and writing about those memories.
As it turns out however, not as easy as I thought. Events of the day trump this random approach and on day one of the blog, news came through of the death of David Bowie so inevitably I wrote about him. Also, once you start to write, a thread develops and each post follows on from the last in terms of the thought process. On top of all that, you sometimes just want to write about what is going on in your own life at the time, and there is usually a song that will fit the situation.
So, inspiration can come from anywhere and (just to be clear) the songs I write about are not always my favourites, in fact sometimes I may even loathe them, but they do form the soundtrack to my life and can sometimes form a pesky earworm that lingers for days. I was born right at the start of the ’60s, so have over 50 years’ worth of tunes swirling round in my head to write about. Although I live in the North of Scotland with my husband (Mr WIAA) and “darling” daughter (DD), these are mainstream recordings everyone should have heard of.
I started off calling the blog The Jukebox Time Machine but soon changed it to What’s It All About? inspired by the opening lyric to the 1966 Bacharach and David song Alfie. The first name just sounded too Dr Who-ish and didn’t capture the essence of what I am trying to do here. In 2020, at the touch of a screen, you can find out so much more about each song than was ever possible first time around and I soon realised, when revisiting the tracks of my years, that a particular song was often not what I had always imagined it to be about at all (and you feel a bit foolish for having been so naïve). Likewise, the memory associated with it, in hindsight, was not all that it had seemed at the time either – Yes we do eventually work out “what it’s all about” and this has been an interesting journey so far.
At the beginning of all this I managed to write daily, but life does tend to get in the way so not quite as frequent now although I do try to publish at least once weekly. A post will always have a featured song, the lyrics, a few pictures and a video clip. If possible, the audio track will also be embedded.
Feedback is encouraged and please feel free to suggest a song of your own to be included – A challenge indeed.
Thanks for visiting the blog and welcome aboard.
Alyson
Disclaimer:
The song clips and pictures are added to complement the stories I write about them. They are included for nostalgia purposes and to champion sometimes long forgotten artists – If you have an issue with anything posted here please contact me and I will remove it. Likewise, the opinions expressed here are of course, entirely my own.
The banner picture at the top of the page is courtesy of Veli Bariskan, a local photographer who kindly let me use it for my blog.
What's It All About? 