This is the time of year my grocery store offers little bundles of ten closed daffodils for $1.79, and if your grocery store does something similar I highly recommend finding a vase in the back of your highest cabinet and taking it down and putting some daffodils into it. I go to the grocery store twice a week, so if I buy a bunch each time, I maintain a nice full bouquet even when I have to take out the wilted ones. It bolsters my late-winter mood SO SURPRISINGLY MUCH, just having some yellow spring flowers in the house. If you don’t have a vase but you do have a Goodwill, check there: ours has TONS of vases for like a dollar each, and I would think their supply would be especially high right after Valentine’s Day.
Speaking of mood-bolstering, it was so fun to talk about music with you guys on Twitter the other day.
I sat at my computer while replies came in, listening to option after option on YouTube. So many good songs! I went with Kiss (Prince), Owner of a Lonely Heart (Yes), Everybody Wants You (Billy Squier), Call It Love (Poco), and The Cure (Lady Gaga). (That last one doesn’t at all match what I was looking for but I wanted to hear it so I put it in.) There were a ton of other suggestions that were exactly the kind of song I like, and the only reason I didn’t choose them was that I’d already chosen them on previous occasions. Here are some of those, mixed with others I’ve brought before, in case you are looking for similar songs:
Time After Time (Cyndi Lauper)
Footloose (Kenny Loggins)
Take On Me (A-ha)
Venus (Bananarama)
Joking (Indigo Girls)
Least Complicated (Indigo Girls)
Hearts of the World Will Understand (Starship)
We Built This City (Starship)
Love Walks In (Van Halan)
Dancing in the Dark (Bruce Springsteen)
Dancer in a Daydream (Ace of Base)
All Out of Love (Air Supply)
Can’t Fight This Feeling (REO Speedwagon)
Walking on Sunshine (Katrina and the Waves)
Jump for My Love (Pointer Sisters)
Straight Up (Paula Abdul)
Love and Affection (Nelson)
Free Your Mind (En Vogue)
I Remember You (Skid Row)
Just Can’t Get Enough (Depeche Mode)
Invisible Touch (Genesis)
Edge of a Broken Heart (Vixen)
Pictures of You (The Cure)
So Alive (Love and Rockets)
Mystify (INXS)
Slide (Goo Goo Dolls)
Name (Goo Goo Dolls)
Walk Like an Egyptian (The Bangles)
Just What I Needed (The Cars)
Magic (The Cars)
Best Friend (Queen)
Wait (White Lion)
Don’t You Forget About Me (Simple Minds)
Closing Time (Semisonic)
Good Riddance (Green Day)
Wonderwall (Oasis)
I Want You (Savage Garden)
Against All Odds (Phil Collins)
Take a Chance on Me (Erasure)
Bizarre Love Triangle (New Order)
Birdhouse in Your Soul (They Might Be Giants)
For the Longest Time (Billy Joel)
Obsession (Animotion)
Forever Young (Alphaville)
To Be With You (Mr. Big)
The Power of Love (Huey Lewis and the News)
Glory of Love (Peter Cetera)
Jimmy Olsen’s Blues (Spin Doctors)
Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong (Spin Doctors)
You Spin Me Round (Dead or Alive)
(I realize some of these came out in the 1970s, but we were still listening to them later on. There was a big Queen fad after Wayne’s World came out, for example. And in high school I found a Cars Greatest Hits album on a clearance rack and listened to it a million times.)
Thank you so much for sharing this! Great songs–I added a ton to my amazon playlists. Some of these songs/groups I had completely forgotten about. I used to have a huge crush on Nelson, lol.
I love how just reading the title of the song can send it spinning around my head. So fun!
(Now I am craving “Say It Ain’t So” by Weezer… “Spiderwebs” by No Doubt… and “Lovefool” by The Cardigans.)
Such great songs! I’m gonna add, “One Way or Another” by Blondie, “We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go’s, “Walking on Broken Glass” by Annie Lennox, “Nothing Compares 2 U” sung by Sinead O’Connor (written by Prince!), and “When U Were Mine” sung by Cyndi Lauper (written by Prince!)
To Be With You (Mr. Big), when this song really opens up, it strikes me, every time, as what pop music is for. This is such a fun list, thanks for sharing :)
I love everything about this! Daffodils and music! And the songs listed…oh my heart!!!! Just wanted to add that “On Broadway” by George Benson came on the radio this morning while I was in the ridiculously long school drop off line, and my heart soared and I started doing the weird “mom dance in the driver’s seat” thing. I don’t remember ever having any over-the-top. fondness for this song, but this morning it was perfection.
When I worked in the city, I used to get daffodils from street vendors and put them on my desk around this time of year. I loved watching them open up. I was just thinking I should do that again this year, if I can find some.
My grocery had tulips like your daffodils this week. I always check the sale bins because I love flowers in the house but can’t justify full price. I was so baffled to find three big vases of tulip bulbs, at least seven blooms a piece, with several more coming in, on sale. 3.50 for a huge glass vase that can be again and again thats made to hold/grow winter bulbs. You’re not joking about the happiness they bring. Just catching a glimpse of them as I go about my day makes me smile.
I seriously live in the wrong place!
In our area, any bunch of supermarket flowers is $8-10 minimum. Daffodils and tulips in the spring are usually around $9, sometimes $11. We are getting ripped off!
(We are less than happy here for many reasons, but cost of living is the big one.)
I feel your pain, Kay! I checked the supermarket yesterday for daffodils, 4 droopy stems for $6.99!
I am feeling the winter, finally – must be all this blowy cold wind we’ve had for the last 24 hours! I think some spring flowers might be just the pick me up I need to get me through this week, where my kids are off of school and I need to work (from home), and my husband gets to blithely leave for the office each morning while I listen to the two “old enough to know better” kids fight with each other and beg for more screen time as I juggle e-mails and meetings…! Yes, no sense dwelling, flowers it is!
Those songs bring instant memories! Since I missed out on the Twitter convo, a few more suggestions for any future considerations:
No Myth (Michael Penn)
Black Velvet (Alannah Myles)
Anna Begins (Counting Crows) (or really any song on this album)
Little Earthquakes (Tori Amos) (ditto)
Hey Jealousy (Gin Blossoms)
I have to know, what kind of get together is it you’re having where you bring 5 songs? Please share the deets!
I get together about once a month with my brother, my sister-in-law, and my sister-in-law’s two siblings. We play games and eat snacks and drink booze and stay up late. It’s so fun. We each bring five songs, and my brother makes a playlist out of them to have as background music.
The Heat is On by Glen something
Everybody wants you
And I totally went out and bought daffodils! Now I’m considering the little hyacinth jar!