I don’t know if you’ve heard or not, but this was a tough year – a recap of it is unnecessary. We all know the myriad ways in which 2020 was difficult and challenging. What is always necessary, however, is a recap of the year in music – even if the year felt like a decade. 

In keeping with the interesting, entertaining theme established by my fellow Anythink bloggers, I wanted to write about “memory songs” and “forever songs.” This is something I think about a lot, actually (most would say too much), and it recently led me to take some drastic actions

In a recent thought-provoking post, my colleague Julie makes the case that there are two different kinds of favorite songs: songs tied to a particular moment in our lives, and songs that seem like they've always been with us. She calls these two types of songs “memory songs” and “forever songs.”

As a child Reginald Dwight was shy and lonely, but possessed of an astonishing natural gift for the piano. Flash forward to Aug. 25, 1970, when the then 23-year-old would give a mind-blowing performance at the Troubadour, catapulting him into stardom. That fellow, the world now knows as Elton John, and this is his year.