The 2023 A-to-Z blogging challenge theme is resilience. Resilience is the ability to get back on our feet and keep going after life knocks us down and kicks sand in our faces. Resilience is how the psyche survives and copes, but resilience doesn’t necessarily wear a cape of positivity.
The 26 songs I’ve chosen show us, musically, what resilience looks (sounds?) like. I’ll offer a reflection of the resilience in each song. The songs are alphabetical by the artist’s first name or the group’s name, except for M, O, U, and X.
Y is for Yardbirds and Crying out for Love.
Yardbirds began as an English rock band that formed in London in 1963. Yardbirds went through many changes in members as well as being the starting place for many musicians. Crying out for Love is a track on their 2003 studio album Birdland. The song was written by group member James Stanley “Jim” McCarty.
We get the narrator’s perspective of dealing with the emotional and psychological issues of someone he may or may not have a romantic relationship with. Whatever the connection, he apparently knows this person quite well. He’s concerned for her. He confronts her about how she treats him.
The way you put me down
Your bitter words today
You push away
all the gold you touch
He calls her out on her behavior, which is simultaneously self-destructive and outwardly destructive. He tells her he sees through her facade of not caring for him. She’s…
Hiding what is real
And the something that is real is…
You’re crying out for love
She is actually in desperate need of love, but for whatever reasons, she puts up the wall of nastiness when he gets too close or when she acknowledges her feelings for him. That’s when she pushes him away with her words and actions. Hurt first or be hurt is her mantra.
The narrator doesn’t know how to help her other than to say it as he sees it: She’s downright mean, and that will get her nowhere but alone. If his honesty helps crumble her emotional barricade in order for her to accept the love she’s crying out for, and he’s willing to give, then he’s accomplished his goal.
The resilience in this song isn’t pretty. It’s a dark psychological strategy for self-protection. This aspect of resilience is often embedded on the psyche as a result of mental, physical, and/or emotional trauma. It is a form of resilience, nonetheless.
*Image of woman holding up her hand by Anete Lusina and Pexels
Until next time,
Kaye Spencer
writing through history one romance upon a time