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My love for this song (still) knows no bounds. Oh and the dancing. I don’t think that that even needs comment!

I became positively enamored of the original of this song by Architecture in Helsinki in the spring of 2008, during our first year living on the beaches of Southern California. Kimmy and I can do quite the impressive “fertility dance” to the bass of the original, complete with dramatic hip thrusting and pelvic gyrations. It was my ring tone for at least two years running.

It takes me back to a far simpler time. Lounging on the beach. Under the stars. Listening to the crashing of waves. Dancing with the sand between our toes. Dreaming about the years ahead while spending our days tangled up in surfboard leashes and white water, and our evenings skinny dippping by the light of the moon. Filled with carne asada and the optimism of youth.

I feel a wash of nostalgic pleasure just hearing this beat. What an appropriate remix and video to take me back to those simple days in the sun.

Today, my heart is on the west coast.

James has been listening to this honky-tonk gem nonstop to power him through the many projects on his “Honey Do” list.

When we first started dating (i.e. watching movies in each other’s dorm rooms and “studying”), I informed James that I positively despised country music. He proceeded to make me a mix CD (people still do that right?) called “Just a Sweet Sweet Taste” with all of his favorite country jams to ease me into life with a bona fide country music lover.

I can’t say I hated it. Or that I haven’t been singing this little ditty myself.

I am unabashedly and helplessly into this song.

SO SUE ME.

Can you tell I hung out with a group of 300 twenty-two year olds last week?

When told what music was hip and now during my college years, they responded, “Usher’s Yeah! and 50 Cent’s In Da Club are such classics.”

I’m sure Sinatra and The Beatles are thrilled with this proclamation.

And then I broke in my walker to a medley of Katy Perry songs.

Darlingside‘s first animated music video. Duh.

How I love these dudes.

Once again, these guys have blown me away.

No really. I’m currently floating on the ceiling, next to the epic three foot balloons from this weekend’s baby shower.

We live in a town where a local couple regularly hosts musicians in their living room for small house concerts. They appropriately call themselves Billsville House Concerts.

Pretty neat, eh?

After Darlingside participated in their line-up last fall, James and I signed up for the BHC newsletter. A month or so ago we received an email from them about an upcoming concert with musician Joe Fletcher. I took a gander at the embedded music video and my jaw hit the floor when I recognized the face of the gal in the video as someone for whom I used to babysit.

Small freaking world.

Thanks to the creepy connectedness of Facebook, I hopped on and confirmed that it was indeed Mackenzie that I’d spotted in the video and that she was the sweetheart to said musician In Real Life, not just in the video world. And, yes, she’s as strikingly gorgeous in person as she is in the video. True statement.

It was this very concert that James and I attended the night that this happened. We purchased Joe’s album, and honestly haven’t stopped listening to it. We particularly love rocking out to Drunk & Single.

Cuz I’m drunk. Single. And there’s no two ways about it.
You try talking sense in me, but I’ve lived all my life without it.

Appropriate lyrics for a preschooler to belt at the top of her lungs, no? But what can we say, Sunny digs his sound just as much as her parents.

Happy International Women’s Day! This video is a nice pop culture reminder of the fight that was had for our right to vote, our right to be equal in the eyes of the government. Given what’s been happening in politics recently, it feels like we’ve hopped a time machine to Crazytown, i.e. the Middle Ages, when it comes to women’s rights. All the more reason to vote this year to get our voice back.

Shame on you if you don’t exercise your right to vote, something for which generations of women fought. Hard.

All that is to say, Rah rah! Vote vote! (in Gaga-esque fashion, of course)

I first heard this song in July of 2009, seven weeks after Addison’s birth, on the porch of my childhood home. Dave and Auyon played an acoustic version, a skeleton of the song it was to become, as I swayed across the boards of that porch with my firstborn cradled quietly in my arms.

I’ll never forget that feeling. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to being completely at peace. Watching Sunny and Courtland meet for the first time is the only other moment that resonates on that same level.

This will always be my favorite song. It transports me to a favorite moment in time. And always will.

If you don’t know Darlingside. You really should. This group of guys is amazing. For so very many reasons, not the least of which is the gift of this song and that moment. And the calm that they bring.

Subscribe to Darlingside’s debut full-length album here.

Oh how I love me some Zefron and T Swift. And Ellen, obv.

Many thanks to Kimmy for the hat tip. We are never above pop culture.