Playlist blog

Summer Love
By Destiny Jackson, 16, Mayfair HS (Lakewood)

Teens are falling in and out of love, but during the summer, falling in love isn’t as easy as it looks. If you need help getting through the stages of summer love—the longing, the courting ,being in love, the fighting and the reconciling—here are some tunes you can groove to and hopefully they will inspire you. Wind down in a nice setting and listen. Just listen.

Longing
This is when you are looking for the right boy or girl.

Track 1: “Use Somebody,” Kings of Leon
The song title might sound a bit mean, but it’s not. It’s actually a soulful melody about needing someone. “You know that I could use somebody/ someone like you.” And it explains how I feel sometimes, when I have a crush on the brain. And the singer’s voice will sweep you into a cloud of love.

Track 2: “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” Jet
This is for the boys out there; since boys think girls are a tricky species to understand.This song should boost the confidence that any boy has for approaching a girl. “1, 2, 3, turn your head and come with me/ because you look so fine/ that I really wanna make you mine.” C’mon guys give it a shot.

Courting
All right so you got your significant crush to have eyes for only you. Congratulations! Now it’s time to get to know each other.

Track 3: “When the Day Met the Night,” Panic At the Disco
This song explains the pros and cons about relationships through a metaphor about the Moon (a girl) meeting The Sun (a boy). “In the middle of summer/ all was golden in the sky/ all was golden when the day met the night.” It’s a sweet, poppy melody that will get stuck in your head for days.

Track 4: “Kiss The Girl,” Colbie Caillat
Don’t you wish guys would just cut to the chase? Well hum this song from The Little Mermaid, and you never know, something might happen. “Sha-la-la-la-la my oh my/ look at the boy too shy/ he wanna kiss the girl.” Calliat’s smooth voice is perfect for this refreshing cover of the wonderful Disney classic. It just fills me up with romantic energy.

Being In Love
You have successfully charmed your love interest. Things are starting to get pretty serious, now that your love is official.

Track 5: “Happy Together,” The Turtles
This song perfectly describes the way being in love feels for me, even if it is just for the summer. “I can’t see me lovin’ nobody but you/ for all my life.”

Track 6: “Hot,” Avril Lavigne
This song talks about all the things you feel when you’re in love, crazy in love. “You make me so hot/ you make me wanna drop/ It’s so ridiculous/ I can barely stop/ I can hardly breathe/ you make me wanna scream/ You’re so fabulous/ you’re so good to me.” ‘nuff said. Thanks, Avril!

Fighting
Sadly love must come to an end. It can’t be all lovey-dovey.

Track 7: “Everything We Had,” The Academy Is …
If you feel like you can’t quite describe how you’re feeling after a fight or breakup, let TAI frontman, William Beckett, do it for you. He croons the lines “everything we had/ is no longer there” in this harsh break-up song.

Track 8: “Gives You Hell,” The All-American Rejects
If you’re like me, you can only listen to so many sad break-up songs. So why not listen to a scream-at-the-top-of-your-lungs pop tune I mean who could resist singing (or screaming) “When you see my face/ hope it gives you hell/ When you walk my way/ hope it gives you hell.” Awesome, right?

Reconciling
You sing your heart out to all the break-up songs you know, and you eat a whole tub of ice cream with your friends hoping it will make you feel better. But you just can’t forget all the time you’ve spent together and you start remembering what drew you to them in the first place. You realize that it’s not too late to apologize.

Track 9: “If It Makes You Happy,” Sheryl Crow
A total chick song that you can’t help but sing along to. It’s almost as if Crow is speaking the words, “Well, OK. We get along, so what if right now everything’s wrong?” And “I promised you I’d never give up/ If it makes you happy/ it can’t be that bad/ if it makes you happy/ then why the hell are you so sad?” is kind of saying work through bumps in your relationship and maybe it will work out in the end.

Track 10: “I Caught Fire (In Your Eyes),” The Used
“Every second I’m without you I’m a mess,” The Used frontman Bert McCracken reveals. This song is about rekindling lost love, and remembering the good things in a person that made you like them in the first place, like that first kiss that blew your mind. “So kiss me like you did/ my heart stopped beating …” this song is a sweet trip down memory lane.

Track 11: “Ever Ever After,” Carrie Underwood
As we come to the end of our journey, and you’ve worked through some tough spots, here’s a song that sends a good message Underwood sings “Each happy ending’s a brand new beginning/ let yourself be enchanted/ you just might break through …” and you just might live happily “ever, ever after” … at least for the summer anyway.

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Insomnia
By Janie Lee, 16, Troy HS

For the past few years, I’ve had trouble falling asleep. During the school year, I find myself trying to stay awake to finish all my homework. Then the moment I finish, I’m wide-awake, staring into the darkness trying to sleep. During the summer, I have days when I stay up late talking to friends or come home from a night out and have too much energy at 2 a.m. A few months ago, my friend suggested creating a mellow playlist to listen to, and it worked. I put this playlist on shuffle and I’m usually asleep by the third song. If you are having one of those nights, this playlist may help!

Track 1: “Slow Dancing In a Burning Room,” John Mayer
Mayer’s amazing guitar skills really shine through in this song. His soothing voice and guitar playing stunned me so much the first time I heard this song that I didn’t even recognize it was about a fading relationship.

Track 2: “Make Me Whole,” Amel Larrieux
Lying in bed, I have my eyes closed and reminisce about past crushes with this sweet love song.

Track 3: “Sleeping In,” The Postal Service
The chorus of this song is fitting for insomnia … “Don’t wake me up, I plan on sleeping in.” After hearing that lyric about 20 times in this song, I can’t help but want to sleep.

Track 4: “I Will Follow You Into the Dark,” Death Cab for Cutie
The vocalist, Ben Gibbard, is the same vocalist from Postal Service. This song is a little different and has an acoustic feel to it. This song relaxes me and puts me in the perfect mood to fall asleep.

Track 5: “Let it Be,” The Beatles
This song is a classic that brings back great memories I had on a road trip with my brother and cousins. I feel like I am back on the road without any worries whenever I hear the three words, “Let it be.”

Track 6: “Don’t Know Why,” Norah Jones
Jones’s voice is unique. I feel like she is singing a lullaby to me every time I hear this song.

Track 7: “Guilty Cubicles,” Broken Social Scene
An instrumental song that gets me where I really want to be: the place where I think about absolutely nothing and feel complete nirvana.

Track 8: “The Scientist,” Coldplay
The combination of the keyboard and Chris Martin’s tranquilizing voice make this song great for calming me down after a night out with my best friends.

Track 9: “Cannonball,” Damien Rice
Rice almost sounds like he is whispering throughout this song, and it makes me feel like I’m lying on clouds because it’s so soft and soothing.

Track 10: “How We Breathe,” Pinback
There is an electric feel to this song, but I love how it is somehow still mellow.

Track 11: “Falling in Love At a Coffee Shop,” Landon Pigg
I first heard this song on a television commercial and loved the short part that I heard so I bought the song, which was just as good the whole way through.

Track 12: “The Sweetest Love,” Robin Thicke
I can’t help but smile when I listen to this song. On top of my celebrity crush’s soothing voice, the lyrics about being in love with that special somebody put me in a good mood to go to sleep, or even dream about a life with Thicke.

Track 13: “Creep (acoustic),” Radiohead
Radiohead is the last band anyone would expect to be on a mellow playlist, but when my friend showed me the acoustic version of this song, I found it surprisingly calming. The acoustic version of this song is different from the original, which at times is loud and rocky.

Track 14: “Boston,” Augustana
I love listening to this song at the end of any day. It speaks to anyone going through a hard time and is a beautiful song.

Note: The Beatles’ version of “Let it Be” isn’t available on iTunes. Here we’ve included Paul McCartney’s.

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