~Friday~ Welcome to the third installment of The Alphabet Workout, which, actually started with the letter K, and then jumped back up to the top of the alphabet.
Here's what the playlist ended up being today:
| Song | Artist |
| Boulder to Birmingham | Emmylou Harris |
| The Boxer | Simon & Garfunkel |
| The Boy Next Door | Barbra Streisand |
| Brand New Girlfriend | Steve Holy |
| Brand New Man | Brooks & Dunn |
| Brass Buttons | Gram Parsons |
| Brave | Idina Menzel |
| Break Each Other's Hearts Again | Reba McEntire & Don Henley |
| Break My Mind | The Flying Burrito Brothers |
| Breakaway | Kelly Clarkson |
| Breakfast in Bed | Train |
| Breathe | Andy & The Lamboy Club Mix |
| Brick By Brick | Train |
| Bridge Over Troubled Water | Eva Cassidy |
| Bring Him Home | Les Miserable Soundtrack |
| Brokeback Mountain 1 | Brokeback Mountain Soundtrack |
| Broken Arrow | Rod Stewart |
Thoughts and observations I experienced while listening to this list:
- I just love Boulder to Birmingham. It's a song I've only recently learned about, and I'm still in a place with it that I could put it on
for a couple of hours. It's such a beautiful song. - The Boxer always takes me back to the first time I heard the lyrics (I was young!) "Just a come on from the whores on Seventh Avenue," and the even racier subsequent admission, "I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there."
- Brand New Girlfriend always makes me think of line-dancing, as we do a dance to that song.
- Brand New Man is one of my favorite Brooks & Dunn songs, and I hadn't heard it in a long, long time. It made me smile.
- Although I prefer Simon Garfunkel's original version of Bridge Over Troubled Water, I chose to listen to the Eva Cassidy version in this playlist, and I can never hear the unbelievably melodious voice of hers without thinking about this NPR broadcast in December of 2000, which is how I learned who she was.
- I've only seen Les Miserable once, in the West End actually, and at that time I really didn't care for it. It could have been because it was part of a 6-country, 13-city European tour with my wife and both sets of our parents, and that it was such a long play for which we head nosebleed seats. With that said, there are at least two songs that I love from it: I Dreamed a Dream and Bring Him Home.
- That Brokeback Mountain selection is just a short instrumental piece, and I pretty much like anything that can take me back to that movie and those beautiful men—Heath Ledger & Jake Gyllenhaal. I think this particular music is what starts playing toward the end of the clip above, which is the famous "I wish I knew how to quit you" scene. Made me cry just reviewing that, particularly thinking about the sadness of the death of Heath.
- Although I don't listen to Rod Steward music often, whenever I do, I always thoroughly enjoy it. With that said, Broken Arrow is not one of my favorite songs of his.