For Day Ten, we should have something enjoyable. Songs I listen to when I’m happy, sad, bored, hyped, and mad.

This was more appropriate twenty-five or thirty years ago. I don’t listen to music that often these days. Listening to music has always been a very private experience for me. If other people are around, I won’t listen to music. Somehow, I got it in my mind that it was rude to do so, and if someone is around, I turn music off. This may be accentuated by having a husband whose musical tastes a very different from mine. Since he’s 23 years older than I am, He formed his musical tastes before I was born. Also, he’s a musician, so the music is more important to him. As a writer, the words are more important to me (although, that certainly doesn’t explain everything.).

He’s a fan of Big Band and other instrumental works from the 40s and 50s. I’m more into 70’s rock and 80’s country (same thing, really). But that doesn’t answer it either, because I have no knowledge of a lot of the “important” bands of that era — Journey, KISS, Aerosmith, and Guns ‘N’ Roses (to name a few that I don’t know beyond hearing the name). That’s more my sister and brothers’ era, I think.

I can remember being mad once in the mid 1980s and listening to a lot of Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.” That’s a great song for frustration. During my separation before my divorce, I listened to a lot of Huey Lewis and the News, Little River Band, Eddie Money, and similar stuff. I guess that would mostly be sad music.

I’m not sure I listen to music when I’m happy. I have other things to do. (Nah, that’s not it. I put it on shuffle most of the time, so I get a variety of things.)

I turned to my old iPod, and apparently, it’s playing sequentially, because I’m getting a medley of Abba. If I base my favorites on number of albums by a single artist, they are probably Kathy Mattea, Neil Diamond, George Strait, and Dan Seals.