The Year(s) In Music (2020 – 2024)

(By Richard Goodman, 7 June 2025)

Hello!  It has been a while since I last talked to you.  Has anything significant happened lately?  I did not plan to send you the box set of music you are holding in your hands.  It just sort of happened.  When I last sent you a Year In Music CD back in the beginning of 2020, Donald Trump was running a presidential campaign despite concerns about his fitness for office, Elon Musk was making waves in the business world and exerting his social influencer muscle, Brexit was causing turmoil in Europe, the United States exited many global alliances like the Paris Accords, weather patterns were changing and causing unprecedented natural disasters, the Kansas City Chiefs - America’s new favorite sports team - were Superbowl bound, and when someone said the word “Corona”, the first thing you thought of was a beer.

And now, um, well, all those things are still kind of true, but in completely different ways than before.  Part of the delay in sending music to you was because of my procrastination but a lot of it has been a lack of new music coming out in the last few years for some reason.  It almost seems like the world has been concentrating on other things from 2020 through 2023. 

The culprit, COVID-19, has affected public health, global supply chains, political agendas, education, social activities, and yes, even the music scene.  Since streaming music services have killed album sales and they pay out pennies to the artists in return, musicians depend on touring revenue to make a living.  Artists now release albums to help promote their tours, not because they expect to earn gobs of money from selling albums.  

Touring is needed to bring in money to pay the bills, since streaming revenue is negligible.  So if an artist can’t use a new album to generate ticket sales, many feel there is no point in releasing anything new.  When people were unable to safely gather and listen to a concert, musicians stayed at home and had to find other ways to earn a living.

As a result, there was not much new music coming out during the peak COVID years.  Heck, it seems like there were more corona variants coming out then there were hit albums.  We started with the big names in COVID - Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Omicron and then moved on to other “less deadly” variants like Epsilon, Zeta, Kappa, Lambda, and now there are so many we don’t have any fun Greek fraternity names to give them and have just started numbering them like iPhone updates (BA.2.86, JN.1, JN.1.7, JN.1.18, KP.2, KP.3, KP.3.1.1, and LB.1.)

Usually, I have no problem finding two or three CDs worth of material that I want to share but the Covid era made worthwhile new music much harder to find.  There were a few notable exceptions though.  Dua Lipa put out her glorious second album, full of insanely catchy feel-good songs that distracted us from a glum world.  Taylor Swift went in the other direction and released two (two!!) million-selling albums of comfortable, soothing, folk-leaning pop that made you want to stay home, wrapped up in a blanket, drinking a glass of wine.  A lot of us did that very thing, when we could find wine and cheese in stock at the grocery store.  Of course, Taylor Swift could release anything and it would do well- I’m looking forward to her putting out an album during the post-apocalyptic zombie outbreak.  It will probably feature a sequel to “Cardigan”, called “Kevlar Sweater”.

So for 2020 I barely found one CDs’ worth of music and didn’t feel motivated to send anything out.  Then as the pandemic dragged on into 2021, the lack of new music continued.  I explored the back catalog of artists I liked but hadn’t extensively listened to before and I re-listened to past favorites but that doesn’t really let me find unknown treasures for you.  I mean, you all know Belinda Carlisle’s songs, you’ve heard Henry Mancini before, you probably don’t care about Jefferson Starship, and you likely have heard all of Transvision Vamp’s good songs already - there are only two of them.  On the plus side, I got to fully evaluate some legacy artists to whom I had not paid proper attention, for example the whole output of The Bangles, Journey, The Cars, Foreigner, Veruca Salt, Lush, and U2. 

So 2021 also resulted in just one CDs worth of songs.  Still, that means I had two CDs worth of things I found worthwhile that you might appreciate.  It seems fitting that I would send both years at the same time because doesn’t it feel like 2020 and 2021 blurred into one long, long span of time where it was hard to tell one month apart from another and you weren’t motivated to do all the things you normally do?  Yes, yes it did. 

Then, as Covid started to wane and become less deadly and vaccines became widely available and utilized by those who understood how medicine works, I lost a couple of people that were really important to me.  My friend John passed away as did my mother.  Ironically, neither was a Covid victim but they were gone just the same and I was dealing with those losses and the emotions that went with them.  So that lethargy carried on into 2022 and 2023.  Since the music scene had picked back up again in 2023 and 2024, touring resumed and new album releases were coming out on a regular basis from people other than Taylor Swift, I figured I might as well wait until 2024 ended and include that year too and send everything at once.   

That’s not to say there weren’t some positive side effects of the pandemic.  Since everything has been anguish about COVID since it showed its’ face, I wanted to take a moment to recognize a few good things about what we experienced. This is not intended in any way to disregard or minimize the terrible death toll and the social impact of the virus but rather to celebrate the urge to look for silver linings and cheer on the adaptability that comes from adversity.

So first, traffic was amazing during the pandemic period.  It took almost no time to get to work and on days when I didn’t want to drive into the office, I could work remotely from home.  This meant more sleep time, less need for gas, and I could eat lunch from my own fridge with no need to pack a lunch or get take-out from a restaurant.  Gas prices were really low - I mean like 1980’s low.  Global emissions and carbon output dropped drastically, and some notoriously smoggy cities had clear skies for the first time in decades. 

There were no new television shows being produced so there was time to catch up on things that were backlogged on my DVR.  Clearing that backlog was bittersweet though.  Many of the episodes that I had waiting for me were the final episodes of series that had been cancelled and I was saving them because I didn’t want the show to be over because I loved it so much.  I watched the last season or final few episodes of The 100, Wynonna Earp, Last Man Standing, Agents Of Shield, High Fidelity, Silicon Valley, The Good Place, Modern Family, Brooklyn 99, and The Magicians.

Then there were the streaming services that exploded in the last four years. Everyone stuck at home, unable to go to concerts, or movies, or dinner out with friends, or sports events, or on vacations or dates, instead watched stuff on streaming services.  Yes, some of it was garbage like Tiger King but there was also The Queen’s Gambit.  I was amazed at how much I loved this drama about chess.  Everyone watched this show and talked about it, and it even kickstarted a public resurgence of interest in chess.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, I also loved Teenage Bounty Hunters, a dramatic comedy about some teenage girls who are, as you would guess, bounty hunters.  No one I know watched this show, which is why Netflix cancelled it, and I was crushed that I never got a chance to talk about it with anyone.  It was hilarious, heart-warming, satirical, soapy, sexy, and thrilling and no one will ever know it existed, except for me.   

People got to explore everything on streaming that they had never watched before or to revisit old favorites, which made Friends and The Office hugely popular shows again. 

Drive-in movies became a thing again.  While theaters were closed, pop-up drive-ins, um, popped up because people could isolate in their cars and still a see a movie on the big screen.  When theaters did reopen, they were not as crowded, and people could reserve their seats.  I enjoy having an audience when watching a movie, but I don’t want people in the seats on both sides of me, boxing me in and crowding my armrest.  Theaters were pro-active and enforced spacing so there were certain seats blocked off to maintain distance between patrons. 

Once COVID restrictions were lifted, reserved seating stayed.  At first, I wasn’t a fan of reserved seating because I was used to getting to the theater early and finding a good seat but I eventually came around because a little planning ahead meant I didn’t have to spend time waiting around in the theater lobby, reading a book or fiddling around on my phone.  Ever since the Merrifield Multiplex theater closed and the Area 51 arcade game was gone, I haven’t really wanted to hang out in the lobby because it isn’t as fun anymore.  Sometimes I saw a movie with friends, so I could talk to them while waiting to get seated, but about 50% of the movies I see are by myself so hanging out in the lobby isn’t that much fun post-Area 51. 

Another forced benefit of the pandemic was that buying groceries was a breeze.  Not because there was an abundance of choices but because there were none.  Supply chain issues meant a shortage of almost everything.  Because many factories are specialized, they could make commercial paper products but couldn’t quickly switch to consumer paper items like toilet paper, even assuming there were enough healthy workers to staff the factory.  If you wanted toilet paper, eggs, bread, or vegetables, you grabbed whatever was there, as quickly as you could before someone else got it and the shelves were empty again.  Shortages even extended to metal used for coins and aluminum cans.  Gone were the days where I could choose whether I wanted Cherry Coke Zero, Cherry Vanilla Coke Zero, or Minute Maid Zero Lemonade.  Coca Cola cut back to just their core products so I got to choose from Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero or nothing.

There was also a renewed appreciation for simply going outside and taking a walk.  People who didn’t normally bother doing that in the “before time”, realized how enjoyable it was to get outside for some fresh air, opens spaces, and physical activity.  When you see the same four walls for weeks on end, you learn to appreciate different views and surroundings. 

Economically, there was lots of hardship, so I was happy for the little breaks that we got.  Income tax deadlines were pushed from April until July for the first year of the Corona virus, and then we also got three stimulus checks in the next couple of years.  It was nowhere near enough to replace a salary for people who lost their jobs, but it was a nice bit of relief for those still working who were struggling with the unexpected costs arising from the difficult circumstances.  Libraries stopped charging late fees for overdue books, and that stayed in place to this day. While I have always considered late fees as a way of supporting the library system, I’m happy to do that other ways instead of worrying when I need to return a book that I haven’t finished yet.  I would much rather give them money by going to library book sales. 

Another economic break was restaurant delivery fees.  Since restaurants weren’t doing dine-in service, they relied on pickup orders and deliveries.  To encourage people to order from restaurants, delivery fees were waived.  Owners wanted your food order and weren’t going to discourage that by charging you $5.00 to deliver it.  You got to feel like a hero for ordering food and not spending time cooking for yourself.  For me, that is an amazing plus.  I could order cooked food from a restaurant and feel like I’m supporting my community and being a good neighbor.  Granted, waived delivery fees just went back to the drivers as tips because they were being even bigger heroes, by bringing the food and interacting with people they didn’t know who might be contagious with a deadly virus, and possibly not wearing a mask.

Zoom was a gamechanger because it enabled you to stay in touch with people outside your household, conduct business, attend school, see concerts, and remain connected to the world.  This remained the case after the pandemic ended, and I’m very happy that I no longer have to travel to attend meetings or do training.  People can work remotely and be productive.  The time and expense saved by conducting gatherings electronically is a major plus.    

Finally, the pandemic likely forced you to spend lots of quality time with family.  You learned a lot about them because there was nowhere to go and nothing else to do.  This forced people to get better acquainted.  Even though you sometimes got on each other’s nerves, you later appreciated the time together, especially if you lost a loved one to the virus.  I’m so thankful that all my family and friends made it through the pandemic.  Although some of them are no longer here, at least they all survived the biggest health crisis of the last 50 years.

So that is a very roundabout way of telling you why I wasn’t prioritizing the delivery of my Year In Music CDs.  Now though I don’t any such excuses, other than laziness or spending too much time watching YouTube, which doesn’t sound like a reasonable excuse.  Thus, you now hold five CDs in your hands, covering my music obsessions from 2020 to 2024.

Looking at what I had sent out in 2018 and 2019, it felt like I was a bit too inclined towards pop and dance-y songs so I checked out more rock-based artists.  I already mentioned going through the back catalog for Journey and Foreigner, and gained newfound appreciation for them, although none of their stuff is on the CDs since they aren’t undiscovered artists who need promotion.  If you look at the 2020 track list, you might say “So why is Huey Lewis on here?  We all know him (them?)”  Yes, but during the pandemic, I learned that Huey Lewis has an ear condition and is going deaf. 

As a musician, it is very hard to play or write music if you are deaf.  (Yes, there was Beethoven - 250 years ago! - but can you name anyone else?)  Huey and his band put out what may be their final album of new material.  It was a decent album and I really connected with the song “While We’re Young”, which I am not, and neither is he.  The song is about making the most of what you have while you have the chance to do so and that was a very impactful sentiment considering what the world was going through that year. 

I also enjoying Green Day’s take on a Joan Jett song, Royal Blood’s latest monsoon of rock, and an album from a long time favorite – Local H – who is long overdue for recognition of their great work since their one hit twenty years ago.  I listened to a spinoff band (liarflower) from another huge favorite (Queen Adreena), a couple industry veterans (Dion and The Fleshtones) who re-emerged to share great new music, and some mid-level artists taking the next step up in their career (Tennis, Tame Impala, Avalanches, Travis, Dua Lipa).  I found yet another great Tom Jones song, an interesting acoustic cover of a Guns & Roses song, and multiple collaborations. 

The most unusual thing I came across this year was an artist called Poppy, who started out as a You Tuber called That Poppy.  She made bizarre videos on YouTube, some involving her mannequin friend Charlotte, others with her doing performance art, like the one where the whole video is her saying “I’m Poppy”, and some which were straight up music videos of her original songs.  The music had a bubble gum pop sound, but the subversive lyrics were razor sharp satire.  Most bizarre of all were interviews I found online where she went through the interview in character as a robot pop artist.  (See  one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J5WqyJFbVs.)  Her answers, her affect and vocal inflection were as if an AI chatbot were doing the interview, but this was a couple years before chatbots and AI tools were a thing. 

There are even some reaction videos online where kids are reacting to her personae and then she reacts to their reactions, culminating in her appearing in person, inside a box to talk to the kids and the kids just freak out!  (you can see the thing here: Poppy Reacts To & MEETS Kids React Cast: The ENTIRE Saga https://youtu.be/QJORKxYYrhQ?si=n3JriiYT0z9MUQ0q).         

Even more interesting than whether Poppy is a real robot, or just a normally manufactured YouTube star, is her musical evolution.  I included three consecutive songs for this year so you can see her change from a satirical pop princess to a message driven artist, to an alternative metal singer.  Her last few albums have been very metal-edged, and the videos and songs remind me of Nine Inch Nails.  Then she will suddenly throw a curveball come out with something like “Stagger” (https://youtu.be/yp5A8awHfas).  I’ve just been fascinated watching this.  It is like a documentary of music history, or the Spinal Tap of pop music, or the blueprint for becoming internet famous.    

So that was 2020.  In 2021, I retreated further back into the past while listening to new releases.  By that I mean a lot of legacy artists put out new music.  So I heard stuff from Paul McCartney, Lindsey Buckingham, Pixies, Edie Brickell, Duran Duran, Sting, ABBA, and Barry Gibb but it wasn’t their oldies.  It was recent music that sounded like their oldies, which turned out to be a good thing.  Barry Gibb put out a covers album of his own songs done as duets with country artists.  It might sound like a weird combination, but it works.  The track he does with Alison Krauss is amazing.  While I think his vocals on the original version of “Too Much Heaven” are jaw-dropping, what Krauss does on this cover duet with him is equally magnificent. 

ABBA put out a new album some, let me check here…, FORTY YEARS LATER!  It was not worth the wait, but it was a nice bookend for their career and there were three songs on it that I quite liked.

There were a couple of throwback songs too. Ones that had been around for decades until I finally heard them this year.  I discovered Paul Anka’s “Times Of Your Life” - a sappy, over-produced, but surprisingly emotional and touching late career hit. Plus an old techno-industrial hit by My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, and a Bryan Adams Christmas song that I first heard this Christmas even though it had been around awhile.

There were exciting songs and albums from alternative favorites (Pretty Reckless, Royal Blood, Dandy Warhols, Courtney Barnett, Julianna Hatfield, and a full-on nu metal song from Poppy) and newly discovered favorites, specifically The Beaches, Zella Day, and Wet Leg.  Wet Leg was the biggest surprise for me, and the most exciting find.  The reason for the surprise is because I heard their first single, "Chaise Longue", and was not impressed.  I couldn’t understand why people were digging the song so I dismissed them.  Then I heard their second single, “Wet Dream”, and loved it.  That song deserved all the praise that it received.  Then I heard a few other songs of theirs, and they were all pretty good but not as good as “Wet Dream”.  When their album was finally released, I was not expecting it to be anything other than a collection of the singles I’d already heard plus some more filler.  Boy am I glad I was wrong!

The album came out in 2022, so let’s move on to that year’s disc.  I included Wet Leg’s “Angelica” and “Ur Mum” because they were awesome – equal or better than “Wet Dream”.  Their whole album was amazing, ending up as my favorite of the year. 

Also carrying over from 2021 was Zella Day.  I liked “Dance For Love” in 2021, so in 2022 I dove into her whole catalog, finding several favorites, including this disc’s feisty “Mushroom Punch” and shimmery “Golden”.  Writing this in 2025, I know what she has done next, which is an almost a Poppy-level switch-up, but I will discuss that when I do the 2025 disc since her new incarnation will have an entry on it.    

In fact, the 2022 CD is mostly filled with surprises and unexpected resurrections.  For example, who expected Elton John to have a major hit again by covering an old song of his?   During quarantine, Elton ended up doing a duets cover album thing as well, just like Barry Gibb did the year before.  Elton teamed up with Dua Lipa for a modernized mash-up of four of his songs.  As Wikipedia puts it, “The song is a medley of four songs written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, as well as Andrew Meecham, Dean Meredith, Nicholas Littlemore, Peter Mayes and Sam Littlemore, with the production completed by the latter three as part of the dance music group Pnau. Interpolating John's songs "Rocket Man" (1972), "Kiss the Bride" (1983), "Sacrifice" (1989) and "Where's the Shoorah?" (1976), the remix is an upbeat contemporary synth-pop, dance, dance-pop and pop song describing the decline of a relationship.”   Interestingly, I had also been unrelatedly listening to PNAU since they were connected to Empire Of The Sun and Sleepy Jackson, bands I found enjoyable in a slightly over the top way.  “Cold Heart” was a major pop hit for Elton John and Dua Lipa, a big surprise for Elton John fans and no surprise to Dua Lipa fans.

Another unexpected release came from Tears For Fears.  Their previous album had come out in 2004 and was long-time mainstay Roland Orzabal’s reunion with original member Curt Smith.  That 2004 album was also unexpected at the time since Orzabal had been basically doing solo work, just under the Tears For Fears name, since 1990.  With Orzabal and Smith’s exemplary reunion release being named “Everyone Loves A Happy Ending”, I expected that to be the end of their recording career, and for 18 years I was correct. 

Then in 2022 came “The Tipping Point”.  It was another new Orzabal and Smith TFT album, 18 years later.  Not quite an ABBA length absence, but still a long time gone since releasing new material.  The first couple of songs I heard on the radio were not encouraging though.  They seemed slow and melancholy.  When the whole album came out, I learned that the genesis of the album was Roland trying to work through his grief over his wife’s illness and subsequent death. 

I can understand how that would affect the songwriting process and become a more meditative work without the usual energy I attribute to them.  There was no “Shout” or “Sowing The Seeds Of Love” on this album.  After an initial listen, I set aside the album.  Later on, after continuing to think about the album and feel disappointment after such a long wait, I pulled it back out to give it another try in case I had dismissed too casually.  I listened to it again, with no expectations since I knew what it wasn’t.  After two or three listens, the songs made their way into my brain, and I appreciated what the album was and how it unwound as a slow burn and not an explosion.  The trademark TFT choruses were there, as was the impeccable production and the baroque chamber pop flourishes, and I fell for the album.  I ended up loving some five or six tracks and I really had a hard time deciding whether to include “My Demon” or “End Of Night” on this compilation since both are excellent.        

Another unexpected treat was a new Tom Jones album, with a bunch of unexpected covers that seem tailor made for Jones as an 84-year-old man, who had lost his wife in 2016.  He was unsure if he would ever perform again because she had been his rock, his love, and his emotional support for sixty years.  The songs reflected the relevant topics of aging, anguish, legacy and social consciousness he had been exploring on his last few albums in the 2010’s but this one had an extra dose of sadness.  Then there is his voice – it is still the Tom Jones voice that sends shivers down your spine.  The thing I included here is an oddity from the album.  Basically, it is like spoken word poetry in time with a rough beat.  It is too slow to be considered a rap; it sounds more like a monologue from a fervent and slightly sarcastic clergyman, and (trigger warning) it concerns a political figure.

The surprises continued this year with Gorillaz putting out a really good album after a couple of dull ones.  The Cult, Black Keys, Mitski, and Pixies did the same- a good album after a couple yawners- so I plucked a standout track from each to include here.  A magazine column from David Crosby (R.I.P.) got me to hear the Sarah Jarosz song, and I loved a super old song I heard from a 1972 Bee Gees album, released during their “lost years” phase when they were past their Beatle-ish and ballad years but before their disco resurgence, when they could not get a song or album on the charts.  After listening to this song, I just don’t understand how the public decides what to like.  This song is a banger.   

Moving on to 2023, I am mostly back in the present day, musically.  There are current songs, although from artists old and new.  Jason Mraz has a new hit, the impossibly upbeat “I Feel Like Dancing” which makes you feel just that.  Spoon, The Hives, Metric, and Juliana Hatfield- some of my favorite alternative rock artists- are back with new albums. 

Metric are icy, alternative pop, and are hit and miss but I included the album highlight.  The Hives are The Hives, which means – as they will tongue-in-cheekily tell you- they are greatest rock and rock band ever.  To describe them I would say to imagine the Ramones if they were brasher, catchier, more cinematic, and could write more than one song.  Spoon is an oddity.  When people say something is lo-fi, I imagine a guy sitting in a rocking chair playing a banjo, or a three-piece band doing one take into a small microphone in a bedroom or garage and refusing to do overdubs or multi-tracking. 

As someone who first heard music by listening to the radio in the 1970’s, a period ruled by artists like ELO, Pink Floyd, the Bee Gees, Chicago, Rod Stewart, Earth Wind & Fire, and Billy Joel, songs with a DIY feel or lack of strong production skills take some getting used to.  Granted, the 1970’s also had America, Olivia Newton John, and John Denver, which leaned more acoustic, but they were still perfectly produced.  They didn’t sound like they were sloppily recorded in someone’s bathroom.  This is why I’m surprised that I like Spoon.  They are definitely not overproduced.  You can clearly hear every instrument playing, there are no backing beats or electronic flourishes.  What makes them so enjoyable is the song construction and passionate delivery.  I read a review for the album “Kill The Moonlight” and decided to give it a try.  I went into it not expecting to be impressed but several songs hooked me and I’ve been listening to them ever since.  Every album is pretty much guaranteed to have four or five terrific tracks.          

Then there is Juliana Hatfield, an artist I have been listening to since 1992.  Every album is a treat, a present to unwrap and see what has been going through her mind lately.  On the 2021 mix CD, you got her gory and glorious “Chunks”, from her oddball, riff-y political leaning album “Blood”.  For her follow-up, she does one of her covers albums, this time focusing on Electric Light Orchestra (ELO).  Not exactly a straight line from one to the other. 

While I enjoyed the ELO covers album, I didn’t love it. It was too-straight forward and if it sounds almost like the originals, why bother.  There is no way anyone else can replicate ELO’s production.  That said, I wanted you to have a taste of the album, so I shared one of the lesser-known songs that I enjoyed.  Then for good measure, I included her cover of Neil Young’s “Lotta Love”, one of my all-time favorite songs.  It has been covered by many people and I love them all, from Nicolette Larson to She & Him to Juliana Hatfield to Courtney Barnett.  Incidentally, I feel the same way about covers of Neil Young’s "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", covered by artists such as Saint Etienne, I Blame Coco, Natalie Imbruglia, and Juliana Hatfield.

Speaking of covers, I included Dennis DeYoung’s “Hello Goodbye” which isn’t exactly a cover although it does include parts of that Beatles song. This is more of a pastiche of various Beatles songs and lyrics.  See how many Beatles references you can spot in this one song.  Similarly, I came across some mashups on YouTube by Wax Audio that combined multiple songs into one new Frankenstein song.  Those are actually on the 2022 disc but I wanted to mention them now.  Listen to “Blue Jump” and see how many songs you can hear.  I count four distinct songs that were combined into this one.

The other mashup song on the 2022 disc is “Stayin’Alive In The Wall”, a combination of “Another Brick In The Wall” and “Staying Alive”.  You might not think they go well together but once you hear the combo, you can’t imagine them not together, like a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup.  Chocolate is quite good by itself but you will always consider whether you want it with peanuts or peanut butter after having had a Reese’s peanut butter cup. 

The movie “Barbie” came out in 2023, and I know that because two of the songs on this disc are from that soundtrack, which is just as great as the movie is.  First, Dua Lipa, who is having her moment in case you didn’t already realize that, had a highlight song in the movie, during the dance party segment where Barbie (a terrific Margot Robbie) asks “Do you ever think about dying?”  Then at the end of the movie, when Barbie meets her creator, the Billie Eilish song “What Was I Made For” plays.  I got a little misty eyed during that scene in no small part due to that song so how can I not include it here? 

There are two songs on the disc from the band Sorry, a recommendation from Elizabeth that I’m glad I took to heart.  They are an English band I’d never heard of, but I ended up loving their two albums.  There is a Little Steven song I’d loved since seeing the video on MTV in the 1980’s and finally got around to buying the digital single.  The video was stupid- Little Steven riding around on a bicycle- but the music was anthemic. 

What else is left?  Some songs from Therapy?, Chemical Brothers, and Herb Alpert as I worked through my accumulated backlog of albums from those artists.  A representative Veruca Salt song as I delved into their catalog via John’s collection.  A hazy, dreamy, hypnotic song from Bakar, the Dutch band The Art Company with their UK Top Ten sing-along song “Susanna” from an 80’s collection, and a pair of instrumentals from Neil Richardson that give me happy 1960’s jet-set vibes every time I listen to them, which is only when I play this 2023 collection because I don’t think they were ever heard by the general public and are near impossible to buy now.      

That leaves three more songs on the 2023 collection.  There is the Billy Joel song “Turn The Lights Back On”, written and released 30 years after his last pop album.  It is neither a good nor bad song.  It would fit in reasonably well on the “Streetlife Serenade” album.  I include it here simply because it is Billy Joel, one of my top ten all-time favorites, and I think people should listen to it and decide its’ merits for themselves.

Another all-time top ten favorite is Kylie Minogue and in 2023, she was having another moment.  These seem to come along for her every 20 years.  She burst onto the music scene in 1987 with “The Locomotion”, a top ten U.S. hit, and then the UK # 1 hit “I Should Be So Lucky”, also a top forty hit the United States.  She was then completely ignored by the U.S. (but not the rest of the world) until 2001 when “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” went to # 7, and #1 everywhere else in the world.  The U.S. went back to ignoring her again until 2023 when “Padam Padam” would become another worldwide hit, selling millions of copies, and winning her a second Grammy award.

Finally, we come to Midlake, a band that appears to have one excellent album among the half dozen they recorded.  I heard the song “Young Bride” on a Sirius channel and fell in love with the mournful, melancholy, ballad.  Even though it came out in 2017, I can imagine it being played by a guy in a tavern in coal country in the 1800’s.  It is the violin the gets me the most.  The vocals are sad and bitter but when the violin kicks in for emphasis, it just devastates me.  Let me know what you think.  I paired this song and the Billie Eilish “Barbie” song to close out the 2023 collection and leave you weeping sadly, a perfect way to end the pandemic.

By 2024, COVID was behind us, maybe not in actuality since it continues to hang around and infect several thousand people a month, but its lethality is greatly decreased, and people no longer take any precautions to protect themselves from it any more than they do to avoid getting the flu.  So we are now in the new normal, in society and the music industry.  That means concerts are going on, new albums and singles are coming out, late night shows are promoting artists, and I can hear large amounts of new music.  As a result, I ….. have retreated to the past.

It wasn’t intentional but during the pandemic, I started getting hooked on a compilation series called “Now”.  I’m sure you have heard of them since they have been popular in England for decades and about 15 years ago, the U.S. started doing their own version.  A couple of times a year, “Now” collects the biggest songs that were released since the last collection came out.  I had picked up a few of the CDs when the series first rolled out, but I stopped pretty quickly because, to sound old man-ish, a lot of the music sucked, and I was better off just cherry picking the singles I liked and buying them individually.  Paying for $3 worth of singles sounded better to me than spending on $14 to get those same songs and 14 others I didn’t like.                

In the last five or six years though, the people who put out the “Now” series got clever and started releasing a “Now Yearbook” series.  This is a four-volume collection of the biggest and best songs of a specific year.  So each year’s release had around 80 songs, and they included British hits too.  That means some of my favorite hard to find 1970’s and 1980’s hit singles like Sheila E’s “Love Bizarre”, Alexander O’Neal’s new jack swing classic “Fake”, and John Paul Young’s “Love Is In The Air” were available without having to buy a whole album just for one song.  As a plus, I got to hear what was hot in England during the same time, including a lot of songs I’d never heard before because I was not buying imports of S Club 7 or Deacon Blue.     

Even more insidious, the company started releasing a “Now Yearbook Extra” series consisting of three discs of additional and lesser-known songs from that year. I decided I would get all the “Yearbook” And “Yearbook Extra” volumes for 1973 to 2000 and then stop collecting anything before or after that since my music collection was pretty well stocked on both sides of that time period.  Heck, it is well stocked even within those years, but I was enjoying getting some of the rare selections and hearing what was on the British charts at that time. There is no pattern to the release schedule, so in a given year they might put out volumes for “Now Yearbook 1974” and “Now Yearbook 1992” and “Now Yearbook Extra 1998.  I’ll be done once 1975, 1976, 1989, and 1994-1997 get released. 

Then the bastards started a “Now Yearbook Vault” series.

It is meant to fill in the gaps in the years that are not covered by the seven volumes already released for each year.  You would rightly be skeptically of the merits for the “Vault” series.  The problem is that the five released so far have covered 1980-1984 and 1976-1984 is my favorite period of music, without question.  Can I live without them?  Yes, I could.  Did I want to have them so I could hear additional songs from one hit wonders like Dexys Midnight Runners, M, Rupert Holmes, Fun Boy Three, and Yello?  Yes, I did.  Plus getting them, I’ve built up a nice collection of hits by Shalamar, Madness, OMD, Gary Numan, Japan, The Tourists, and The Stranglers that I wouldn’t otherwise have sought out.  So I’ll wait and see how far the “Vault” series expands but unless it covers 1976-1984, I should be able to pass on those, like I have on the “Now Millenium” series for the post-2000’s years.  

This is my meandering way of apologizing for and explaining why you might recognize some older songs on my “Year In Music 2024” collection.  I’ve included several selections from the “Now” volumes, but they are likely to be new to you, like the bonkers spoken word UK song “Hole In My Shoe” by Neil, Matt Bianco’s festive groove “Half A Minute”, or the humorous female empowerment anthem that never became an anthem, Carole Bayer Sager’s “You’re Moving Out Today”.    There are also personal oldies favorites, like UB40’s cheerful “Rat In Mi Kitchen”, Paul Young’s booming vocals on “I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down”, Robert Plant’s moody dirge “Big Log”, and Tina Turner’s “Let’s Stay Together”, included simply because it is a great song and to recognize the passing of Tina Turner during this year.

Some other older favorites here that are not from the “Now” series are included here.  Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder On the Dancefloor” had a resurgence due to being included in a pivotal moment of the recent movie “Saltburn”.  I’ve enjoyed Sophie’s music ever since randomly buying a CD of hers on a trip abroad fifteen years ago and I was glad to see her get some attention stateside.  The song is always a pleasure to hear.  New Order apparently has too many great songs to bother releasing them all.  “Touched By The Hand Of God” was released as the B-Side of their remake “Blue Monday 1988” and wasn’t released on an album except a 1994 best-of collection and as a remix on a couple remix collections.  Give it a listen and see if you think it sounds like a hit. 

Tears For Fears had a few studio leftovers from their recent album so they put them on a live greatest hits album.  The live album was okay but if it wasn’t for the four new studio songs, you could ignore it in favor of the original versions of the songs on the albums.  Of the four new songs, two are nice and two are blah.  I did give them a thorough listening though to make sure I didn’t initially ignore TFT stuff a second time in a row.  I put my favorite of the four on this compilation.

Don’t worry- there is also a lot of recent stuff too.  Billie Eilish continues to turn out touching ballads like “Birds Of A Feather” so I included that standout from her recent album.  I also liked “Lunch” but that is a bit too metaphorically raunchy to include.  When I was watching a morning show, I heard a band called Guster doing a live song that captivated me.  After playing their most recent album, I found that song and a few others that charmed me with their melodic wistfulness.  Two of them are included here and tissues may be needed since they are a little downbeat.      

Last year I shared Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” from her new album “Tension”, and normally that means I’d have to wait another couple of years for the next album, but she surprised me and released “Tension 2” in 2024.  Kylie is often opaque with her lyrics, touching on universal themes rather than explicitly linking them to her personal experiences but “Someone For Me” sounds like she might be trying to say something about herself and that sentiment resonated with me since I sometimes feel the same way.   

The Dandy Warhols are another long-time favorite artist, possibly top 25, and after a stretch of mediocre albums, their last two have reminded of what I love about them.  Their songs have a distinct vibe, a fuzzy, slightly psychedelic, groove driven sound.  If I was a stoner, I would love these songs for this reason.  As a music fan, I love them for their unique texture and clever lyrics.  “Root Of All Evil” is representative of their recent output.  Still, nothing will match their first three albums, but this recent album is a welcome throwback to that style.    

Mysteries Of Life are an offshoot of The Blake Babies, an earlier band of Juliana Hatfield.  The two Blake Babies who are not Juliana formed Mysteries Of Life so I was curious to give them a listen and I liked the pleasant “Going Through The Motions”.  Dicte’s “You Wanna Dance” was discovered by letting Spotify play me stuff chosen by their algorithm after the album I had selected was over.  That is often a way that I find artists to check out further.  Susanna Hoffs has become a favorite artist of mine.  I love the smoky, soothing sound of her voice and generally enjoy hearing her sing anything.  Given that she either covers classics or write engaging new material, she has a high percentage of good songs.  “City Girl” was a B-side on a single but I feel it deserves to be judged on its’ own merits.              

Speaking of smooth and seductive voices, we are down to the last two songs on my 2024 collection.  Clairo is an indie-leaning artist that I just recently noticed, and I need to go listen to her previous work beyond what I’m hearing on Sirius XM but “Sexy To Someone” immediately struck me and put her on my radar as someone to pay attention to.  The song has a seductive feel while echoing the longing sentiments in Kylie Minogue’s “Someone For Me” of wishing someone would notice her.  On the other end of that scale is Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso.  She knows that everyone is noticing her, and they all want her, like a caffeine addict needing their shot of espresso. Both of the songs discuss desire but from different perspectives, but both do it with a voice so smooth and seductive that you cannot imagine either of them having a problem capturing someone’s attention.  They certainly did that with me, at least musically.  

So that has been my musical journey in the last few years.  I used the framework of the COVID pandemic to give it some form of context, but looking back at my selections, I notice some other commonalities emerging.  I see that I responded to songs about having a purpose in life (Clairo’s “Sexy To Someone”, Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For”, Billy Joel’s “Turn The Lights Back On”, Paul McCartney & Beck’s “Find My Way”, Mysteries Of Life’s “Going Through The Motions” ), about death and aging (Paul Anka’s “Times Of Your Life”, Huey Lewis “While We’re Young”, Guster’s “When We Were Stars”, Pretty Reckless’ “Death By Rock And Rock”, everything by Tears For Fears), and political and social unrest (Ministry’s “Alert Level”, Tom Jones’ “Talking Reality Television Blues”, Dandy Warhols’ “Root Of All Evil”, Poppy “Time Is Up”, Edie Brickell’s “Horses Mouth”.) 

Maybe subconsciously I’m trying to find answers to these unspoken questions?  Maybe listening to pretty and catchy songs on these subjects will let me avoid thinking about them?  Maybe it is a coincidence?  I think that will be a topic for another day because this is already long enough. 

Thanks to those of you who read through to here.  Let me know what you think of the music.  It isn’t a good collection if I don’t have at least a couple of songs that people absolutely love and a couple that make them want to punch me in the arm for subjecting them to such a stupid song.  

Do you have things you can recommend to me?  It doesn’t have to be just music either.  That’s why I like doing this- I want to start conversations that are not about the serious topics I just mentioned.  Sometimes you just want to enjoy yourself and clear your head.  Since there are forms of entertainment besides music, I’ve included some recommendations below in case you are interested in the other things I appreciated in the last few years. 

So that’s a wrap on 2020 -2024.  I’m eager to see what surprises 2025 has in store for us.  I hope that they are mostly positive and that life treats you well until next time.

The Leader

Wild beast roaming free

too curious to settle

eyes the open plain

 

The pack wails and howls

as the leader bounds away

to the last frontier

 

The pack will not starve

Hunting skills were well learned

just feral joy ends

 

Each time the moon fills

they offer cries of thanks for

the time together

 

The beast remembers

taking their spirits along

Her journey goes on

(This was written for a co-worker who was leaving the company and moving to Alaska.  As I posted on her farewell Kudoboard, “How to say goodbye to Caitlin, who has been such a bright light in our organization? When considering how to do this impossible task, an image popped into my head. I decided to write you a haiku, actually five of them, to make the overwhelming simple and concise.”) 

Thinking Of You Today And Forever

(By Richard Goodman, 27 November 2023)

In the middle of May, I’m in my office working.  It has been a quiet morning so far.  Then around 10:45, the power went out.  The lights, the electricity, the internet- everything shuts down.  Since this happens occasionally in every office everywhere, I do what I normally do, which is nothing.  I take five minutes to walk around the office and do some things that don’t require electricity.  Surprisingly, the power did not come back on during that time.  Usually, it momentarily blips and everyone panics then it comes back on after two or three minutes.  Not this time.  So I check my cell phone for alerts from the property management company, or our I.T. company, or the Alexandria city government.  No notices at all so I check-in again with the other people in the office.  Still the same situation for them as well. 

As the company’s Operations Manager, I am in charge of power, internet, and all those things that keep the company running although I have no special power over them when they suddenly stop working.  I called our internet provider and they confirm that we are offline but that it is not on their end.  So I’m wondering what I can do to fix the situation, and the IT company suggests calling the phone company to see if they are doing work in that area and maybe cut a power cable.  I might as well try that since I can’t do anything else and my phone won’t stay charged forever. 

Ping!  My phone announces that a text message just came in and since it starts playing “Rat In Mi Kitchen” by UB40, I know the text is from my sister. 

Susan: “Please give me call when you are free.”

I don’t like that message because my sister rarely calls during the workday.  A text, sure, but not a phone call.  Also, the day before she texted me something about our Mom, who is in assisted living and has been slowly going downhill.  She texted an article called “How to recognize that a loved one is dying” and said, “Mom has the mottled skin now, is restless, and has rattled breath.”  As I said, I don’t like that on today’s text she asked me to call instead of texting me like normal.  I texted her back.

Richard: “I’m on the phone with our phone/internet company because our internet died so no one can do anything.  Is that an omen?”

Susan: “Yes”

Richard: “Damn it.”

Susan: “☹”

So the phone company says that they will register my issue and get in touch with me if they have any updates about work in the area that might be affecting our power or internet service.  In the meantime, they will send a tech out to our site to troubleshoot the issue.  After some back and forth, they agree to send the tech today instead of two days from now.  I let everyone know this and they all decide to go home and work from home since it isn’t a problem with our overall IT infrastructure because all the remote staff are online and not having any problems.  It is just the local internet in the office because the power is out.  While I wait for the tech, I call my sister back and she confirms the worst.  Mom passed away a little earlier that morning, right around the time the power went out. 

This is kind of weird, right?  The power goes out for an extended time right when Mom is unable to fight anymore and succumbs to her posterior cortical atrophy, dementia, and related medical issues.  I think it was Mom giving me some time to reflect and grieve.  Sitting alone in a dark office, with no distractions kind of forces you to think about things. 

My sister agrees that it is an odd coincidence. That was not the only one though.  Three days later, on my birthday, Sweden won the Eurovision song contest.  Mom is a proud Swede and have been thrilled to know that Sweden won the song contest for a record-tying seventh time.  Then when Susan and I went to Florida to attend the funeral, we had the fun task of going to the funeral home and making final choices on arrangements that Mom had made for Dad and her at that cemetery. 

We picked out the actual spot where they would be buried, near the center where there was a bench and flower bed since Mom liked to look at flowers.  Then we went to a small grassy area to look at the headstones the funeral home had on hand for immediate use.  As we were debating if Mom would have liked any of these headstones, we heard a really loud cracking sound and looked across the yard to see that a huge branch just broke off a tree by the funeral home.  Susan and I glanced at each other and decided that we would go inside the funeral home and look at other options for headstones in their catalog.  Mom didn’t seem to want us looking at the ones out here.       

After going inside and looking at the other possible headstones, we found one that we agreed on and thought Mom would like, and that Dad could tolerate because they wanted a combined headstone for both of them since they would be buried side by side.  We ordered the one that felt right for them and passed on some of the trinkets that were offered, like creating a necklace with a loved one’s fingerprint on it or making things out of their ashes.  Next time we go down to Florida, we can see the finished headstone that was placed there after it was delivered.  One thing we didn’t realize until we discussed it with the funeral home director is that Florida does not allow ashes to be buried outside of a container.  If you are cremated, you cannot also have those ashes in a burial plot unless they are in an approved container.  Mom had specifically said that she did not want to be buried in a box in the cold ground.   

Even though she did prefer cremation, she hadn’t expressed an interest in being in a container sitting on a shelf somewhere so we had to make a choice on what she would have preferred.  Eventually we went with an ash vault in a light Swedish blue color that would be buried in the plot, and I asked to have a small container of ashes for myself.   That wrapped up the funeral planning for now.

The next day, we went to have lunch with Dad.  Before knocking on Dad’s door though, I made a stop at the little garden area where he did his daily walk.  It was a very small area but along the circular path there were several trees and bushes, a little water fountain, and lots of flowers.  I thought this would be a good place to sprinkle the container of Mom’s ashes that I got at the funeral home the previous day.  I scattered some among the various flower beds, at the base of the two trees, and underneath the shrubs until the little container was empty.  There were a few ashes clinging to the plastic bag which I put back in the keepsake container to take home with me.  As I finished up the scattering, rain started to sprinkle down, soaking the ashes into the ground so they would not blow away.  Now whenever Dad takes his daily walk around the path, he will be with Mom and she will be part of the flowers and trees, near her husband, and not just in a box in the ground.    

Finally, Susan and I met with the pastor to finalize the memorial ceremony.  Or rather, I watched Susan and the pastor confirm the songs, and readings that would go along with the service.  Susan had worked on this before with the pastor and now they just confirming everything, handing over the music that was selected, and picking the order of the different parts of the ceremony.  The pastor took us to view the chapel and see how the logistics of the ceremony would flow.  On the way back to her office, the pastor saw us looking at a cardinal on a tree branch.  She said that there had been quite a few cardinals appearing at the nursing home these past two weeks, which was a bit unusual because they aren’t really that common in the area.  Susan and I looked at each other with a little shiver because cardinals are very common in Virginia, where it is the state bird and where our family lived for many years. 

The pastor had alerted the nursing home community about the memorial service and Susan had already placed an obituary in the newspaper a few days ago to alert anyone else that that may want to come to the memorial.  I made sure to search the local convenience stores in town for the newspaper once we arrived- in the evening of the day it was published.  At first, Susan wondered why I wanted to keep stopping at convenience stores and grocery stores but then she realized I was looking for the newspaper so I had a physical copy of it.  I found what must have been the one remaining copy in town. 

We didn’t think that the obituary, which was pretty expensive for a local paper, would bring in a huge crowd, but we thought it would be nice to let people know about Mom and what she had accomplished during her life and maybe say a prayer for her, even if they didn’t know her at all.  She deserved to be noticed and appreciated.

At the memorial service, things were kind of a blur as you would expect.  Susan had arranged for a big picture of Mom to be printed and the pastor provided the memorial program for the ceremony and there was a flower arrangement too so that part was taken care of.  Then people came in, the pastor spoke, music played, we had a slideshow with pictures of Mom and her family, and then it came time for the eulogy.  There was no way my Dad could do it- his memory issues are severe enough that he might forget what he was doing at the podium midway through talking.  Plus, he was emotionally distraught. He was actually crying during the ceremony, especially at the slideshow.  The only other time I saw him cry was at my sister’s wedding.  I’m glad he was able to understand the significance of the event and be able to express his grief.

My sister had said that she did not want to do the eulogy either because she did not think she would be able to get through it.  So it fell to me, since I was the emotionless one, although I hated public speaking.  In the last year or so, I had been thinking of what I could say about Mom when the time came and after the power went out at work that day, I started gathering those thoughts and putting them into a semi-coherent order that I hoped would do justice to my mother.  I got up and delivered the eulogy, trying to impress on the audience how much she meant to me and our family, and describe her involvement in the wider world.  She made a mark and her absence will be felt for a long time. 

Mom had outlived all her relatives and the one or two of her remaining close friends were in Sweden.  She took a trip to Sweden about eight years ago, just her and my dad, to visit people and show Dad her places since he never came along when Susan and/or I accompanied Mom to Sweden.  I think that was sort of a farewell tour for her, to showcase her husband, say goodbye to friends, and get a last look at her home country while she could still talk and move about somewhat independently. 

That is why I’m glad Bill, my uncle, got up and said a few words about Barbro.  He talked about what a smart, friendly lady she was.  He shared a story about how when her vision started going and she couldn’t read a restaurant menu board, she asked the counter clerk to read her the options.  The clerk asked my aunt and uncle, who were with her for lunch, if she was illiterate, to which my aunt replied, “Yes, and she is illiterate in multiple languages.”

I didn’t want to be the only one to commemorate her.  She should have had dozens of people get up and say how wonderful she was but, in the end, it came down to those that were the most important to her- her family.  She would have appreciated that the ceremony was short and sweet, and showed the love that we all felt for her.

We didn’t do much at the gravesite, other than put the ash vault in the ground and throw in some ceremonial dirt.  It was just my Dad, my sister and I sitting there reflecting on what had occurred and remembering Barbro.  My aunt didn’t feel up to it since she has been having some struggles of her own, but she got to spend time with Mom during several bedside visits in those last few weeks.  My uncle did the same, as he had for quite some time, providing some mental stimulation to keep my mom engaged in the world on his visits and also when he accompanied my aunt. I’m thankful for everyone’s support during this time of grief.  It was easier to handle knowing that others felt the same way about my mom and were there for her too.  I hope I don’t have to go through this again for a long, long time.

Below I included the eulogy I wrote for my mom and delivered at her memorial ceremony, in case you want to know what I said.  You can also visit the funeral home’s website through the link below and see the obituary that was published in the paper or view the video slideshow we made for the memorial.  Love each other while you can and think of them now and forever.

Barbro L Goodman Obituary - Visitation & Funeral Information (gentry-morrison.com)

  

Eulogy For My Mom, Barbro Goodman

I’ve avoided writing a eulogy for my mother, Barbro Lindberg Goodman, for years because I didn’t want to imagine there would be a time when she wasn’t around.  Mom inadvertently enabled my procrastination by continuing to defy stubbornly the negative prognosis she received.  When doctors diagnosed her with a rare affliction, Posterior Cortical Atrophy, she was given an estimate of no more than five to seven years to live.  Well, she surpassed that estimate and stubbornly fought not just to stick around but to stay connected to the world.   When the affliction caused her brain to stop processing images properly, it became difficult for her to navigate and walk on her own or even recognize common items like a fork.  For such an independent and capable person, I can’t imagine how hard that was on her. 

Rather than give up, she adapted and allowed herself to depend on others, something she wasn’t used to doing.  She accepted her husband’s arm on walks around the neighborhood, trusting that he would guide her around safely.  She listened to audiobooks for entertainment since she couldn’t read the newspaper or magazines anymore.  She was happy to be around other people and soak up the conversations. 

When additional ailments struck her, she lost the ability to hold extended conversations.  When a fall put her in assisted living, she was basically bed-ridden and unable to see or speak but she kept hanging on.  During our visits with Mom in her room, we had mostly one-sided conversations, but she would occasionally make a short comment or murmur an acknowledgment that showed she knew we were there and had been following the conversation.  There were times when someone asked her if we should go and let her rest, and she immediately and emphatically said “No!”  That melted my heart at the same time it broke it.  She knew we were there and wanted us to stay with her.

My favorite recent memory was on a visit about five years ago.  Mom was still in the Florida house with Dad, and I was sitting at the perpetually cluttered kitchen table with her.  She couldn’t really see but when I told her I was looking at some photo albums that appeared to be hers from when she was growing up in Sweden, she wanted to “see” them too.  I would describe the picture to her, and she would tell me what was happening in her life at that time, who was in the picture with her, and about what year it was.  I learned a lot about her childhood friends, her time in the Swedish equivalent of the Girl Scouts, what her mom and dad were doing, what school life was like, and what she wanted to study in college.  That was an enlightening conversation and the last lengthy one I remember having with her.  Her ability to converse started fading shortly afterwards.

In a sense, that is when I lost my Mom.  The mother I had known for over 50 years was gone.  Instead, I would sometimes get glimpses of the person she had been.  I treasure those little moments I got after she started declining and losing the ability to see or talk.  For instance, when I agreed with her logic about delaying a surgical procedure until further tests were done, and she said, “That’s my Richard!”, it brought me back to my childhood where I enjoyed getting praise from my mom.  When I came to visit her in her hospital room, she sat up a little straighter when I was there and listened intently to whatever silly story I was telling about what was going on in my life. 

Some visits she was babbling and saying nonsense words, but I would try to follow along and see if I could place myself in her stream of consciousness.  I would comment on what she had said and she would respond and we had a conversation on the likely imaginary story in her head but I always hoped it was a memory she was reliving, and we were sharing a moment from her past. 

In March, during my final visit with Mom, she seemed to be in pain because she was moaning and agitated.  I told her I understood how difficult things were and that I wished I could make it better for her.  I put my hand over hers and told her I was going to go, to go see Dad.  She stopped making noises and looked in the direction of my voice.  I told her I loved her.  And that I would see her again soon.

Two days later, she took a turn for the worse and was put on “peaceful passage” status, a nice euphemism that the family should expect the worst imminently.  I was about to lose my mom again, for good.  But being the focused, purposeful person she had always been, she rallied and her vital signs improved enough that she was removed from “peaceful passage”.    I had even admiringly joked to Susan that Mom was like the Little Engine That Could, she just kept going and going and was determined to succeed.  Sadly, the engine ran out of steam in May.  Mom finally succumbed to her second “peaceful passage”.   I won’t say she surrendered though because from what the nurse said, she was fighting to stay around and draw another breath.

So now I’m doing something I never wanted to do.  I’m still trying to procrastinate though because now I’m stuck on how to celebrate someone who gave life to me and whom I’ve known my entire life in just a few words.  Someone who made me the person I am today in every way imaginable. 

I can talk about her accomplishments that the world sees.  A woman in Sweden who got a degree in Chemical Engineering at the university in Halsingborg.   During a trip to Germany, when she was taking a summer break from teaching chemistry and math, she met an American Army Officer, and after a short time they got married and moved to America, where she raised two wonderful children.  Not content to be a bystander, Mom went back to school and did her degree again, in America, so she could get a job and put her chemical engineering skills to practical use.  She went to work for Philip Morris, the world’s leading cigarette maker, and became an integral part of the company in a male dominated profession.  Along the way, she was named on six patents for her technical innovations. 

After retiring from Philip Morris, and moving to North Carolina, she kept herself occupied by working for H&R Block doing taxes until retiring for good to travel the world.  She had already seen some of the world as an Army wife, having lived in Germany, Florida, Michigan, Maryland, and Virginia with her husband George, and on trips to Europe and Scandinavia with her parents Margit and Lars, as well as going to international conferences as a representative for Philip Morris.  Now she was seeing more of it, along with her family.  Mom, Dad, and I travelled to a dozen foreign countries before Mom’s medical issues became too unmanageable.  We visited Iceland, Spain, Morocco, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Hungary, among others.  Of course, I was also happy to join Mom whenever she wanted to go to Sweden and visit Mormor, or to handle the affairs for Mormor’s funeral in 2008.  I cherish those later trips when we got to socialize as adults and spend quality time with each other.                 

So to the world at large, Barbro was a good citizen, a successful worker, and a wonderful mother and wife.  But that is not why we remember her and admire her.  We love her for the person that she is.  A shy Swedish girl with a clever, inquisitive mind and an overwhelming curiosity about everything.  Mom wanted to see everything, experience everything, and taste everything.   

The times I will remember most fondly were those when she was just being herself, a logical person eager to experience new things with her family.  I love when she tells the story of having me on a leash when I was a small child because I liked to wander off and see things too, just like her.  Some shocked parent asked her why she was treating me like an animal and keeping me on a leash.  Mom explained the practicality of the leash and body harness and how it allowed me to wander around happily but not get so far away that I got into danger.  She couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t have their kids harnessed.  

During summer vacations, Mom and Dad would take Susan and I to destinations around Virginia.  We went to Williamsburg (Virginia), Kitty Hawk (North Carolina), Chincoteague Island (Virginia), with Dad as the driver and Mom as the navigator, roles they would continue to perform for most of their life.  We would frequently go to Sweden to visit her parents, and we loved exploring the Swedish countryside with our Mormor and Morfar, seeing the giant Dala horse at the Dala factory, visiting the shops in Falkoping, and getting candy at the corner kiosk.

When Susan and I were in school, Mom would do all the mom things you expected and that we took for granted.  She would drive us to sports practices, take us shopping for clothes, and drop us at a friend’s houses before we could drive ourselves.  She took me and my friend John to our first comic book convention in Richmond.  At the time, I actually remember thinking it was an imposition on her but she said she would just go into work for a couple of hours since Philip Morris was not too far from where the convention was.  Now I can look at that generosity and know she did it because she wanted me to do something that I enjoyed, just like her. 

Even though she was actively engaged in our lives, she taught us independence as well.  Since Mom and Dad both had careers, they weren’t home when school let out so for a while we went to various babysitters after school and then later on we became latchkey kids.  It was a logical decision to make.  Since we were responsible enough to be on our own, there was no reason to spend money on a babysitter.  So being babysat and then being latchkey kids taught us adapt to new situations and to be responsible for ourselves.        

During Christmases, Mom would both delight us and torment us kids.  We were delighted to see all the wonderful decorations, including things most American kids didn’t have, at least not then, like straw rams, advent calendars, Santa Lucia decorations, and a Christmas Eve present since Sweden celebrates on December 24^th.  She tormented us by wrapping wonderful presents and then labeling them with secret numbering codes that only she knew.  So I didn’t know if the notation R48 meant it was one of 48 presents for me or if it meant something else entirely.  I never did figure out what the code meant.     

At our various homes in Virginia, Dad always had a vegetable garden in the back and Mom had a flower garden in the front.  She loved to plant flowers and shrubs.  For one of her birthday’s when we lived in Chester, Virginia, she asked for a hanging plant holder and I thought she was wasting a birthday present by asking for plant stuff but I got her a macrame plant holder and she loved it.  I was amazed at the joy she could get from something so practical and unglamorous.  That taught me that listening to what people want can create a special moment.  She also loved to look at flowers.  During her travels, if there was a flower garden or flowerpot, she would stop to look and take a picture.  I think flowers reminded her of her childhood in Sweden and being outdoors.  Her parents also had lovely flower beds, bushes, and trees shrubs around their house.  Plus rhubarb plants which were made into a rhubarb pie that Mom loved but none of us shared her delight at that so-called treat.

When home computers started becoming affordable, Mom got one for our family.  The same thing happened when VCRs came out.  I have an audio recording from the 1970’s when Mom used a cassette tape recording to document a Christmas in Florida.  She was curious about new technologies and wanted to see what they were like.  At different points in her life, Mom was a gardener, Red Hat Lady, a bridge player, a witness in a landmark lawsuit, a member of her neighborhood community committee, a community cookbook contributor, a fan of the television shows Survivor and Big Brother, a Girl Scout, an MBA, and a patent holder. 

If you will please indulge me for just a couple more stories about my Mother because I haven’t mentioned one of the most amazing things about my mother, which is her unending capacity for delight.  On our first river cruise trip together, there was a day in Hungary when we had a free afternoon.  We decided to walk around and just look around at the town we were in.  It was a pretty town but a sudden rainstorm drenched us since we didn’t have umbrellas or raincoats.  We scurried into a nearby shop and it turned out to be a bakery so we got a pastry and drink and sat at the table talking and watching the rain fall on the square.  I loved that afternoon as much as any of the “important” sites we saw on the trip.   

Then during a trip to Sweden, we did something similar.  On an overcast day, we were walking around Falkoping, because we were both in the mood for Princess cake, a very Swedish confection of angel cake, crème, strawberry jam, and marzipan.  We stopped by several shops until we finally found some and took it back to where we were staying and ate cake while talking about our trip.

You might see where this is going.  If you know my Mom, you know she loved pastry.  Any pastry really.  If you set a slice of pie, Princess cake, a Danish, a coffee crumb cake, a muffin, a doughnut, any baked good really, her eyes would light up.  No matter what was going on at the time, how tired she was, how much she had already eaten, she retained a childlike delight at the chance to experience something amazing.  Every pastry was a chance for something wonderful, the possibility of experiencing something new and unknown. 

If you dared to have eat a pastry in front of her, you better have something for her as well or she would have one of her rare moments of hurt and disappointment.  I always felt terrible if I caused Mom any hurt.  I still can’t believe none of us made any special fuss about that birthday thirty years ago.  Since then, at least I’ve learned to always bring a treat for Mom.

Being the practical person she was, Mom passed away May 10^th, 2023, on the cusp of Mother’s Day, and today she is being celebrated on her seventy-eighth birthday so we will always know when to celebrate Mom’s life and her passing. 

Thank you for bearing with me while I worked through this and for overlooking my lapses using past and present tense incorrectly while I let this settle into my brain.  This has helped me process things.  Following specific steps and analyzing a situation is something I got from my Mom and I’m happy I did.  Being curious, eager, optimistic, enthusiastic, logical, practical, and organized are gifts.  What she gave me, by birth and by example, is something I can never thank her enough for.   

As I wrote this, I looked back at some of those pictures from the Swedish photo albums I discussed with her five years ago and I’m now struck not by the stories that we shared then but by how many more photos there are that I never got a chance to ask her about, all the other stories I didn’t get to hear.  Seventy-eight years was not enough time to appreciate what a remarkable person she was.  Thank you for being here and sharing this difficult experience with me and for celebrating this remarkable person.   

In the end, I want the same thing everybody wants – to spend more quality time with the people they love, even if it is just doing something ordinary like sitting at a table trying a new pastry and talking to each other.