Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Like her. Like this song.

Think I might this acoustic version even better, though:

She’s Orianthi and, yes, I like her.

Plus, I think she rips that guitar UP. But I need Cullen to tell me if she does. If he says she doesn’t, then, clearly, I am done with her.

Although I will still continue to work out to these songs. But with contempt then, of course. Contempt will drip from every word I sing at the top of my lungs.

Ooh, at about 3:20 in the video below, I was on sheer tenterhooks as to how it would end! Nailbiting suspense, pippa!

In the one below, she has a purty sparkly guitar. I need Cullen to explain what’s going on with the guitar in the foreground because it doesn’t look to be what she’s playing, but maybe it is. I really don’t know. So … is that cool or just weird?

The red eye of Sauron is making me insecure. I need non red-eyed people to tell me what to think. As usual.

Oh, but check her out at about 2:12-2:27.

Christian Aquilera on the “American Idol” finale the other night. Honestly, the ONLY good thing to come from this season of complete and utter dreck. I watched intermittently only and cared not one bit who won.

Uhm, who won again?

Check this out. (Fast forward to about 4:07. Anything before that is just the American Idol rejects singing Christina and it’s cringe-worthy.)

But the woman herself? Amaaaaazing. Raw. Staggeringly beautiful.

Do not ask me how I stumbled across this, I beg of you.

Anne Hathaway’s version of the 70s hit by Leo Sayer.

You know, this guy:

Wacky clown Jesus from Godspell!

Shudder, shudder, shudder.

Weird, but I fixate on only one thing in this disturbing-on-so-many-levels photo and I’ll bet it’s not what you think.

It’s this:

The GIANT YAWNING U’s between his fingers.

Look at them! LOOK at them, pippa! The arms of a starfish are closer together. They make me think of spiders. To get from one finger to another requires an exhausting trans-Atlantic flight. I don’t know. I’m really freaked out. I’m looking at my hands right now and I have nice pretty little V’s between my nice pretty little fingers. That’s normal, right? I’m sorry. I notice men’s hands. Kind of a thing of mine. I don’t like pretty hands on a man, nor do I like freaky yawning starfish hands. Honestly, I would never ever want this man ANYWHERE near me — definitely not my type and it’s not just the hands, shockingly — unless I came across a really stubborn mayonnaise jar. Then, yes, lose the suspenders, lose the hair, lose the t-shirt, lose the face, and get your wacky bag o’ jacks paws over here. And tout de suite on that, Crackie.

Good Lord, where was I?

Oh, the song. Yes. Please listen and don’t think about his hands, okay? And if you know the original, what do you think? Better? Worse?

Do you like her voice? Hate her voice? What?

I need thoughts.

Tell me things about this — anything — so I stop thinking about Starfish Hands.

Probably my favorite Dan Fogelberg song.

This video is utterly ridiculous, just so you know. I don’t post this for the video, but for the song itself. I mean, every time the lyrics say “crowned” — guess what? There’s a crown! I’ve talked about this before: these amateur YouTube “filmmakers” and their literal interpretations of every little thing — it’s all quite painful. So, please, just listen, because you’ll laugh if you watch. There are faeries and random torsos and crowns and trees stark against an unforgiving sky, blahdie blah blah. And, as we all know, trees stark against an unforgiving sky say, “I am 15 and I am very deep.” Oh, and it’s mostly in black and white, so it’s super duper deep.

Dan Fogelberg is turning in his too-early grave on this one. Fair warning. It is ridiculous.

So whatever yourself. Just listen. I love the lyrics.

Seldom seen
A scarecrow’s dream
I hang in the hopes of replacement
Castles tall
I built them all
But I dream that I’m trapped in
the basement.

And if you ever hear me calling out
And if you’ve been by paupers crowned
Between the worlds of men and make-believe
I can be found.

Michael Franti.

This is not a deep song, but who cares? Yes, he rhymes “you” with “you” and then …..”you,” but, seriously, who cares?

It makes me happy.

And, really, the important thing to learn here is that he knows one thing, that he loves you. He loves you, he loves you, he loves you.

And that ain’t bad. Well, maybe for you fellas, but just roll with it, okay?

See for yourself.

Hey mama.

This song was featured at the end of “House” last night and I sat frozen from the second it started to the second it ended. Cuts right through me.

maybe someday, we will look back at this and we’ll smile, but right now i can’t bear ……

when we first met we were kids, we were wild, we were restless
and after a while, i grew coarse, i grew cold, i grew reckless
i hold this memory, hold you so close to me, whispered were we always happy

My other favorite traditional hymn, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” This is a really cool version by Sufjan Stevens. I love it. Quirky and open and vulnerable.

I even like the video here. Although the images have nothing to do with the song, they’re gorgeous.

The lyrics below are the more modernized version. I prefer the original lyrics.

Come Thou Fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of God’s unchanging love.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace now like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

(An Ebenezer or Eben-Ezer, found in 1 Samuel 7:12, which says: Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah, and named it Ebenezer; for he said, “Thus far the LORD has helped us.” It’s a stone of remembrance and fresh beginnings, acknowledging God’s help. Pretty cool, huh?)

More on that later.

I am lying in bed with my laptop, struggling to keep my eyes open as I write this. It’s what? 7:30? So, whatevs. I am eight. Next year, I will be in third grade.

So for your consideration, before I drift off into my looming coma, the only — and I mean only — song of Bryan Adams’ that I like. Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman from “Don Juan De Marco.”

Actually, it’s one of my favorite songs.

But, look, Bryan Adams. I get that the whole mask thing ties into the movie, but I’m tired and it just makes me want to smack you. You need to LOSE that, Crackie. Leave that to Johnny Depp. Just sing.

Uhm, okay. The image this is frozen on …. I have no control over.

I remember watching this episode of Ally McBeal several years ago now — the episode the short clip below is from. You don’t really need a context, thank God, because I don’t remember enough of the episode to give you one.

The clip simply shows Ally sitting at her little upright piano in the final moments of the episode and plucking out the tune to Dulcinea from “Man of La Mancha” — a song her dad used to sing to her. His voice joins in and sings with her.

But when I saw it, it had a completely different context to me. The song of Dulcinea could just as easily be the song of the childless woman. That’s what I heard when I saw this episode. These are exactly the words you sing to the children you don’t have. The children you swear you know, the children you know you love, but still, the children who are not here. And the visual at the end of this clip — well, that’s the life of the childless woman, during the worst of it, when you want to die.

I put this clip up not for my sake, no, but for anyone you might know going through this right now. Mourning what doesn’t exist. Going crazy from it. Feeling haunted. Wondering if they’ll ever come out the other side. Pray for them, okay? Or just say a prayer in general for the childless, for the single who long for children, too.

Be forewarned: I don’t make it through this clip dry-eyed — ever — and you might not either.

There are so many people walking around mourning so much that people just don’t see, aren’t there?

(partial lyrics below)

I have dreamed thee too long,
Never seen thee or touched thee.
But known thee with all of my heart.
Half a prayer, half a song,
Thou hast always been with me,
Though we have been always apart.

And thy name is like a prayer
An angel whispers… Dulcinea… Dulcinea ….
Dulcinea …. Dulcinea ….