---
title: "Where did all the singable songs go?"
description: "Last night I attended a New Year's eve party with a bunch of musicians. I have a weakness for musicians. James likes to tell me that he played sax in grade six. It's not exactly the same though, is..."
url: https://somisguided.com/2006/01/01/where-did-all-the-singable-songs-go/
date: 2006-01-01
modified: 2006-01-01
author: "Monique"
type: post
lang: en
---

# Where did all the singable songs go?

[!(http://static.flickr.com/36/80480556_77639a848f_m.jpg)](http://www.flickr.com/photos/somisguided/80480556/)Last night I attended a New Year’s eve party with a bunch of musicians. I have a weakness for musicians. James likes to tell me that he played sax in grade six. It’s not exactly the same though, is it?

Anyway there was a bit of a song and dance portion of the evening and it struck me that none of us could think of popular songs that everyone would know the words to. Maybe it was just our group, maybe we don’t sing along to the radio enough, maybe we had a mental block on New Year’s songs, or maybe it’s that the majority of the songs on the radio are trite and not the songs you sing together. Perhaps we needed some of the songsters from Zizane restaurant or Colombia.

I was in Colombia years ago and my host family was appauled by my lack of singing. The first night I stayed with my host dad, he took me to a party where we sat around drinking whiskey and singing Sinatra. “Why don’t you know all these songs? They’re your songs,” he said. I pointed out that they were actually American songs and I tried to sing part of a Hip song but lost my way.

Years before that I’d been on a city-city exchange with a Quebec town. I was the youth contingent and everyone else representing my town was 60-70 years old. When they started singing it was awing. Lots of songs about friendship and love and songs that the Quebec folks knew in English and French. The Quebec group who were younger–40-50–had their own songs too. What did I have? A bit of Madonna and Debbie Gibson. A very sad state of affairs.

So where did all the singable songs go? Or better still, what are the songs that we sing together? Who knows all the words to Auld Lang Syne? When was the last time you sang the anthem? Maybe there can be more singing in 2006.

Happy New Year.