"A Winter's Tale"

For this week, I've been inspired to talk about one of the Moody Blues' less famous tunes, "A Winter's Tale."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE4UUZpOkqA

I have a sort of spiritual connection (for lack of a better term) with the Moody Blues. My parents are both huge fans of their music, so they took me to a concert when I was a baby and even named me after the lead drummer Graeme Edge. It's a little ironic because, personally, I've never really cared that much for most of their music, with some exceptions. Oh well. Wrong generation, I guess.

"A Winter's Tale" is a song from their album compilation of winter-related songs called December. I have lots of fond memories of listening to the album in my mom's car on Christmas Eve as we drove to Outback Steakhouse for dinner. Looking back, it's a good way to make me feel the joy of the holiday season.

To be honest, I probably could've chosen just about any song from this album, but there's a reason why I picked this one. Without really paying that much attention to the lyrics, just the tone and melody of this song makes me picture a forest landscape covered in snow on a starry night. It's a beautiful image that always puts me in the holiday spirit. I just love it so much.

When I was a kid, I loved winter entirely because it meant just two things: snow and Christmas. I always anticipated getting to play out in the snow, throwing snowballs and sledding in tow on my uncle's four-wheeler. One year, we even had enough to build a real snowman. Winter also brought promises of a magical Christmas season. They say the holidays are the most magical time of year and back then, I really felt it.

Sadly, now that I'm an adult, winter has become much more of an inconvenience. We still get snow days off from school, but since I'm now stuck at school anyway with nothing really exciting to do, it doesn't make much difference. Plus, to make it worse, I've developed eczema on my hands, so now I've got blisters and band-aids to look forward to every year. As for Christmas, it's still the best part about winter in my book, but sadly, the magic has more-or-less dwindled away with age. I still look forward to the holiday season with great anticipation every year, but it just doesn't quite excite as much as it used to. Just one more of the many perks of growing up, I suppose.

Well, now that I've thoroughly depressed you yet again, time to wrap this up. "A Winter's Tale," along with the other songs on the Moody Blues' December album, are a holiday tradition that I really like to revisit every year if just to attempt to maintain the thrill of the winter season.

"Monster"

This week, we have the hit song "Monster" by Christian rock band Skillet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9NStVkSCuk

I don't really have a huge amount of things to say about this one, but it is one of my favorite songs not just because it's so catchy. I was first introduced to this song back when I was a sophomore in high school and I immediately loved it. It was also my introduction to Skillet as a group and I later discovered many more songs of theirs that I really liked. But "Monster" was pretty much my jam for the remainder of my sophomore year.

I've seen this song used on Youtube to pay tribute to so many villains in the media. Villains are always my favorite characters to look for because they're usually just so much fun to watch. But this song especially works for a certain type of person: the one with some sort of duplicity, or the "werewolf" if you will.

I've always been a fan of the werewolf. Not just the mythical creature, but also the character type. Usually, they have some kind of condition, like a split personality, that causes them great distress and puts others in danger. Just the concept of a split personality fascinates me and it's always interesting to delve into the psyche of somebody suffering from such a condition. The idea that somebody can just suddenly become a whole different person is both an amazing idea and a frightening one.

"Monster" is all about a person going through this exact struggle, with lyrics like "The secret side of me, I never let you see. I keep it caged, but I can't control it." The person in the song is fighting to, to quote the Incredible Hulk, "control the raging the spirit that dwells within him." If you want to think about it on a more broad level, everybody has a side to them or a secret that they're afraid to let people know about for fear of what might happen to their reputation. It doesn't necessarily have to be a split personality, but I think everyone has at least one skeleton in their closet.

For anybody who has ever had a deep personal secret, or just anyone who likes werewolves, Skillet's "Monster" is definitely the song for you.