Soak Up the Sun

by Sheryl Crow and Jeff Trott

You’ve been trying to stay off social media, for your mental health. There’s been some major changes in your life and you find yourself changing your tune a bit. What once was your only place to express yourself is now mostly algorithms you’ve outgrown. You think of all the old people who complained about the world changing, and you think seriously about their lives. You think the craziest lifetime must have been between 1890-1990. You think about how 1950s-2000 are the canon decades, and you’ve only known life in their shadow. You think about the women who lived through great social advancement across their whole life but never progressed past age 20.

You must come from a long line of loneliness. You see names in your ancestry that are foreign but know that DNA is living in you. You feel less lonely.

You think of all the ways you could have been part of history. You’re doing your best, trying to overcome your fear of being on the wrong side.

You open Instagram and see old friends, gathered to celebrate the new year. They’re grinning in the mirror you’ll probably never be invited into. Smiling along with them, you think of your resolution to find and practice peace. You delete the app.

When I was little, my mom would play this song off a CD player in the laundry room. I was maybe 3 or 4, making core connections between her and Sheryl’s voice. I loved the feeling of sunlight. I enjoyed the safety and warmth of laundry and my mother being close to me.

This is apparently a post 9-11 number, but it has more of a “let’s go back to the 90s!” feel to it than the desire to create something new. I always wonder what people’s reaction to songs were when they first came out. Maybe it has always been nostalgic, I’m too young to know.

P.S. Soccer Mommy did a cover, which to me expresses how prophetic this song is. Young people are extremely struggling! For the Indie pop rock girlies: