Father's Day songs Part 1: I Loved Her First

Fatherhood is captured in song and in movies as well as any topic that's ever been written about. Over the next few days, I want to highlight 5 meaningful songs about fatherhood. Some will come from the viewpoints of the dad, some from the child,and some from both. This is not a Casey-Kasem-like countdown, so I don't want arguments about which is best. There is no ranking. Just enjoy. ;)

As everyone from Donald Miller to John Eldredge has pointed out in recent years, telling a great story is the best thing you can do. And many great stories are told in 4-minute snippets.

"I Loved Her First" is a stellar song, written by a friend of mine, Elliott Park. The band who sings it, Heartland, barely has local-band talent, and never achieved any other success before or after this single. But the fact that a band like that, on a small label with no promotional budget, could achieve a huge hit just goes to show what a powerful song this is. It tells a great story.

The next song in the list is here.

Comments

Anonymous said…

barely has local band TALENT?? Wow, you really know your stuff when it comes to bands. The original group is not together anymore, but if you would have seen them in concert or knew what they are doing now, I think you would have a different opinion. Course, thats just mine.

October 27, 2011 at 3:20 PM

Saying goodbye to one set of twins, and hello to another

"It's been ten whole years already? Wow! Hard to believe." Many a father will say something like that while shaking his head in disbelief, when his oldest approaches the 10th birthday. It's a milestone, not just for the kid, but for the parents. It's a head-shaker because I am reminded that on that day, 10 years ago, my life changed forever. In some ways, it has passed very quickly. In other ways, it seems like it's been every bit of ten years. There are two distinct things, though, about the ten-year anniversary of my dadhood. The first is that I became a father of not one, but two little bundles of joy that Tuesday morning. Abby was born at 8:48, followed by her brother Jacob at 8:50. The second is that their birth marked some rare joy in the midst of the darkest day in our nation's history. As my wife was in labor, a nurse came in and told us that an airplane had crashed into a skyscraper in New York. I turned on the labor room...

Embarrassing video clip--John Cougar

I recently stumbled across some Youtube gold: a live performance by John Mellencamp when he was Johnny Cougar. He appears to be have been about 23, and he's singing "Ain't even Done With The Night", in front of a fairly unresponsive crowd with Bobby Bare (?!) in the front seat. Cougar/Mellencamp is dressed in a nerdy sweater and generally bears no resemblance to the singer as we knew him just 5 years later. He looks a lot more like Potsie from Happy Days than the guy who sang "Pink Houses". Certainly, there is no way to watch this and make a connection to the guy whose song "This is Our Country" beat us to death by overuse in pickup truck commercials. But the real entertainment value from this clip comes from the guys behind Cougar. In hot-pink tuxedos, there are 5 Pips-like backup dancers/singers who don't sing, but clap their hands real well. They essentially spend the entire song performing cheerleader dance routines not unlike those ...

The Two Christmases

As I walked through the front door of the Post Office to make my stamp purchase, I was faced with a choice. On my left was a vending machine, and to my right was the customer service desk, where I could make the purchase from actual human beings. Because there was no line at the moment, I chose the human interaction. I strolled up to the middle-aged, slightly balding postal employee, read that his name was "Rex", and I asked for two books of stamps. As it was mid-December, Rex asked me "would you like Christmas stamps, or...". Once I realized he wasn't about to complete the sentence, I looked down and saw that he was holding some very un-Christmas-like stamps bearing images of the Liberty Bell and the word "Forever." Knowing that my wife had planned to mail several Christmas cards, I told him "One of each." To my surprise, the decision-making did not stop there. Rex hit me with a follow-up: he held up two types of stamps: one had a pi...

Middletree

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