Day 5 of the daily WordPress #bloganuary challenge is to write about something that brings me joy. I have quite a few things I would love to write about but for some reason singing came to me for this one 🎶

I wrote in day 1 of #bloganuary that one thing I’d like to do more of this year is listen to more music and sing.

Something that has always stuck with me

I’ve always enjoyed singing my whole life. I have a cassette tape recording of me age 5 singing to my mum performing all the songs from a school play about Cinderella.

I used to spend hours as a kid writing down lyrics to songs, stopping the cassette tape every two seconds to scribble down the words I think I heard (sometimes I’d get them hideously wrong). I’d rip out song lyrics from magazines and enjoyed singing and dancing with my friend to Eternal and Spice Girls songs. I spent hours watching my favourite bands perform on Top of the Pops and on Saturday morning TV, I probably wanted to be a singer at one point too.

Fast forward 25+ years and I still love to sing, I just Google song lyrics or read them on Spotify instead of writing them out myself. Singing is not really something I do in public. The shower, kitchen and car are my stage and my family my audience (just because they are walking around the house). My favourite place to sing is driving in the car with the music loud. It’s just me in my own space and I don’t need to worry about anyone judging what I sing and how well.

I always wanted to be in a band but I couldn’t write songs and although I dabbled in the guitar wasn’t that great. At 18 a group of my friends got together to play instruments and sing but we all wanted to do different songs, it didn’t really work and that was that. My fleeting singing career 😂

I like the idea of getting singing lessons, but I chose to get cello lessons and I want to see those lessons through. Unfortunately I can’t afford both. Maybe one day….

How singing brings me joy

I think it’s a bit of a physiological thing. Listening to music and belting out a song is a release. I can channel sad, anxious, excited, nervous and happy energy into singing and literally sing the emotions out of my body. Pretty powerful stuff right? Add in loud music and it is a winning combination, it has to be loud to get that release. Why does music always sound better louder, especially with headphones in!

If I’m really upset or anxious it can feel like a workout once I’ve sung some of my favourite songs at the top of my voice, it’s as if I’ve just performed at a top arena.

Then there are the songs we hear which just strike a chord with you, something about the music, the voice or the lyrics end up living rent free in your head and you’re either humming that song for ever more, or it becomes one of your go to songs to vent.

Talking about humming I hum a lot and I don’t even know I’m doing it half the time. My partner often says “what are you humming?” Or “do you know you are humming?“ and sometimes I don’t realise. My son is the same he is always humming when he is playing and colouring in.

Singing is therapy

A BBC article about singing discusses how singing releases endorphins aka the feel good chemicals. These give us a feeling of euphoria and in turn reduces stress.

I definitely agree with this one, during the pandemic I downloaded a signing app called Smule where you could record yourself signing along karaoke style to lots of different songs across different genres of music. You could make your videos private so no one saw them, or you could open them up to encourage others to duet with you. You could even join in with other people and sing along with them on their songs.

During a time when we were all house bound and constantly living in each other’s pockets this gave me something I could go off and do on my own and engage with people online from all over the world. I loved it, it gave me something to focus on away from the stresses of working from home with a 3 year old and the fear of Covid-19. One of my closest friends and I would sing songs and duet with each other too. It was a way to bring us closer together even though we were miles apart and it made us both feel good.

Not sure why I’m sharing this….but if you’d like to see me singing along with a random person off of Smule follow this link. We are singing “Swamped” by Lacuna Coil. I come in around 1 min. Here is another duet, this time a Christina Aguilera song called “Save Me From Myself” 😬 I come in around 17 seconds.

Right, I’m off to warm up those vocal chords and get some endorphins flowing ❤️

Camilla-Erika