I Lived

Carpe Diem

I Lived by OneRepublic

Recommended by Bryan

"That's a good one. We make Edward listen to it 24-7."

I really love the music video, which tells the story of a kid with cystic fibrosis between verses. It's touching and helps drive home the message - live for today. The boy is actually teenage OneRepublic fan, Bryan Warnecke.

But you can also listen to just the song here.

I like the sound of the song. I like the guitar strings being plucked, almost delicately. It's a nice way to open the song and serves as a lovely backdrop for the vocals.

The emotion falls into a weird in-between space that happens to be one of my favorites. Is it happy or sad? Neither, really. It's encouraging and positive, but there's a lingering sense of something darker. It seems ironic to feel nostalgia from a song that's clearly about letting go of regret, but I think there are signs of wistfulness because of that what if?

What if I don't get to come back tomorrow? What if this is the last chance I ever get to do something like this? What if I die tonight?

It gets particularly dark for a moment in the middle where I think it seems like a parent looking down at their child:

I wish that I could witness all your joy and all your pain,
But until my moment comes, I'll say
I did it all...

It's a beautiful wish for your child to live fully and fearlessly, but you have to wonder why he expects he won't get to watch his kid grow up. Sure, we all die eventually...but it feels unfair, somehow, to mention death in a song called I Lived.

We live in a society that says, "I'll get to it later." We're always preparing for tomorrow, and implication is that we see tomorrow as a certainty and an entitlement. I think most of the melancholy from this song comes from a kind of petulance. It's a positive song saying to live like there's no tomorrow, and no matter how much I agree with that, there's still a voice saying, "But there should be a tomorrow. I deserve

Overview:

Genre:
Pop Rock

Favorite Lyrics:
I owned every second that this world could give.

Verdict:
Let's seize the day.