five favorites / amazon music

And by "free" I mean the music you get with a Prime membership, but not with the ridiculous up-sell of an Amazon Music Unlimited membership. So, free-ish. 

I'm having a resurgence of playing music during the day, during the dinner hour, in the afternoons. Seems to make me less on edge, less fully overwhelmed by the magnitude of tantrums, and toddler pants wet from another bathroom accident, and babies cranky over anything. It's like playing something, anything, allows 10% of my attention and patience to be reserved and focused on the music, and therefore, I don't lose my sh*t when all hell breaks loose.

It helps.

Top five melodies on repeat here:

1 / Want you back - Haim 

They're three sisters, I think, singing bubbly little pop tunes. 

2 / Spring 1 - Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi, The Four Seasons

Stephanie of NieNie Dialogues wrote a post on this, and said it beautifully: "If you only do one thing today, (besides saying your prayers of course), listen to "Spring 1". Now, don't just play it in the background as you work or do the laundry. Promise me that you will sit down and listen to it.
And I hope you can be alone since I am almost positive the arrangement will make you cry.
I also hope you are able to listen to it as loud as you possibly can and unequivocally know that GOD IS." 

It was good advice. I did it, cried, and have listened to it at least 5 times every day since. 

3 / The Piano Guys - custom set of sappiness 

Made myself a good ol' fashioned playlist circa college in 2006 and added my faves to a good neutral-yet-toe-tapping playlist: Ants Marching, Begin Again, Beethoven's 5 Secrets, What Makes You Beautiful, A Thousand Years. Prime has a bunch of their albums to cherry pick from. 

4 / Jump at the Sun - Scythian 

Auntie Leila at Like Mother Like Daughter mentioned this one in a bits & pieces post a while back, I think because her kids are wickedly talented fiddlers. I pluck no strings over here, but man, these fellows make some great music. Don't miss "Go, Lovely Rose."

5 / The Greatest Showman soundtrack

Ok ok, it's not on Prime music! I listen to it on YouTube (is that illegal? immoral??) so it fits the free-ish category. I've been seeing folks talk about this one for MONTHS now and finally rented it from redbox last weekend. And now, a million dreams are keeping me awake, and this is brave, this is bruised, OH!! THIS--IS--THE GREATEST--SHOOOOW, etc, etc. Can't stop it from playing hourly, either in my head or on my phone. Polling the audience: How long before you get it out of your system? A week? Ten days? Does it take buying the whole thing to be cured of it? 

Linking up with Ashley for five favorites from April.