Girl Powah! (Follow Up)

Months ago, in this blog's infancy, an article was born with the intention of defunkifying those who found themselves down in the dumps. The post, found here -

- never claimed to be a cure all. I make every effort on this platform to assure my audience that I never want to come across as someone naive enough to claim I've found the cure for depression, anxiety, or any other mental malady that might plague you - or me. I do, however, use this forum to offer as many tips, tricks, pieces of sound advice, and words of encouragement as I possibly can to help my brothers and sisters in this battle.

I digress.

With that out of the way, I did want to share this week a tool that has helped me many times over the last year on my particularly bad days. The post I shared back in April of this year listed three different types of music to help lift the corresponding negative moods one might find themselves in. One of those genres was happy, peppy jams possessing the ability to naturally lift one's spirits - at least to an extent.

After realizing what a vital role music played in making me feel better, and prior to writing that April article, I spent weeks building a perfect playlist on YouTube to do just that. Titled "Inspirational Songs" on my channel simply known as Cae, it was custom-made for myself, complete with every uplifting, seize-life-by-the-horns power ballad I had ever admired on movie soundtracks and radio alike. I listed a few singles before, but I thought this week I'd go ahead and share the link to this playlist for those of you looking for your own inspiration, or find yourself too depleted of motivation to create your own at the moment.

The reason for the title of this post lies in the type of music on this playlist (sorry, bros) as it was built with myself in mind. Many of these songs are saturated in Girl Power, and/or belted out by female powerhouses. Now, number one, I want to make it very clear that there is nothing wrong with that or with any boy who chooses to listen to it. By all means, these songs are popular for a reason, and their messages are definitely meant for everyone. Number two, the Girl Power trope is not true of every single song found here. Included are tracks by Fall Out Boy, Andy Grammer, Panic at the Disco, and Smash Mouth. Lastly, I tried very hard to stick to songs that speak to dealing with hardship, seeing the best in oneself, and being a positive figure in the world. I steered clear of anything written about relationships - good or bad - in favor of introspective lyrics about self-love, with a few minor exceptions (Because some of them are just so jammable, they put me in a good mood no matter what).

Without further ado, here is my favorite mood-lifting jams of all time:

Enjoy!