April 08, 2024
Sam Greene/The Enquirer; USA TODAY NETWORK
Listening to Taylor Swift's 'Daylight' is the ideal way to finish to your solar eclipse watching experience. We've created a Spotify playlist with that track and nine others to be the soundtrack for the April 8 astronomical phenomenon.
Do a quick search of "eclipse playlist" on Spotify and you will find dozens of cleverly crafted mixes that almost all feature Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart."
While the Welsh singer's chart-topping tune is perfect for any celestial soundtrack, there are plenty of Philly-area artists who have poetically professed their emotions about astronomical objects. So show some love to your hometown heliophiles and selenophile — of course there are words for people who love the sun and moon — and listen to this playlist while watching Monday's solar eclipse.
A Spotify playlist, with each song preloaded, is included at the end of this article.
While Springsteen is the personification of New Jersey in tight jeans, the Boss's admiration of the "Streets of Philadelphia" allows us to at least partially claim him as one of our own. This is a tone-setting song to ease your way into your eclipse observation and bring to light the presence of the sun before 90% peak coverage around 3:23 p.m. And if you're not wearing appropriate glasses, this could also end up being a prophetic tune.
The bonus track on the North Philly native's 2011 album, which is also called "The Light of the Sun," does not feature much lyrical ingenuity, but the head-bopping guitar riff will put you in the right mood to get lost in space.
With this also being the month of the pink moon, which will occur April 23, the stars really seem to align for this selection. Pink, who as born in Doylestown, teams up with her daughter in this uplifting song that tells us, "the world's been spinning since the beginning, and everything will be alright." Those reassuring words will be comforting for anyone feeling a bit apocalyptic.
The Philly band with a Ph.D. in rock seems to have an infatuation with "light;" it has three different songs with the word in the title. "Buzzing" gets the nod over "Distant" and "Standing in" as a tribute to all those sungazers who are playing hooky and marking this marvelous day with some adult refreshments.
If the emerging darkness conjures up painful emo feelings of lost love, than this anthem of anguish by the singer-songwriter who attended Lower Merion High School is definitely going to hit on all the feels for you.
The Patti LaBelle-led group from Philadelphia covered this Cat Stevens song for their second album, which was also titled "Moon Shadow." Stevens said the song is about finding hope in all situations, which is a nice message after listening to "Doomsday."
The electronic jam band that is partially based in Philly masterfully proves that the word "umbilical" does not have to always be followed by the word "cord." There are simply no words for — or to — this song.
The most popular moon song in the music history was written in 1934 and has been covered by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke and many more. For this mix, we'll go with the version by Holiday, who was born in Philadelphia. Considering this region won't see another event like this until 2045, a song presumably referring to the an expression for very rarely is apropos.
After last week's miserable weather, these lyrics from the Lansdale pop-punk band hit a little too close to home. "It's goddamn freezing in this city. There's no heat in my room. It's like it never stops raining. And I'm soaked through"
With her inclusion as the closer for our eclipse playlist, Swift can now finally say that she's truly made it as a superstar. There's not a more fitting way to begin our climb out of the darkness than with West Reading's own serenading us with, "I've been sleeping so long in a 20-year dark night. And now I see daylight, I only see daylight."
