How and Why I Curated a List of 100 Positive Uplifting Songs

Let’s see if I can remember the exact reason why I originally wanted to undertake the task of coming up with a list of 100 positive uplifting songs…

I’m sure it was just one of those ideas I had one day that I thought would help me add email subscribers to my list.

You see, I’d been working on recording an album of my own positive music — something I refer to as “PosRock” or positive rock. My album is called The Dream Highway, and as I write this I am still in production mode.

As I made progress on recording the songs, it began to dawn on me that eventually…hopefully…I would be finished with the album, and then I’d have to move on to the horrifying next step…

Marketing the album.

Who would be interested in it? Who would buy it? Would people like it or even listen to it? I’ve produced other albums and have only sold a handful of them. My problem has always been marketing myself.

I think it was then that the idea came to me that I should somehow come up with a download — an incentive for people to join my email list so I could let them know about my album. Of course, the download would have to be something that would be related to my album so that, when I told them about my new release, there would not be a disconnect.

If I could come up with a list of 100 positive uplifting songs, I could give the list away — maybe as a PDF document with links to all the songs on YouTube.

Wouldn’t that be cool?

Well, maybe if you’re still living in 2004.

People just don’t have that much time or interest anymore. PDFs are for desktop computers. Most people are on mobile devices these days, and they want their music just one click away.

They don’t want to have to download a PDF, save it to their computer, open it up, click on a link that will take them to web page where they can then click to play the song. I mean, if I haven’t lost you to boredom from even reading that list of to-dos, you’re being very patient with me!

So, I am still working on the smoothest delivery.

How did I come up with the list?

Believe it or not, coming up with a list of 100 positive uplifting songs was not easy! You would think that, with all the millions of songs out there, they would be easy to find. Not so! What kind of a world are we living in where it’s really difficult to come up with 100 positive uplifting songs???

Well, my coach gave me a couple ideas. I then wrote down a few of my own ideas. Let’s see, that’s…five. Okay, only 95 more to go.

Next, I decided to turn to my Facebook community. I posted in my own timeline, on my own Facebook page and in a couple of groups I belong to.

I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of feedback I got. People really seemed to like that question. It got a lot of engagement. The feedback was mostly helpful, and I got maybe 20 songs out of the whole deal.

What was interesting was what some people thought was positive and upbeat. I guess everyone is in a different place. Perhaps one day I will curate a list of songs that people think are positive that really aren’t and call it…

Top 10 Songs That Some People Think Are Positive But Really Are Not

I would say the next helpful thing was just to start looking up the song ideas that I already had on YouTube. What was helpful about that was the suggestions of similar videos in the side column. I got a lot of ideas that way. In fact that’s how I got most of the ideas.

Of course, I also Googled things like “positive encouraging songs” “positive uplifting songs” “empowering songs” “songs of empowerment” and things of that nature. That yielded a couple of great results.

I found songs for all different types of situations, but one theme I kept seeing over and over was songs for girls who’d had a bad break up or a love that had done them wrong. These songs didn’t quite fit the bill, though, as the songs seemed to be filled with bitter resentment, and that’s just not the vibe I was going for.

Lastly, I just kept an open mind and an open ear. I got most of the list filled out, but I was still shy by about two or three songs.

Then, one day I went to see a movie with my daughters. I think it was Ant-Man and The Wasp. In that movie they were playing the theme song to The Partridge Family TV show — Come On Get Happy. I had to add that one to the mix!

Another one came as I was giving a concert/talk/presentation to some freshmen at the local high school. I was telling them about the power that positive music has to impact your energy. I asked them for suggestions of positive songs and one person suggested the theme song for the PBS Kids TV show Arthur. What a great song! What was so fun about that is that we all burst out singing the song together. Good times.

If you’d like to check out the first playlist that I made from that list of 100 positive uplifting songs, You can play it from the videos below or you can click here to listen to 12 positive uplifting movie soundtrack songs on my YouTube channel, and hey, while you’re there, why not Subscribe?

Enjoy!