“Choose To Be Me” (Or How To Make a Fangirl Happy)

I don’t exactly remember when I bought Sunrise Avenue’s first album. It must have been sometime in 2007, because when I switched hosting service for my blog and decided to write solely in English in April 2008 I obviously already owned and loved the album. I don’t really remember if I had considered any other title for this blog and I actually remember that I had once written a short piece somewhere why I had chosen this title. I don’t find that text anywhere though, maybe I deleted it from the „About me” page some time later for reasons unknown. I thought I could easily link to this explanation now, but I guess I’ll have to write it down all over again. I don’t mind though :-)

The first album of Sunrise Avenue opens with the fast-tempo song „Choose To Be Me” and I LOOOOVED it from the moment I listened to it for the very first time. It is a perfect song to „dance it out”, dance wild and jump and just feel good. I only found one decent youtube clip of this song right now to give you an idea. (Samu looks really young in this clip from 2007 *g*) “Choose To Be Me, Live at E-Werk, Cologne, 2007”
But more important I love the song because I could relate to the lyrics and the mood of the song so much. Not necessarily in the „Yeah, I’ve accomplished to get to that point in my life” kind of way, but more in the „it’s my goal to get there” kind of way. I’m still not there yet, but this song always is a good reminder for me to listen more to my inner voice and make my own decisions and not let myself be influenced too much but what other people might think I should or shouldn’t do. These are the lyrics

I was raised by this town
To believe the words they put inside me
They made me hide
Inside their loving arms around me

I turned away
I choose the path that I believe in
I stand today
Above the shady nights behind me
I fear nothing
But the fact that I’m afraid of everything
I knew my name
Would only be for lonely riding

Choose to be me
To be free to be my way
I saw the light shining right in my eyes
Choose to be me
To be free to be my way

Inside the night
I write the lonely story of my life
It makes me cry
But I want to know it ’til last line
I fear nothing
But the fact that I’m afraid of everything
Destiny – blow it away
I’m made for lonely riding

Choose to be me
To be free to be my way
I saw the light shining right in my eyes
Choose to be me
To be free to be my way
With a smile on, with a smile

Every day my sun keeps rising
Giving me the strength that I need
All the faith I need for only you and I

Happiness is here with me
It’s made for all the days I see
Happiness is holding me around and round and round and round

Let’s just say that this song is my own very personal „Life is good” mantra :-) I even have parts of the lyrics inscribed on a piece of jewellery for my bracelet. (photographic evidence is here). I’ve been to one four Sunrise Avenue concerts so far I loved every minute of every show but deep inside I was a tiny bit disappointed that they never played „Choose To Be Me”. Whatever their reason was to not include the song, I was a bit disappointed, because the song means so much to me and I was wondering how it could not mean enough to the band to include it in their setlist. Yes I can be weird like that some times.

I saw my first (of at least *g* three) Sunrive Avenue concerts in 2011 last night and it was so so awesome. As much as I loved (and maybe would even prefer if I ever had to choose one or the other) the acoustic/unplugged shows they did last year, the ‘plugged’ rock concerts are very very cool and a lot fun as well. And they really rocked that venue last night. It’s always so much fun to see these guys on stage because they enjoy it so much themselves, they are great musicians and they can just really rock it.
The traditional medley of all kinds of cover songs from such a wide range of artists always is one of the highlights, because they can show off what talented musicians they are and because they really have so much fun doing it. They even sometimes include seemingly random bits of other songs into the instrumental sections of their own songs, which sometimes can drive you crazy for a bit, but in a good way. Last night they did that during „Sex & Cigarettes” and it was just two lines and the very well known melody, but I just for the sake of my life didn’t recognize the song in that moment. It was one of those „Oh, I know this song, I know this song, just give me a minute and I’ll have figured it out” moments, but there is no time to figure it out, because the show on stage goes on and there are new tunes entering your brain. In this case the cover song stuck in the back of my mind though and I spend half of my train ride to work this morning trying to figure it out. Google helped a bit, I admit it :-)

I actually hadn’t planned to write a concert review here tonight, so I’m sorry for drifting off a bit. But it has been one hell of a concert! Anyway, back on topic. After they hadn’t played my favourite song on any of the four concerts I had seen so far in 2009/2010, I actually had given up hope to ever see them play it live on stage. So when Samu was singing the chorus of „Choose To Be Me” last night during the aforementioned medley, I was surprised and a bit giddy, because I really didn’t expect that.
A couple of songs later they started playing an intro which sounded surprisingly familiar to me and I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But it happened: They played my favourite song, the song that inspired this blog title, the song that just really means quite a lot to me. And I was in heaven. It’s so easy to make a fangirl happy :-). I’m still getting all warm and fuzzy inside when I look back on last night, because it was such a wonderful moment. And if they don’t change their setlist too much I’ll be experiencing this moment at least twice more this year. Yay!

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