As a way to spice up the blog and do something a little more fun, I thought I'd start a new series of posts that will help you to get to know me a little bit better. Each day (for a couple weeks) I'll post one song that I loved as a kid and has stayed with me to this day. Most of them will probably be '90s songs so I'm sure these posts will invoke some nostalgia with a lot of you who are my age. Up first we have the latin diva Gloria Estefan.

This one song, 'Turn the Beat Around', is the biggest reason why this blog even exists today. Yep, you read that right! A long, long time ago when I was a wee tike, my parents bought a new computer, and with that computer came a sampler CD that contained a few music tracks and their respective videos. One of the songs on this CD was Gloria Estefan's 'Turn the Beat Around'. The first time I heard it I fell in love, and after that the song was on repeat. I'm sure my parents were probably sick and tired of the song within a week. This was the first time I had ever really been aware of what music actually was, and the song instantly became the first song I ever loved. After that, the world of music opened before me and I began exploring its vast space. I actually heard the song today at the bowling alley and it sparked my creative inspiration to create this new post series. Every time I hear this song, I remember my childhood and I start belting out the lyrics. And looking back, this might have subliminally influenced me to play the flute as a line in the song is "Flute player play your flute 'cause / I know that you want to get your thing off." The song was originally a disco tune recorded by Vicki Sue Robinson in 1976, but Gloria recorded it in 1994 for the film The Specialist. It peaked at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 (which is also kind of weird because that's my favorite number), and it became her first #1 on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play chart. To this day it is still one of my favorite songs, and it's really interesting to reminisce how this one song sent me down the path of being a music connoisseur. Do any of you remember this song?