Harder than easy but worth it

About this time last week ten musical notes--a little snatch of a melody--wormed their way into my head and played over and over. They were beautiful. I knew I'd heard them before but had no idea when or where and no way to find out the name of the song. If only I could identify the song, I could download it on iTunes.

I hummed those notes all day long. When I lay my head on my pillow that night, the notes continued to play in my mind until I finally fell asleep. In the morning they were gone. I couldn't remember the music and felt sad that I'd lost it, but there was nothing I could do about that.

I went about my business, humming other tunes as they came to mind. Then, in the middle of the morning, the notes came back, arriving in my brain as suddenly as they had the day before. The difference was that this time the first six notes were accompanied by five words of the lyrics: "I will always love you."

I googled those words and shouldn't have been surprised when the search turned up pages and pages of references to "I Will Always Love You," the song made famous first by Dolly Parton and then by Whitney Houston. That's a beautiful song, too, but not the one I was trying to find. I looked through several pages, then gave up.

The tune continued to play repetitively, then, late that afternoon, another few words of the lyrics fell into place.  Now I had words to go along with all ten notes: "I will always love you the best I can." Back to Google I went and eventually matched those words to a set of lyrics that seemed familiar. The lyrics had a title, of course, so it didn't take long after that to find the song on YouTube. I listened to it a couple of times, then went to iTunes to buy it. I didn't want the song to get away from me again.

To my surprise, when iTunes opened up to my music list, the title of the song leaped off the screen at me. Apparently, I had already downloaded it a long time ago. I've since learned that this song was once featured on a "Grey's Anatomy" episode, so I must have gone through the same or a similar process to find it after watching that show. I usually listen to my iTunes in "shuffle" mode and can't explain why that song has never made it into the mix.

This song that I've been humming over and over to myself, then playing on YouTube and iTunes, is "Harder Than Easy," by Jack Savoretti (with Lucy Styles). Since it's captured so much of my attention, it seems only fair to make it this Saturday's song selection and post it here to share with you.

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(Thanks to mjchunfilm02 for posting this video, complete with lyrics, on YouTube.)