I wrote The Tango of My Life around 2009. I wasn’t personally walking away from my life at the time, but I know I must have been stressed. You know those moments — when life feels loud and heavy, when everything piles up at once, and you suddenly think, I just want my life back. That’s where these lyrics came from.
When Life Gets Too Loud
This song is an empowerment song, but not in a dramatic or rebellious way. It’s for women who feel overwhelmed. Not women who are necessarily trying to walk out on their lives, but women who reach that quiet breaking point where they say, Damn… that’s it. I need to find me again.
That’s where the lyric Destination Me comes from. It came from that internal moment when you stop trying to hold everything together for everyone else and realize you need to turn back toward yourself. Destination Me isn’t about leaving your life — it’s about returning to yourself within it. It’s the decision to choose yourself without knowing exactly what the next step looks like.
This song isn’t about running away. It’s about claiming yourself again.
Writing Was Always My Exit - Sometimes Saving Me From Heading to the Front Door!
For me, the exit was never leaving — it was writing. Some people journal. I write lyrics. I’ve been doing that since 1968 (yah, I was 8 years old). When life gets tangled, when emotions don’t come in neat sentences, I put them into a song or a poem.
The Tango of My Life came from that place. It came from needing to breathe. From needing to hear my own voice again. From realizing that sometimes the only way through overwhelming life circumstances is to stop and put the truth somewhere safe.
This song isn’t about quitting on people, and it isn’t about abandoning your life. I’m not saying that some people don’t need to leave certain situations — sometimes they do — but this song holds more than one truth. It can be a momentary feeling of get me out of here, or a long-standing knowing that something has to change. It holds both.
The Middle Still Belongs to You
The song talks about how someone else may have gotten the beginning of your story, but you still get to decide the middle — and ultimately, the ending. That part belongs to you. Always.
This is a song for people reclaiming their lives. It’s also for someone who’s just having a bad day and thinking, I’ve had enough. I need to pause. I need to do this for me.
If that’s you — even just for today — this song is for you.
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Thanks so much for sharing your insights, Barbara.
ReplyDeleteI love that you found such a powerful and positive way to channel and express your most powerful emotions at a very young age, Barb. You’re amazing!
ReplyDeleteYou definitely write about some very deep thoughts and experiences in your lyrics! At some point in every adult’s life, I'm sure they find times when they have to grab back the control of their lives, even if it is just determining to take a "vacation" from continued stress. This song is a great reminder that we can and should look out for ourselves, not selfishly, but protectively.
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