Each song on the list below is a link to a YouTube version of the song. Hope you find a few for your playlist that are new to you or that you’d forgotten about.
There is a lot more to our rising adult years in our twenties and thirties than our aspirations, motivation, and empowerment to excel and achieve. There are dozens of great love songs and many great songs about spirituality, friendship, our social conscience, suffering, loss, and coming to grips with a bad childhood — even great songs about marriage, parenting, and our relationship with our parents.
But I’d argue that staying empowered to tackle life’s challenges is the most important theme for our twenties and thirties. And given the abundance of great songs there are to motivate and empower rising adults in the 2020s and beyond, it took a while to cut this list to 29.
Six of these songs are by Alicia Keys, whose music has defined the empowered and self-actualizing young woman of our time. Five are from FIFA World Cups and three involve the Olympics, and these eight songs give us a sense of life from rising young achievers throughout the world. Global empowerment in a global culture.
Other singers and songwriters making more than one appearance on this “ultimate empowerment soundtrack” are Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Katy Perry, Aloe Blacc, Avicii, Jeff Bhasker, John Williams, and the band Fun.
Am starting things off with an inspiring song from our tribal roots — “Yeha Noha” by Sacred Spirit.
Then a reminder to approach our achievements with the fun spirit of the band Fun in “Carry On” and of Avicii’s “The Nights”, and a reminder with “the Real Hero” and “Superheroes” that everyday heroism counts as much as grand heroism.
(The official video of “Brand New Me” has gotten tens of millions of “YouTube” views, but I like Alicia’s live performance better. “The Real Hero” has millions of views, but I went with Jazz J’s video cuz I like his visuals. As for “Superheroes”, the official video is amazing — what an amazing story the video tells!)
The first three Alicia Keys songs, Katy Perry’s “Firework”, Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song”, and Aloe Blacc’s “My Way” capture the move up from feeling vulnerable to feeling empowered.
“Top Gun” and the accompanying visuals and “Indiana Jones” convey the energy of achievement in its more masculine form. “This Girl is on Fire” and “Superwoman” get to the heart of empowered feminine energy. And in “Rise”, Katy Perry brings out the best of both our masculine and our feminine energies.
The anthem “We Are Young” by Fun seems impossible to resist.
Then come the eight Olympics and World Cup songs. “Dreamers” is on the list twice cuz both versions seem to me to be equally great. “Chariots of Fire” is not a song of the Olympics but of a film about the 1924 Olympics; Vangelis wrote one of the most inspiring songs of all time to accompany one of the most inspiring films of all time.
This is followed by “Tribute”, composed by Yanni with lyrics and singing by, arguably, the Millennials’ greatest singer, Nathan Pacheco.
And to wrap it up, we’ll slow down for two expansive ballads / anthems. The first, the Maria Carey and Whitney Houston duet “When You Believe”. And for our finale, how about letting Mariah Carey bring it all home for us with her epic solo “Hero”?
Enjoy!
All my best,
Mike
“Yeha Noha” (“Wishes of Happiness and Prosperity”) by Sacred Spirit
“Carry On” by Fun and Jeff Bhasker
“The Nights” by Avicii and Nicholas Furlong
”A Real Hero” by College and Electric Youth
“A Hero Will Rise” by Future World Music
“Brand New Me” by Emile Sande and Alicia Keys
“Wait Til You See My Smile” by Alicia Keys, Swizz Beats, and Jeff Bhasker
“How It Feels to Fly” by Alicia Keys
“Underdog” by Alicia Keys, Johnny McDaniel, Ed Sheeran, Amy Wadge, Jonny Coffer, and Foy Vance
“Fight Song” by Rachel Platten
“Top Gun” theme by Hans Zimmer
“Indiana Jones” theme by John Williams
“Girl on Fire” by Alicia Keys, Jeff Bhasker, and Salaam Remi
“Superwoman” by Alicia Keys, Linda Perry, and Steve Mostyn
“Rise” by Katy Perry, Savan Katecha, Max Martin, and Ali Payami
“We Are Young” by Fun with Janelle Monae
“Chariots of Fire” by Vangelis
“Olympic Fanfare” by John Williams, performed by The Bands of Her / His Majesty’s (HM) Royal Marines
“One Moment in Time” by Whitney Houston
“The Cup of Life” by Luis Gomez Escolar, Desmond Child, and Draco Rosa, sung by Ricky Martin
“Dreamers” by Jung Kook with Fahad Al Kubaisi
“The World Is Ours” by Adam Schmalholz, Aloe Blacc and others, sung by Aloe Blacc and David Correy
“Tribute” (“Omaggio”) by Yanni with Italian lyrics by and sung by Nathan Pacheco