It Is What It Is

It's kind of neat that the two songs I have in this issue just happen to be dedicated to each of my two daughters. (See the notes about "Poor Me!" on the previous page.) This song is for my daughter Megan. Megan is a wonderful young lady who is now a junior in college. Throughout her middle and high school years she would sometimes agonize about an event or presentation or test that didn't go well. "Why did I do that?," or "Why did I say that?," or "Why didn't I study more?," she would say. We always told her the same thing: You can't go back in time and you can't change the past, but you can learn from what happened and move on. It seemed like good advice for her, and for many of us, actually. So, that made it seem like a good idea for a song. By the way, Megan studied Latin all through high school, and one year for Christmas we got her a sweatshirt that read "Id est quod id est." You can probably surmise what that means. I decided to use that phrase for the tempo marking of the tune.

The song itself is easy to learn and enjoyable to sing. The light rock accompaniment on the recording features a rhythm section, alto sax, trombone, strings, and some truly awesome electric guitar licks played by Sandy Williams. There is an optional second vocal part that enters at measure 39 and then stays in for the rest of the piece. It's not too difficult and adds some nice interest to the song. We have isolated this second part and created a rehearsal track which you will find at our web site.

I guess this life lesson clicked with Megan because I now often hear her saying "it is what it is" to herself and to others. Sometimes she says it in Latin (if she happens to be wearing that sweatshirt we got her). – KH