Next Time Won’t You Sing Along With Me: Metastatic Breast Cancer Theme Songs

I recently attended the national meeting of a breast cancer advocacy group. I had never attended this annual event, and overall, I liked it. The speakers were good and the attendees were attentive and enthusiastic. There was even a special session on metastatic breast cancer.

The event concluded with a reception in a hotel ballroom featuring a DJ who played all the block party favorites: The Electric Slide, YMCA and the group’s unofficial theme song, “I Will Survive.”

None of the metastatic breast cancer events I have attended featured dancing or music–it’s  like “Footloose” only starring people with cancer vs. small-town high school kids. In the weeks following the advocacy meeting, I found myself pondering the theme song question–if there WAS music at an MBC event, what would our signature song be?

My family’s “traditional” party song is Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration,” which I guess is from about the same era as “I Will Survive.” I think it was played at one of my cousin’s wedding reception in the early 1980s and it just kind of stuck. It’s a good song, but surely there must be something more recent, something that hasn’t been played to death (so to speak)?

I thought of One Republic’s “We’re Marching On.” I think it’s pretty good–a kind of crowd anthem with a driving beat. But I’m not sure a lot people in the typical MBC demographic would know this one.

I like Gym Classs Heroes’ “The Fighter.” (Sample lyric: Here comes the fighter / That’s what they’ll say to me, say to me, say to me /This one’s a fighter.) That’ s a good song, too, but it’s not really made for dancing.

There’s also Givers’ Up, Up, Up. It has the benefit of having been featured on “Glee,” which means more people would probably know it. On the other hand, it’s also featured in this lame commercial for Lipton ice tea. Plus, let’s face it, the song  probably is really about taking mind altering drugs.

But then as I prepared this post for MBCN’s blog, I had an epiphany. It happened as I reviewed the results of a  recent survey of 1,273 women in 12 countries. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the women surveyed said they “often feel like no one understands what they are going through” while two in five women said they “feel isolated from the non-advanced breast cancer community.”

Sometimes, yes, I do feel like that myself. But to be honest, I also felt alienated from the rest of the world during much of the 1980s when I was a teenager, a feeling captured perfectly in this1984 smash hit.

Feel free to join in:

OH WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT
NO, WE AIN’T GONNA TAKE IT
OH WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE