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Songs stick with us for all sorts of reasons, but when a song has a splash of color in the title, it seems to carry an extra punch, don’t you agree? Colors spark emotion, trigger memories, and even make a song easier to remember. Over the years, musicians have leaned on shades of black, blue, yellow, and more to give their hits an edge. Let’s take a walk through some memorable tracks where a color in the title helped turn music into something timeless.

Of course, this one was going to be the first item in our article. When Prince released "Purple Rain" in 1984, he turned a color into a feeling. Purple came to represent spirituality, passion, and mystery, while rain symbolized both sorrow and hope. The combination gave us one of the most powerful rock ballads of the decade.

The Beatles’ "Blackbird," released in 1968, may sound gentle, but it was written with powerful meaning. Paul McCartney has said it was inspired by the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The "blackbird" symbolized hope and resilience. Behind its delicate fingerpicked guitar arrangement, the song carried a quiet strength that continues to inspire listeners today.

Few songs feel as sunny as "Brown Eyed Girl." Released in 1967, it became Van Morrison’s most famous hit. He originally wrote it as "Brown Skinned Girl," but changed it at the last minute. That switch gave us a track that became a staple of radio, backyard parties, and weddings for decades.

The Rolling Stones weren’t afraid to shake things up, and "Paint It Black," released in 1966, proved it. The haunting sitar riff and pounding rhythm gave the track a unique edge. The lyrics, full of grief and darkness, showed that rock music could explore themes far beyond simple love songs. It became an anthem for a restless generation.

Coldplay wasn’t yet a household name when "Yellow" was released in 2000. The simple word gave the song a sense of warmth and light, even though the lyrics focus on love and devotion. The band has said the color choice was almost random, yet it ended up helping to define their early sound and launch their career.

Michael Jackson’s "Black or White," released in 1991, carried a powerful message about race and equality. Its upbeat, guitar-driven sound, paired with pointed lyrics, made it more than just a pop song. Jackson used color in the title to drive home the idea that love and humanity matter more than skin tone.

Billy Idol’s "White Wedding," released in 1982, wasn’t your typical love song. In fact, it was more of a mockery of marriage than a celebration of it. Idol has said the track was inspired by watching his sister’s wedding. The color white, traditionally associated with purity, was used with irony and a sharp edge.

Elvis Presley helped make "Blue Suede Shoes" a nationwide hit in 1956, though Carl Perkins wrote and first recorded it. The song showed how even a pair of shoes could be transformed into a rock anthem. Not because of the fashion item, but because Elvis had a magic touch! Protecting those shoes wasn’t really the point; it was about attitude.

Sting released "Fields of Gold" in 1993, and it’s as peaceful as its name. Inspired by the barley fields near his home in England, the golden imagery reflected both love and the passage of time. The song’s warm melody and reflective lyrics helped cement it as one of his most beloved solo works.

Wanna know a fun fact? Paul McCartney once told Sting he wished he had written "Fields of Gold." Sting replied that he wished he had written "Blackbird" — a nod to McCartney’s classic with The Beatles.

In 2006, Amy Winehouse poured her pain into "Back to Black." The title captured her return to dark times after a breakup. Here, black isn’t about fashion or aesthetic; it symbolizes loss, relapse, and emotional turmoil. Her deep, soulful voice made the song raw and unforgettable, even for listeners who had never heard of her before.

DO YOU STILL REMEMBER YOUR GRANDPARENT'S PHONE NUMBER?

Remember these 10 things you don’t need to remember anymore?

Image: Eric Rothermel

If you were born more than 25 years ago you probably recall a time when you had to remember things like a phone number, an address, directions for going somewhere, birthdays, and many more things you don’t need to remember anymore. Technology helps us in a million different ways in our daily lives and one of the most frequent examples is the amount of things that it "memorizes" for us. Listed below you will find ten things that were once stored in our brains and have now been transferred to technological devices. Do you remember them?

Image: Wesley Hilario

There was a time when everybody knew the telephone numbers they used the most.

It was the most common thing, knowing your close family members, friends, or even work telephone numbers. Maybe you even remember some of those numbers to this day.

Nowadays, since cell phones have become a universal and integral part of our world, nobody knows anybody’s phone number. We just trade contacts and look for their names whenever we need to make a call.

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Back in an age where with no social media, like Facebook, birthdays and anniversaries were dates usually remembered, or at least, marked in paper calendars. And, while we still remember the birthdays of our closest relatives and friends, most people rely on social media platforms like Facebook, to remind them of everybody else’s birthdays, or push notifications that simply pop up on our cell phone screens with the relevant information.

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Knowing an address number was a common thing back in the day when contact information was not a standardized thing readily accessible on our cell phones. It may be hard to understand in a day and age when most addresses are forwarded to us on WhatsApp messages, sometimes with a location pin even, but it was very normal to have to write down addresses on a piece of paper until you remembered them.

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Since we just mentioned addresses, there is no sense in beating around the bush with this and we must talk about another item on this list that is intrinsically connected with the former: directions.

There was a time when it was normal to carry around a city map if one was unfamiliar with the area or ask a stranger for directions. And, while some people still do those same things, most of us rely on the Maps location on our smartphone to guide us anywhere we go.

Who needs to memorize streets and corners beforehand when they can simply take their phone and ask to be guided with whichever voice they prefer?

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Some people still use them. Maybe you do too. Do you remember schedule diaries? People wrote their appointments in those books or maybe used little Post-it notes on their freezer doors and bathroom mirrors to remind them. And, when the day of the appointment came, they had to remain vigilant of the time and remember what was that they had to do and where.

These days, your smartphone will send you one or more reminders during the day, with directions if needed, possible departure times, and several recommendations.

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Granted, it was much more simpler to remember one or two passwords a couple of decades ago than the million ones we are required to create and remember these days. Back in the day, unless you were a spy or something of the sort, there weren’t that many passwords to recall. But the ones that we had, were usually stored in our heads, or maybe written down in little papers and folded into our wallets.

Nowadays, Google will recommend a password and offer the remember it, and auto-complete any instance when it is needed, so you don’t have to worry about it.

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Those crumpled pieces of paper stored in our pockets, containing shopping lists and things to do were an ubiquitous item in our lives. And, if the list was tragically forgotten at home, we had to try and remember whatever was on that list.

Once again, smartphones have replaced such lists with a very convenient notepad application that even reminds us to check it once in a while.

Image: Debby Hudson

Browsing through cookbooks, asking people for recipes, storing handwritten papers and magazine pages with recipes in notebooks, asking for the advice of more experienced cooks, and remembering quantities and procedures were common practices in an age before the internet and even more so, in an age before smartphones.

These days, all you have to do if you want to cook anything is look it up on your phone and a million different recipes, with detailed videos will pop up immediately. And, if you don’t have a kitchen timer, you can set up multiple simultaneous alarms on, again, your phone.

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Waiting for the weatherman on the TV, or looking up the forecast in the newspaper, or asking somebody for a rain prediction were pretty much the only ways to know how the weather was going to behave in the following days.

It seems like the smartphone has come to solve this situation too, since all you have to do now is look into its permanently updated forecast to know how the weather is going to be in the next 10 days.

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In a day and age when a photographic camera was a separate device from a telephone, certain skills were necessary to handle it. Even an amateur aficionado needed to learn a thing or two about the focus, aperture, exposure, and a few other things before he or she was ready to go out into the world and take decent pictures.

These days, almost nobody owns a camera anymore. Most people just use the camera on their phones which requires a simple point-and-shoot attitude to the whole endeavor. Forget the ISO, composition, white balance, and all that. Your phone knows the procedure and will make sure all your pictures are perfect.