This is the last song in the 2025 Unplug & Elevate playlist, and it embraces a core value that we BRA’s share. By now maybe you can name it. Both Eileen and Charlotte have written about it in their reflections on Break My Stride or Pink Pony Club. I’d name that value as finding a place for your authentic self. The three of us have spent the last two summers blogging about how finding the right song, that expresses just the right volume of sentiment, at the right time has led

Cass Elliot is, was, and always will be the mother of making your own rules. I may be a ‘90s grunge child, but there’s always space for The Mamas and the Papas—and especially Cass as a solo artist—in my life. In a world full of skinny blonde sopranos, there was Cass Elliot’s velvet-rich alto voice coming from a luscious brunette, reminding us there’s more than one song worth singing—and more than one way to live a life. For a well-built, alto-singing swimming girl like me, he

I love Mavis Staples. She’s a lifelong civil rights activist and an R&B/gospel music icon who began her career in 1948 with her father and sisters in The Staple Singers. Her voice finds my ear everywhere—movies, commercials galore—and her face even graces a mural across from a drugstore near my house. To me, she is as much the soundtrack of Chicago as the skyline supported by the Hancock Building (and whatever we’re calling the Sears Tower these days). So, when Eileen Murphy