Elementary, my dear… Let’s choose a theme song for “2026: The Movie”
Published 4:05 pm Sunday, January 4, 2026
When each new year snaps into my rather diminished visual field, I try to find a topic that might cause readers to reflect a bit on the 12 months ahead. What can we count on or hope for or guard against? Or, better yet, I might urge us all to stretch our minds a bit and look at a few impossible possibilities.
As much as I dislike admitting it, 2026 appears too full of negative portents to suggest any realistic challenges. And certainly none that are fun! It’s just going to be one of those “Que Sera Sera” years, I thought. And then: “That’s it! What we need is a theme song to get us through this bio-pic or whatever category you think our current situation fits within.
But just what was the name of that movie, anyway? I remember Doris Day singing the song. But the rest of the movie escapes me entirely. Not memorable. Which, if you think about it, is what I hope for 2026 — a year that won’t be memorable for long. A year for which, once it’s over, only the theme song remains.
‘Don’t Fence Me In’
Though I’m a flat-out sucker for cowboy and country songs, “Don’t Fence Me In” seems almost too obvious to suggest. However, even ignoring the plea for “wide open spaces” (since they really have little to do with the fencing problem I have in mind) the longing for the ability to move freely is the bottom line here. So many of our citizens and visitors to our once-upon-a-time “land of the free” are not at all free any more. Not free to stay here (no matter their citizenship status), not free to live an open and productive life among us.
OK, then. How about that Woody Guthrie favorite, “This Land is Your Land.” Most of us grew up with that rollicking tune and would sing out the chorus loud and strong whenever a performer gave us the opportunity. And we bought into it — “hook, line and sinker” as they say. Like what’s not to believe?
We grew up knowing that there was a place here for everyone as in our Statue of Liberty’s “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” In fact, many of us can point with pride to our ancestors who came here to “start over.”
‘Who’s Sorry Now?’
And, as unlikely as it might seem, there are always the “Love Songs” to fall back on. I can still hear Connie Francis and her poignant (yet sort of gloating) lyrics, “Who’s sorry now? Whose heart is achin’ for breakin’ each vow?” Perhaps a bit fanciful and wishful thinking-ish given my suggestion that it be used as the theme song for “2026: The Movie,” but what is the likelihood that the vow-breaking has changed now that the New Year is upon us? Highly fanciful, anyway.
Just in case, though, let’s not hedge our bets. I’m ready to belt out “Gonna Get Along Without You Now,” or at least those two lines of the chorus made memorable back in 1952 by Teresa Brewer: “I got along without you before I met you, Gonna get along without you now…” The mind boggles at the multitude of applications those few lines might have.
I’m sure readers will have more recent and, perhaps, more appropriate songs to suggest. And wouldn’t it be fun if someone had moxie enough to actually cobble together some of the bizzarro scenes that are bound to surface during these next 12 months? And then to find a theme song that might serve to poke a little fun, shed the light of reality on the outlandish times we are enduring, and unite us all in a song we could enjoy together — sorta like “We Shall Overcome” but more in the here and now!
Yes! My wish for the year: “2026: The Movie” (complete with a theme song) coming to a neighborhood near you soon!
