It’s a beautiful, scary, angry, desperate world.
But music can make everything better. Music can save us all.
My extra long school run due to road closures and floods was made better this week by music. As long as I have music, I know I’ll be okay. One day driving along, a teenage girl caught my eye. She had headphones on and was singing as she walked, moving her hands around, grinning, making the odd little dance move in pure joy. She didn’t care about the line of traffic passing her or about anyone else around. She had her music. So everything was all right.
This morning, driving back, I saw a teenage boy doing the same thing. He was also alone, (though, not really) with his chunky headphones on and I could see his mouth moving with the words he was singing out loud. His forehead was furrowed, his lips turned up, his hands made movements. He looked so happy.
I’m sure it made their walk to school far more tolerable.
And then there’s me in my car crawling through traffic with the music so loud I can’t hear myself singing along. My heroes John Squire of The Stone Roses and Liam Gallagher of Oasis released an album together last week, so of course I bought the CD and the long school runs have given me the time to fall in love with it. Stand out track for me is ‘Raise Your Hands’.
Raise your hands,
I can see you
We’re aliiiiiiiiiiiive……!
And music reminds us that we are. Our hearts like beating drums inside our chests, our feet desperate to tap and move, our lungs open and ready to be filled with enough oxygen to belt those tunes back out into the world.
In our house, the music never stops. My daughters are away at university but whenever they are home, I hear their Spotify playlists following them around. They both have such eclectic tastes ranging from hip hop, to Abba, to anything from the 90s, to Glass Animals and Mother Mother. Their musical minds are way open. Meanwhile, my 16 year old son is a 90s devotee at heart, with his record player and his growing vinyl collection of Nirvana, Oasis and Radiohead albums. He was thrilled to see Blur last summer in London and he’ll be seeing Liam Gallagher this June in London. I am so jealous! He’s discovering new bands too, which I love, because we can’t allow ourselves to only live in our musical past. There is still so much out there to discover!
My 9 year old son is obsessed with music. The Clash are his favourite band, but he adores Blur, Oasis, Weezer, The Black Keys, Beck, Tom Waits, Talking Heads, The Beach Boys, Nick Cave and so much more. He talks about music non-stop. He will even pause his PlayStation game if he hears me playing music in the kitchen, to run in and ask what band it is and what song. He goes to sleep with his CD player beside him, listening to his favourite songs, just as I did as a kid.
Aside from writing, there is nothing else that gives me such joy and makes me feel so glad to be alive. If I ever wake up in a bad mood, I only need a few songs in the car to get me going again and the bad mood is shifted.
Every Saturday I have a long bath with a glass of wine and then cook dinner in the kitchen while blasting out my playlists. I sing along, don’t care how loud I get or who can hear me, and I dance around the kitchen. It just feels so good…
We need music more than ever.
It has such a unifying power. You know that feeling when a good song comes on the radio and you look at the person next to you and your eyes light up at the same time? And then you both sing along, laughing and yelling, caught in that moment together. Or when you’re feeling low and it feels like everything is going wrong. You don’t need silence to compound your fears. You need music. Sad songs, happy songs, slow songs, fast songs, whatever it takes. You need to know that someone else felt the same way as you and wrote a song about it. Music gives us a sense of belonging, of not being alone.
Enjoying the same songs unites us, but we also feel less alone thanks to the songwriter and the musicians that put it together. We feel like they are on our side, that they see the world in the same way, that they have struggled too and that we too can come out on the other side, still singing.
Music gives us something to live for and look forward to. I can’t keep up with the new albums I want to buy at the moment, or the gigs I would love to go to. It keeps you excited, it keeps you feeling young, knowing there is always more to come, that hope it never lost. That the music never stops.
Music takes our hands and leads us through the dark. It explores the dark with us, it allows us to suffer and feel loss and sorrow, but it always leads us back out the other side, back out into the light where we too can shine.
Music gives us something to look up to. It lifts us up. It forces our eyes from the ground. It blurs the dullness of our days and numbs the hopelessness of the future. It shines and sparkles and blinds us. It means so much. It explodes inside of you and sends shivers up your spine.
Music soundtracks your existence. Nostalgia batters you when you listen to songs from your youth, or even from last year. Remember this was the song that was playing when we first met? This was the song we first kissed to! This was the song I played when we broke up. This was the song we played to help the baby go to sleep. This song played at the kids first music festival. This song reminds me of that summer and that time the car broke down. This song always, always, makes me think of you!
Thank you, music!
Music gives us something to move to. You feel better when you are moving around, throwing up your hands, leaping up and down, letting your body move in the way the music dictates. You feel free. You feel young. You feel alive.
You remember that you are alive, and that this is your life.
And everything will be all right, I promise you, everything will be all right as long you’ve got music.
The Glorious Outsiders 