Music is the soundtrack to our lives. Here's some fine examples of what it does -
"Praise Chorus" by Jimmy Eat World
Everyone has a call-to-action song.
This song has always been the one that gets me to action.
It was my movivating song leaving my long-term marriage.
Great tune for riding the open road.
I love to put on a good song and drive around and look around me and it seems like the life going by fits a music video. Your brain becomes a director, your eyes become a cinematographer, and everything that never made sense in the world suddenly falls into an orchestrated pattern.
Life isn't here to baffle you, but to entertain you.
"Peaceful Easy Feeling" by the Eagles.
Music as a time machine.
Eagles and Chicago take me in the way-back machine immediately.
This song, "Peaceful Easy Feeling," jolts me right into a childhood crush on my brother's best friend. It's the sound of camping out on our property, exploring the woods and the creek, riding down a country road to the lake for a swim, lying down in a meadow of buttercups and daisies. It's hot denim on a summer's day. It's hilly roads with dappled light. It's my hippie sister's feather earrings. It's a cup of sweet tea on the porch. It's a nap on the bank of a stream. It's riding through town in an early 70s Mach 1 with my feet on the dashboard. It's cutoffs at the swimming hole.
When you hear this song, where does it take you?
"I'm Like a Bird" by Nellie Furtado.
Sometimes your body and spirit respond to a song to where you can't hear it without wanting to move your hips, bob your head, sing the chorus.
What is this body memory?
Joy!
You can't walk normally when the rhythms wash over you. You're bobbing on a cloud. The sun is shining and birds are singing. You're transported into a Disney magical mind set where everything feels like you sucked on some laughing gas and are flitting around a wildflower meadow.
"Need You Now" Lady Antebellum
The breakup song that you can't help singing to and believe you're hitting every note perfectly. Why does it fit so well?
Everyone identifies with the longing. The haunting echoing notes of a good heartbreak song seems to create an emotional cleansing we all need to put things in their place.
You know how in a musical it seems crazy someone breaks into song out in public? We all on some level understand they aren't actually performing in public, but this is what is going through their emotional state at the moment and it's expressed with song.
That's what song is: Emotion converted to sine waves.
"Waiting For My Real Life to Begin" by Colin Hay
There's that one song that is truly the theme song of your life, the one that makes your chest feel hollow, your belly quiver, your soul ache.
The composer swished around in your soul and pulled this rabbit out of his musical hat.
What is your greatest unfufilled dream? The opportunity you wish you hadn't said "no" to? The timing that just had you miss a relationship? The past that seemed so idyllic you want to go back?
This beautiful tune by my all-time-favorite, Colin Hay, is truly my ache in lyrics and notes.
"Sharp-Dressed Man" by ZZ Top
Let's not forget the physical effects of music.
Some songs you just can't stay still when you hear. A foot may tap, fingers may drum on a steering wheel, or you may find yourself bobbing up and down.
Even those who swear they don't dance want to grab an air guitar and pluck along.
Emotions begin as thoughts in the brain and turn into chemicals that need expelling. If you don't workout or pace the floor, you need to let it out somehow because it enters the body and causes an electrical storm.
Dance. Drumming. Singing. Emotional static electrical discharge. Perfectly permittable and actually encouraged.
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