Month: July 2012

No story today I’m afraid. But I was sitting here just now musing. Contemplating the power of music.

 

Music has to power to heal, a particular song or even feel of a song can make you feel better or help you get over hurt. I personally love certain guitar tones (being a guitarist) or a certain vibe. I can’t tell you what songs specifically make me feel better because they’re always changing or recycling. Strangely though, I find songs with sad lyrics are actually uplifting, in the way that it helps you realise other people have been through things too and are often far worse off than yourself.

But on the other side of the coin, songs also have to ability to hurt. To bring up an unwanted memory or elicit a certain uncomfortable feeling. This can be down to memory or even just from not really understanding what’s going on in the music. From a dischordant nature or abrasive lyrics.

Music can also bring people together or even indeed force people apart. In ever possible genre of music there is a community, sometimes these are welcoming. Often people with similar music tastes bond together in their mutual love of music. Other times, this love of a certain style can mean that people who like others are forced away. If you don’t like a certain type of music this can mean you are deemed ‘inferior’ to those who do. I’m not condoning this, each to their own. But it is definitely a noticeable trend in music circles. But on the plus, music can bring loads and loads of people together. Each year now in the summer here in the UK we are seeing thousands of people descending on music festivals of various genres and there are more each year. Now, some festival goers may go just for the party atmosphere and drinking, but music is very much at the core of any festival whether people realise or not.

There are also songs that can relate certain people to others. I have a couple of songs that remind me of some people. Sometimes they can be hard to hear and sometimes they can make you smile or sing at the top of your voice. One particular song means a hell of a lot to me, to the point I even did a version of it myself once. Every time I hear it now, it will always make me think.

That is exactly what music can do, how powerful it is. It can elicit such a range of emotions and ideas, inspiration and action. It can control some people and help people express things they couldn’t normally express.

It doesn’t even just have to be lyrics. Words of course are very powerful and the expert lyricist can write in a way that can be interpreted differently and mean different things to different people. But the music itself has a power of it’s own. A song doesn’t have to have lyrics to make you feel a certain way.

Take what you will from music. But I guarantee it will affect your life in some way at some point.

 

Thanks for reading.