The time period between high school graduation and college has been filled with excitement, nerves and lots of nostalgia. Maybe it’s because my mama forced me to help dig up all my mementos of participation awards and certificates for my graduation party or going through picture after picture seeing my physical transformation from an acne prone brace-faced child with glasses to the beauty queen I am today. Looking through my changes physical in pictures and mentally in my writing has given me a sense of accomplishment seeing how far I’ve come.
However, it wasn’t in the endless photo albums or going through old journals and Tweets that brought the most feeling out of me. It was through listening to music.
It wasn’t going through videos of music programs and choir concerts.I’m not solely talking about listening to the radio where they play the Top 10 songs on repeat every hour. I mean when you’re on Spotify, YouTube, your own music library, etc. when the throwbacks come.
There're certain songs that take me back to certain moments and I can exactly feel how I would be then. It’s like time traveling but you don’t move. These songs more than express feeling through its lyrics but through the people you’ve heard it enhancing those relationships.
Every person has “that song” which they can cliche-ly say, “Oh, this takes me back”.
When Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” plays, I’m the naive freshman at her first homecoming having her first slow dance with a boy. At the moment, I felt like I was part of those stereotypical high school movies and modern day happily ever after would ensue.
I hear “Down” by Jay Sean and the voices of sixth grade me and her classmates ring my ears as we try to be hipper than we truly were. We thought we were rap gods when we lip sung Lil Wayne’s feature. In general, we felt like gods just to be in middle school.
I’m the bawling 8th grader who is the picture of an obsessive Directioner when One Direction’s “More Than This” is on. I hear screaming fans. I see countless sleepless nights as I “researched” about the boys and watched every video even slightly relating to them. To all Directioners: I used to be a hardcore carrot.
The classic “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy instantly brings a smile on my face as I reminisce jamming and coding with my senior computer science class. I see wide eyes of the boys of the class, which is 98 percent of the class, amazed that Jessica and I, the only girls knew all the words.
One would think a worship song would take me back to my mission trip days but it’s “Shut Up And Dance” by Walk The Moon. Throats dry from screaming the lyrics at the top of our lungs. Excessive jumping that we considered dancing. Rounds of ratslap. Praising God with the joy of being alive. It was a week of being light.
Gloria Gaynor's “I Will Survive” brings back my childhood friend David and how I sang this at our fifth-grade talent show as he played the piano. I can still imagine our practice sessions at his house for the show and how our elementary school attention span led us to the park nearby instead or played with his chubby cat Batman.
A song the brings multiple walks down memory lane is Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” It always reminds me of how my sister claimed this song and would at least sing it once every time we had a family karaoke night. It also takes me to me senior prom and my date Tanner, who’s a skinny string bean, carried me around bridal style at the bridge. I’ve never felt so light and free in my life.
I have countless more songs and memories but for some reason, these ones stuck to me. I’ve realized they’re also songs I rarely would skip over. I’d listen to the whole thing probably just to relive those moments.
Music is a universal thing, even remote parts of the world have their own forms of song. Along with love, it’s a thing that brings people together. Music is also timeless. Maybe because it ignites your emotions reminding you that you’re alive, music has the power to transcend time.
Now I wonder, what will be the next song that will take me back?
Where will I travel next?
