I have always loved music. But who hasn’t? We all have our favorite genres, artists, and songs, and we all love to share our favorites with everyone else. But why? Why does everyone love music, and why is it such a huge component of our daily lives?
For starters, it’s because it is a universal language. Everyone understands music. Whether you’re a professional musician and you understand the theory and technicality behind a song, or you’re a kid who loves to sing along to the radio, you “get” music. Everyone can hear a song and feel the beat. The pulse that you can feel in your heart and soul whether you’ve heard the song a million times, or one.
Music is something that can create an emotion in any person at any time. Something that can make us cry, or laugh, or grin from ear to ear even if we’re just driving in a car alone. Music can be used for worship, and to connect a whole room of people who are all gathered together for the same purpose. And music can make us feel better about any situation. There is always a song that can somehow exactly describe how you’re feeling at any time. A breakup song, a makeup song, a song about love, or loss, or friendship, or any other thing under the sun.
Music has gotten me through every happy time and hard time in my life. I have so many playlists on my phone named various forms of “at the moment,” because the songs that make them up directly relate to how I was feeling when I made the playlist. And now, when I go back and listen to the ones I made during my senior year of high school, or over the summer, or during my first semester of college, I can remember just how I was feeling. The music we listen to holds more memories than we do sometimes. It helps us hold on to parts of our lives that we might wish we could relive once in a while.
Music happens in a moment. Sure you can replay a song or an album, but what about a performance? What about the concert you went to of you’re absolute favorite band when you were fifteen, or the concert you did with your high school choir or band, or the performance you saw while you were on vacation with your best friend? Those performances were just made up of moments. Each note that was sang or played was there one second and gone the next. Yet we pay thousands of dollars to see performances of music. Because that is how much it means to us. To be connected to everyone in the room: the performers and the audience. Even for just an hour or two. And again, when you go back and watch the videos you took, or listen to the songs that were sung, you somehow remember exactly how you felt in those moments.
Music is powerful. It is emotional. It is important. Whether you perform on a stage in front of thousands of people, or in your car in front of a red light, everyone has a secret musician inside of them just waiting to get out. So sing loud and proud, and think about what the music means to you next time you hear it.
