Music gets us through
How many songs are there in the world? Ten million? One-hundred million?
Whatever, it's a lot.
And of those, how many are widely popular? More mysteriously, what accounts for that popularity?
This is on my mind because Valentine's Day is near, and music fans are loading up their devices with songs they love. Among them is what has become a perennial fave, “The Night We Met.” Despite being released 10 years ago – and tracking the story of a romantic breakup – it continues to be regularly downloaded around this time of year. Of the 876 songs on Spotify's Billions List, the song was recently number 31, with downloads nearing 3 billion.
The lyrics resonate with legions of fans, like those pictured here at Red Rocks: “I had all and then most of you, Some and now none of you. Take me back to the night we met.”
As it happens, the most common song themes are heartbreak, death, discontent, friendship and growing up, according to the Atlanta Institute of Music and Media (AIMM). Hmm, some heavyweight emotions in there...
And researchers at North Carolina State University have backed that up. They ran a textual analysis of the lyrics of 50 years of hit songs (1960-2009) and discovered 12 key themes: loss, desire, aspiration, nostalgia, pain, breakup, rebellion, inspiration, jadedness, escapism, desperation, confusion.
When I was a teenager, dating an older guy my parents didn't approve of, I cried regularly to Neil Diamond's “Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon.” (“Love you so much, can't count all the ways I'd die for you, girl, and all they can say is, He's not your kind.”)
I cried again decades later, when Urge Overkill covered the song. Not that I stayed with the guy, but he taught me so much about all the good things I wanted in a partner. And the song consoled me because I knew I wasn't the only one struggling.
When my daughter died in 2002, Bruce Springsteen's album “The Rising,” about the trauma of 9-11 and the rebirth it inspired, echoed in my heart and my head. I felt like he was writing directly to me.
It seems music carries a lot of our emotional weight. We not only like and want music, but we need music in some essential way.
Maybe you've been consoled or inspired by music. No doubt there's a community of us, so let me know in the comments.
Here's hoping the bands play on.
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Heartbreak Hotel is the song that started it all for me at age 4! I remember being at my grandmother's house playing that song over and over on my aunt's portable record player. Ever since then, I have loved listening. I am totally amazed and have so much respect for anyone who can write music. While my dream of being a back up singer for any rock band did not come to fruition, I still to this day, have music playing almost constantly. From the Beatles to Post Malone (my recent discovery) I continue to appreciate the fact that someone can come up with a sequence of notes that have not been used yet to create something new. And …
Wow, Jim, that piece is so powerful. And it’s amazing that so many emotions can be stirred by sound alone. Thanks for sharing that.
One of the pieces of music that inspires me is composer John Williams' "Hymn to the Fallen." It was written for the film "Saving Private Ryan," and is now frequently performed as a stand-alone piece, commonly during solemn patriotic occasions. When I listen, I imagine the unselfish sacrifice of thousands I'll never know; I think of their accidental or unselfish or courageous acts in service to nation and society. And I'm thankful that there were - and encouraged that there are - so many devoted to causes bigger than themselves.
There are no lyrics with this music, only instrumental and choir, but this is music that inspires me. I never reach the end of this version without welling up and…