What do you hear when you listen to music? Are you listening to the words of the artist or the beat of the song? Sometimes we get so caught up with the beat that we don’t pay attention to the words. Sometimes the words don’t even match the beat. You’d ask yourself why a pessimist is talking behind the beat of baby shark. Maybe it’s intentional. Maybe they’re trying to show us how we tend to hide our true feelings behind a mask of pleasantries. Something we’ve probably been doing for a bit too long now.

Some songs are exactly what you hear, plain, blatant, and generic. It doesn’t make them bad; it just tends to make them dull after a while. We relate to music. We relate to what the artist is trying to portray in their song and through this comes the third question, what do you feel? How does the song make you feel?

Our emotions aren’t so 1 dimensional that we can simply describe them as sad or angry or happy. I mean, that does tend to be the case, but the words don’t do the intensity justice.

If I’m to ask you how feel, you’re not just angry, you’re not just happy, you’re a coke bottle that’s about to be opened after a bumpy car ride and whatever’s coming out can’t simply be described as such or well maybe it can but after it splashes all over the place, you’ll probably have more than just one word to say, and clichés won’t always do your feelings any justice.

 

Despite that, there are songs whose lyrics match their beat but not just to the essence of being cliche but to the point that they connect you to a part of yourself you felt was out of reach. But not just that, there’s that feeling that comes with finding that song that describes your psyche in a way that words have failed you and

I find it interesting how people are able to uniquely express themselves in such a way that wholly relates to the human condition that the very words describing it also put you at a loss of words.

How amazing it is to find yourself in the words of another, how amazing it is to lose yourself to the sound of music. The words alone are a poem, with the instrumentals they’re an experience unlike any other. Like a part of yourself you’ve been holding back has been set loose on the world and for a moment you can finally be your true self.

What does your taste in music say about you?

You like reading books and long walks on beaches but your friends think you walk home drunk every night.

You’re a love-struck puppy but strangers think you’re pessimistic,

you love to get lost in the wilderness with your thoughts and a violin instrumental, but they think you like Justin Bieber.

Our taste in music describes our personalities. Who we really are and who we tell others we are.

And it’s understandable. It’s like the tip of the iceberg story. There’s the part everyone sees and the one hiding beneath the tides and sharing a song we love is keen to sharing a part of us. Attacking one’s taste is keen to attacking who they are. How we feel isn’t irrelevant, how we feel isn’t wrong, how we feel isn’t a lack of taste, and how you or your friends feel isn’t bad, it’s different. Different isn’t vile, different isn’t horrid, different is uniquely you.

Share a song with a friend today, something that you don’t always play at parties, something that says, this is me, this is who I am

in the elevator alone before the doors open, this is who I am in the shower, naked and exposed and if you’re listening, don’t judge, don’t send them back to that cave they’ve been hiding, they’ve trusted you with a part of themselves that they’re too afraid to show, though you didn’t ask for it (lol).

Share a song with a stranger and find yourself in another or be more comfortable being yourself outside your bedroom.

In the song, the man himself by gang of youths, Dave Le’aupepe says

„I don’t know what to feel, I don’t know how to feel right but I want to become my own man”

no big words, but small words used in the right way. That’s my recommendation to you.

Written by: Tarique Katuntu