On music

There should be a word for it (maybe there is) – for the feeling when you start to fall in love with a song.

It might swoop into your chest on the very first listen, when the words of the opening line, combined with the specifics of the melody, hit you with a clarity and insight that cuts through all the noise in your head. “Drinking cold black coffee, I shake, and shake, still won’t get off me”, sings Conor Oberst on Better Oblivion Community Centre’s Sleepwalkin’.

It might happen when the beat kicks in, when from that moment on you’re visualising and craving the opportunity to dance to it along with one, five, a hundred other people. Or it might be a slow burner, a song you’ve listened to ten, fifteen times or more before you realise that the chorus, the unique way the verses move up and down, has seeped into you. The shift I find most intriguing is when you think a certain song isn’t your favourite, but then you hear it live and it takes on a whole new depth, and becomes a new most-listened to. I distinctly remember Wild Beasts playing Alpha Female when I saw them live a few years ago – thinking oh, I get it now.

I love all these types of instant or gradual connection with music. It’s something that is an individual experience, and a connection with the music itself, but simultaneously a kind of connection to other people. With those who created or are performing the songs, and in an unknown, unquantifiable way, with others who also love them.

A good friend and I used to reflect on how other people would say: “I love music.” How we’d think: “Yes. But I really love music.” We’d laugh, knowing it made no sense – a person’s relationship with what they love is of course deeply personal and cannot be objectively measured. But such was the depth of our connection with the music and songs that we adored, the importance of it in our lives, and the need to try and describe that feeling.

I’m not sure I really feel like that anymore; I think some of it was teenage intensity and self-importance, the placing of your own feelings and experiences front and centre, ahead of anyone else’s. Life has broadened my experience and empathy. But I remain intrigued by the way that music can hold us in thrall like almost nothing else, and how it can contain and reflect our emotional experiences.

I find it fascinating, too, how music can be both personal and collective. We have our own independent and sometimes private relationship with it, but there’s also nothing quite like that feeling of discovering a shared love of a slightly obscure band with someone else. To say nothing of the wonder of live music, experienced with other people.

I’m of course not alone in mourning the way that the coronavirus pandemic has put gigs and festivals on hold. I always knew I loved them, but as is often the way, their absence has really clarified what a pivotal role they’ve had in my life, and what a huge source of enjoyment live music brought to my existence.

Some of my most life-affirming moments of the past 15 years – indeed of my whole life – have been watching live music, across the whole spectrum of size and type of venue, and music genre. Glastonbury festival is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a recurring theme (sorry, I’m that person). Dancing to the undeniable disco sensibilities of Chic’s West Holts headline set in 2013 with my sister, revelling in hit after hit. The sprawling, layered genius of Arcade Fire on the Pyramid Stage in 2014, a set which felt like a homecoming of sorts. Running down to see Dizraeli and the Small Gods in the Leftfield tent after a volunteer shift, swigging whisky and ginger ale from a plastic bottle and craning to see from the edge of the crowd.

Other places feature too of course. Damien Rice at Bristol Academy: his majestic song writing, by turns delicate and intense, playing out from the stage, while he flirted with lighting a cigarette just after the smoking ban came into force. The unexpected treat that was Joe Driscoll and Sekou Kouyate in the Chai Wallahs tent at Green Man, with a group of good friends – we’d gone expecting to see the former perform solo, and were blown away by the incredible talent and unique impact of their collaborative efforts.

I think, too, of the more exclusive experience of seeing the band Flor at the small-but-ace Louisiana in Bristol. I’d cultivated a somewhat intense love affair with their album over the summer of that year, but only ever really listened to them on my own. When no-one was free to go with me (or particularly interested in doing so), I had taken a deep breath and bought a single ticket. Although I’m ok with doing most things on my own, it did feel a bit weird. I remember reading once about going to the cinema by yourself – that once the film starts, you don’t really feel self-conscious at all. The same thing turned out to be true for watching a band. Once they start playing, all you think about is how much you love the songs. You are solitary, but surrounded my fellow fans, so you’re not really alone.

If we ever get into a conversation in the future, I’d love to hear about yours – your best ever gigs, along with the songs and music that have punctuated your life. Some of these will no doubt cross over with other people’s, but the exact pattern will be unique.

Tell me about the tracks you’d choose if you ever went on Desert Island Discs, and why you’d choose them. List your top five albums, à la High Fidelity, and share the one that you never seem to get bored of and still go back to ten years after it came out. Conversely, give me all the details about the album you were obsessed with initially, but now can’t really listen to; maybe the songs haven’t stood the test of time, or have worn thin like a cheap t-shirt through too many listens. Or perhaps they remind you of a period you’d rather forget, or feels difficult to think about.

What’s the song that takes you back to Saturday afternoons in the first house you grew up in, or that school trip, or sixth form nights out? Who are the band you and your sibling(s) loved? Who did you inherit your love for from one of your parents?

Tell me about the lyrics that run so close to the truth of something you experienced that you’re sure their writer literally looked inside your head. What’s the song that, without fail, makes you blink back tears every time you hear it? How about the one that never fails to lift you, that makes you wonder why you don’t exclusively listen to euphoric music? Let me know, too, about the lyrics that so beautifully convey something beyond your own experience, giving you a level of understanding or empathy that you didn’t have previously.

Tell me about them. And I can tell you mine, if you want. And we can revel in the way that our love for music is both our own, and shared; how it allows us to connect with other people, the world, and to our own lives, in a more authentic way.