30 Things I've Learned: #19

 -Listen to the words

Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol

Hard Sun by Eddie Vedder

Slow Dancing in a Burning Room by John Mayer

Words in the Fire by Patrick Watson

HSKT by Sylvan Esso

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and of which it is impossible to be silent."  In a world currently obsessed with EDM and other variations of chest pumping, feel the beat in your bones music, the lyrics are getting lost. And the lyrics are the message. 

In college I had a shitty radio with even shittier reception, most mornings my wake up call was the buzzing static of whatever station I wasn't picking up.  But one morning as I lay in bed with my boyfriend, our ill fated love story ending before it even began, a song came through loudly - and clearly. Right at the beginning, "If I lay here, if I just lay here, will you lay with me and just forget the world".  We wistfully smiled. It was to be the defining moment of our time together. 

At times music has been my only ally.  It has been the words that have comforted my sadness, eased the tension, and not made the tears rolling down my cheeks feel so lonely.  It has also been the music that I've danced too and belted at the top of my lungs on long car rides or parties with girlfriends.  Cyndi Lauper really did say it best - "Girls Just Want to Have Fun".  

I'm not against EDM, afterall, some of my best nights have been spent dancing to the beat pulsating through my entire body as one song bled into the next.  But the beat is like the bad boy I love to flirt with, maybe even go home with, but who I'll never spend a lifetime with.  The lyrics. The lyrics are the soul.  The lyrics are the soulmate.