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Recently, a trend was going around dedicated to 'my nine albums', wherein people were making collages of the albums that 'changed their lives'. It's a harmless little detour from the usual nonsense that gets posted, and if it gets people to think more deeply about music, that is nothing but a good thing. However, every silver lining has a black cloud, and I happened to be fed one by the algorithms of life.
A semi-prominent music critic/journalist was not a fan of this trend, which is entirely understandable, but they did a commentary about how music cannot change your life unless you wind up going into the music business. That sounded ridiculous on its face when I first heard it, but the more I started to think about it, and when I put together my own collage (see the above picture), I began to wonder about how we are supposed to organize ourselves into societies when it is exceedingly clear we do not all see and experience the world in the same ways. And since I don't consider what I do here to be a part of the 'music business'...
Are we exaggerating when we say that music 'changed our lives'? Of course we are to a degree, but the impact of music on the people we are should not be discounted. The reason I have spent these last almost fifteen years writing so many words about music is for that very reason, because music is a conduit through which we are able to learn about the people we are. Sometimes we are discovering what is already there, and sometimes we are seeing the door open to the next chapter of life. In either event, the people who do not see music as important enough to have these sorts of insights fall into two categories; 1)They don't care enough about music to be impacted, or 2)They are incapable of reflective thought. For either of these scenarios, to have such people as prominent voices in the music community makes me laugh... and a bit sad.
I cannot speak to everyone's experience, but I can this about my own; without music, I would not be the person I am right now. Look, I can (and often do) complain about who that is, but I recognize I would be someone else if I had not listened to and contemplated all the music I have during the course of my life. Let me talk about a few of the albums from my 'my nine' list to explain a bit.
Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell II
My life changed when I heard this record by virtue of becoming a music fan. As I have written many times, this record was the watershed where music shifted from being a passive experience in the cultural background to an obsession that lasts to this day. I could have become a cinephile, or a literature snob, or turned to gaming as so many others do, but music is what came to define me and my thinking. Unless I am focused on a task at hand, there is always a song running through my head. I cannot remember if that was the case when I was exceptionally young, but it has been true for the length of my memory, and most of the time it is a welcome distraction from the stimuli of the world.
With as much time and energy as I have spent listening to, thinking about, and writing on the subject of music, of course it has changed my life.
Tonic - Lemon Parade
My life changed with this album, because the relationship between listener and music is different once one picks up an instrument. Even if one does not come to absorb the knowledge of notes and chords, the act of playing music and feeling the reverberation pressed against your body is one that cannot be replicated by sitting in front of speakers. The music gets into our fingers, or our voices, and becomes part of us in a way we could not have understood before going down that path. The electrical impulses flow through our nerves, and they carve a direct path between the music and our minds. Feeling what that kind of expression is why karaoke bars get populated by people who only grasp this on a subconscious level, which makes me think it is more universal than I anticipate.
The Wallflowers - Breach
My life changed with this album, because I was not a writer before I listened to Jakob Dylan's words. I might have scribbled a few ideas here and there, but the concept of 'writing' in a poetic and meaningful way had not yet sunk in. Words and language took on entirely new meaning after this, with my mind constantly scouring my interior monologue for twists of phrases that could say everything while keeping the cards close to my vest. The entirety of my oeuvre traces back to this album, and from those early days right through to recent times, my self-identity has been that of a writer/creator. That is how I answer questions about myself, it is what I found most important and most interesting about how I am. I am only that because of music.
Dilana - InsideOut
My life changed with this album, because it was the first true introduction made in what has become a crucially important friendship. A frustratingly common piece of advice given to those who are struggling is to 'find your people', which usually comes with no guidance on how such a thing is to be accomplished, or what happens if it turns out none exist. Both of those have come into play for me, from which incurable depression as been staved off only by the hand of a few people. Dilana is one of those, one of the few people who can 'see me', who lets me feel less disconnected from what life and reality are for everyone else. If finding our people is indeed the key to happiness, or whatever we want to call it, our lives change for the better when we accomplish that. Despite the complications and wounds, I am keenly aware I am better off this way, and it would not have happened without music.
Jimmy Eat World - Futures
My life changed with this album when I began to experience bouts of existential dread. The episodes were inching closer together, and finding the silver linings was difficult in the grayscale of dreams that were increasingly monochrome. That is when the power of music struck me anew, as listening to this album's atmosphere embodied that same colorless world, and was still able to find a shred of hope to cling to at the end. That hold was the buoyancy I needed in several moments to not let me think the worst about people, fate, and even myself. Music did not cure anything, or open a new chapter in life, but it did remind me that shadows can only exist if there is light to cast them. Perhaps I will not always be able to tell where it is coming from, nor be able to stand in front of it, but few curses are so unique as to cleave us entirely from the rest of humanity. That lesson needs to be learned over again at times.
I could go on, but I think the point is made. If you are introspective enough to truly think about the person you are, and how you came to be, it is not outside the bounds of normalcy for music to play a part in the process. Yes, for some people music is just a series of sounds they hear as they are going about the more important elements of their identity, but I would like to think I am not alone in how I look at the world. If not, diversions like 'my nine albums' are ways to get in touch with ourselves. If so, I'm sure there's an album out there that can calm the wave of depression soon to hit.
