I recently heard a theory that the music we choose to listen to reflects our own lives — those whose lives have been traumatic often choose hateful, angry music to listen to because that’s what they know.
For years, probably about 11 (when I first heard it) to 16, if I had to pick one song I identified with most, it would have been Simple Plan’s “I’m Just A Kid.” Saying that now, I have the urge to throw a defensive “DON’T JUDGE ME!” in here with that admission, because I am so. over. that song.
“What the hell is wrong with me?
Don’t fit in with anybody
How did this happen to me?
Wide awake I’m bored and I can’t fall asleep
And every night is the worst night ever
I’m just a kid and life is a nightmare
I’m just a kid, I know that it’s not fair
Nobody cares, cause I’m alone and the world is (having more fun than me)
Nobody wants to be alone in the world.”
I don’t really identify with any particular song anymore, but I do know that my ipod is full of songs from the same phase as listening to Simple Plan, bands like Sugarcult and Panic at the Disco, Fall Out Boy and Linkin Park and Good Charlotte, and I find myself increasingly unable to listen to them. I would never delete them from my ipod, but I don’t listen to them and relate like I did. (I have a problem ’shutting doors’, and what if I wanted to listen to them again?)
While in the past the songs I chose to listen to have been ALL about the lyrics, without caring about melody or beat, I find I am actively searching out songs with beautiful melodies, songs I enjoy singing along to. I don’t know what that says about me. A lot of the songs with beautiful melodies are also slower and sadder, but often with an optimistic tinge — at any rate, far more optimistic and less angry with the whole world’s unfairness than those I used to listen to. They often, in a very general sense, take the view that life moves on. Lots of songs are about breakups, for example, but the songs I used to listen to would fixate on it, seeing whatever breakup it was as some kind of earth-shattering event. The songs I listen to now broadly take a view along the lines of “It was pleasant while it lasted, and I am going to be genuinely sad and upset for a while, but life will move on, and so will I.” So maybe that’s what I’ve come to realize — life will move on; it’s constantly changing; nothing is insurmountable, no matter how it seems at the time.
The only song I have loved from the first moment I heard it — during the same phase as Simple Plan — and probably always will, despite forgetting it for stretches of time and not playing it often, is “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” by Green Day — which has the same general message. It’s odd that I loved it so much back then, and even more that it has endured. I used to identify with being constantly tested and never knowing why; now I identify with the chorus, that it was worth all the while, that “why” is a lesson learned in time.
“Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why
It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time
It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.
So take the photographs and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
For what it’s worth, it was worth all the while
It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.”
