Music - What is it good for?

Music – What is it good for?

I have never been one of those people that were always wired in. Listening to music, having the headphones strapped to my head 24/7. I never spent time trying to memorize song lyrics. If I heard a song, no matter how much I liked it, I couldn’t tell where I was or what I was doing the first time I heard it. I don’t own any CDs, tapes, albums, have a MP3 player, or spend nights carousing YouTube. Yet, music has always been important to me.

I do always have music and songs floating through my head all the time. And for some reason, almost always, when I song comes on the radio I know most of the lyrics. I do have favourite songs and do generally like most types of music. Well, pretty much all except Country. I used to joke all the time that there was know such thing as Country Music, just Country songs. And people don’t get defensive about this, this is my opinion. The new stuff is becoming pop music and the old stuff had very little variance in tone or vocal range. I will give the odd acclamation to some of the female singers. And I do like Johnny Cash, but I credit him as a western singer.

Now, with all that, it is the feeling I get when I hear music, or sing that makes it important to me. Which is another reason I don’t like country, the feeling I get from it is generally sadness. There are song I sing when I angry, when I happy, when I am in love, when I am feeling sad, and especially when I feeling bored. Just before I started to write this I was checking out the top 500 songs listed by Rolling Stones Magazine. Their top ten would have not been my top ten, but every song on the list I know and like. Funny thing too, is every time I clicked to a song the tune just magically started playing in my head. And before reading it, if someone asked me to write down 500 songs I would have maybe thought of 50.

Not too long ago I started sing karaoke, and the song I would sing were almost always indicative to the mood I was in. If I was stressed, I would sing hard rock or heavy metal. If I was feeling good, I would sing a love song. If I was sad, I would sing a little softer of a rock song or some blues. I have been doing this all my life. Even when I was a teenager I remember singing “We will rock you” or “We’re not going to take it” at the top of my lungs, and it made me feel better. Music has been around since the dawn of man. It will always be a part of each and every one of us. Music, to me, is emotion in its most finest state.

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything – Plato

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/the-500-greatest-songs-of-all-time-20110407