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the music of our youth
Aug. 16th, 2013 09:13 amIf you've gotten music from me recently you'll know that I am presently all about the Lightning Seeds, a late-80s British band that I never heard at the time. You may also have received the Saturnettes, an 80s-retro indie band just starting up. My emotional response is pretty similar to both, though the Lightning Seeds' "Pure" is the ultimate winner, and I was thinking about why.
Well, on some level I learned to feel emotions from songs similar to these. Are other people like that, too? (Probably less so because of my late-blooming neuroatypicality and introversion, but still.) Adolescence is basically about having all the feelings, and music, alone in your room or with friends, is a safer way to have those intense feelings: there's a lower chance of getting yelled at by anyone for doing it wrong at them. For me, it was generally not okay to demonstrate emotions in my life, but I could go to the woods to experience my own, read a book to learn someone else's, or wait for that song on the radio to get chills and not know what to do with myself.
Ths music I can remember having feelings about goes from "Puff the Magic Dragon", when I was little, straight to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" when I was ten -- actually that whole era of everything played on the morning show as the other kids in the gifted program rode in the van from our local elementary school to the one where our class was, but Wham! is the most memorable. Probably because of the exclamation point. (Not really. The morning show's intro parodied "Wake Me Up" so I'm sure that's why it stuck with me more.)
Anyway, I don't think it's just nostalgia that makes people gravitate toward songs that remind them of that time period in their lives. Some specific songs definitely carry specific reminders -- I will probably never manage to completely repudiate the staggeringly racist "Turning Japanese" because of its associations -- but I think we learn a style of music to feel to. Some of us keep learning to love more kinds of music later and some don't, but that special intense line from synthesizers into my heart has never been duplicated.
Well, on some level I learned to feel emotions from songs similar to these. Are other people like that, too? (Probably less so because of my late-blooming neuroatypicality and introversion, but still.) Adolescence is basically about having all the feelings, and music, alone in your room or with friends, is a safer way to have those intense feelings: there's a lower chance of getting yelled at by anyone for doing it wrong at them. For me, it was generally not okay to demonstrate emotions in my life, but I could go to the woods to experience my own, read a book to learn someone else's, or wait for that song on the radio to get chills and not know what to do with myself.
Ths music I can remember having feelings about goes from "Puff the Magic Dragon", when I was little, straight to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" when I was ten -- actually that whole era of everything played on the morning show as the other kids in the gifted program rode in the van from our local elementary school to the one where our class was, but Wham! is the most memorable. Probably because of the exclamation point. (Not really. The morning show's intro parodied "Wake Me Up" so I'm sure that's why it stuck with me more.)
Anyway, I don't think it's just nostalgia that makes people gravitate toward songs that remind them of that time period in their lives. Some specific songs definitely carry specific reminders -- I will probably never manage to completely repudiate the staggeringly racist "Turning Japanese" because of its associations -- but I think we learn a style of music to feel to. Some of us keep learning to love more kinds of music later and some don't, but that special intense line from synthesizers into my heart has never been duplicated.
