Let’s be real for a second: life would be a whole lot more boring without music. Seriously, imagine walking or driving around with no soundtrack for your life, just cars honking, wind howling, people chattering on endlessly. All that messy noise can be overwhelming, and sometimes even just the unbearable silence of the world can be deafening. Whether we’re blasting something on the bus, humming in the shower, or torturing ourselves with a sad playlist (come on, we’ve all been there), music is practically the glue holding our constantly crumbling teenage sanity together. In a time of perpetual change, we need something to be a reliable constant in our lives, something to help keep all the pieces of us together. Music is great at weaving those pieces together to create one great, beautiful mess. It might not fix all our problems, but it definitely makes them feel much more cinematic.
Think about the last time a song hit you so deep that it felt like it read your whole life story. Or that moment when a random throwback comes on and suddenly you’re reliving a memory you didn’t even know still existed. Music is wild and crazy like that: it can hype us up, calm us down, or emotionally destroy us in under three minutes. No offense to any other hobby, but nothing else is capable of pulling off that kind of emotional range. A few minutes of music can do what an entire week of therapy tries to accomplish. Now with that being said, we all know how music can drastically change our mood, for better or worse. Sometimes nostalgic songs sneak up on us and either make us remember the good times, or be a cruel reminder of the good times we once had, if you get what I mean.
If you’re someone who’s in musical performance, regardless of whether that be a band kid, choir kid, orchestra kid, theatre kid, or even just the “I taught myself guitar on YouTube so I’m cool like that” kid, you already know all too well that music isn’t just something you hear; it’s something you live. All those late-night rehearsals, the screechy notes that haunt your dreams, the calluses, the sore throats, and of course, the famous “we’ll run it one more time” lie that our directors tell with no shame, it all adds up to way more effort than most people give credit for. But then that performance hits: the lights come on, our nerves kick in, adrenaline takes over, and suddenly, everything just fits. It’s like magic, except it’s real, and instead of needing a wand, you just need caffeine, rhythm, and the willingness to be drenched in sweat from your performance attire. I can almost guarantee you that every single musician has a love-hate relationship with their instrument and the music that they perform. One could say it’s an abusive relationship, with us being the abused, obviously. But despite the struggle and the stress, those moments after a great performance are simply cathartic.
But even if you don’t perform, music is still a crucial part of our lives, and it sometimes sneaks into our lives in ways you probably don’t even notice. It fills those painfully awkward moments in the elevator when no one knows what to do, to the point when the walls start looking real interesting. It pulls you out of those moments where you’re stuck doing something boring and need an instant escape for your brain. It gives you something to bond over with people you never expected to connect with; maybe someone’s rocking merch of a band you love, or maybe you overhear a playlist that completely changes your view on a person. Music is the great equalizer— until someone decides to blast their speaker at full volume in a public place, at which point they become everyone’s shared enemy. Music is in everyone’s lives and in a lot of people’s hearts, it’s easy to get lost in it and even harder to escape from. It’s so compelling that a lot of times, we don’t even want to get free from it. From all those long car rides, and sleepless nights, music helps us drift through those to the point where we’re barely aware of the world around us. Music is such a great escape for those rough days and drawn out nights, it’s basically impossible to dislike music, and if you do, either you have musical anhedonia, or you need serious counseling.
At the end of the day, music matters because it helps us make sense of, well, everything. The good days that make you wanna dance, the bad days that feel like they belong in a dramatic indie film, and the “there’s absolutely no way that was necessary” days; it’s all easier with a beat behind it. Music gives shape to our feelings, it turns them into something we can process instead of something that just sits in our brain like a broken record. I honestly can’t think of the last time that music didn’t make things better, it’s just that good of an element in our lives. That large and expansive range of passion and spirit is a perfect fulcrum for emotions and connections among people. That’s the importance of music, it’s the songs, performances, people, and ridiculous melodic moments that make our lives feel a little louder, a little more fun, and a whole lot more alive.
