Music is Love and Love is Music. So Santa, please bring me CDs for Christmas
"If music be the food of love, play on;" says Orsino in the first line of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (Incidentally, this was the play that first whet my appetite for the Bard). You know what, he was bloody right. People put on Barry White if they wanna get down and dirty. They put on a bit of 'Sexual Healing' if they're looking to make the next move. And as much as music enhances amorous situations, for me, music has always been love. Full stop.
You know that feeling when you hear a song you know you'll grow to love for the first time? You hold your breath cos you don't even want the sound of your own inhilation to interrupt the aural pool your ears are swimming in? Thick and fast the tunes rush past your ears and into your soul, making your blood run cold in the best way. When you want to cry while the song plays and when it ends because it's suddenly struck you that it's the most perfect song you'll ever hear. And all you want to do is listen to it again and again and again even though you know it'll never be as glorious as that first time?
When I was 15, my friend Z gave me an ear of her MiniDisc to let me listen to a song called 'Take My Hand' - the final song on Dido's No Angel album.
"Listen closely though," she said. "And close your eyes cos I know you'll love this. Listen hard though, because you can never listen to this for the first time again."
She was right. We listened to that song, all 7 minutes of it, sitting at the back of our coach in Italy where we were driving on a sunshiney day with luminous, looming Italian mountains on either side of us and I didn't see a thing. I thought I was asleep until the song finished and I realised that I'd been on a journey through strings and synths and just wound up right back where I'd started, at the back of a coach in Italy.
But I wasn't back anywhere. I'd heard that song and now I was different. A slight change, invisible to the naked eye. I was different.
As soon as I got home, I bought that album.
This happened to me most recently when I was sat on a train, flitting fickly through FM radio stations and my ears picked out the sound of a twanging guitar and a raspy voice singing at, no, to me. I sat still, afraid to move in case I rustled something and interrupted this fluffy, dark beautiful cloud of sound. Like the first time you hear your new favourite song and you demand to know who sings it but you wait patiently til the end to do so in case you miss a bit. A lovely melodic chord at the end of the song.
This song went on to haunt me, playing in my head when I woke up. Serenading me back to sleep when the end of my day found me back in my bed. I started off only knowing a bit of the chorus. You know that annoying period of time when you hear a song before anyone else, and so singing the chorus over and over doesn't spark that 'Oh yea, I LOVE that song' bit of recognition in them, which let's be honest, is the only reaction you want.
Instead I got 'Who's doing that annoying whistling?'
Weeks later, the radio people play my song again. And again. They play the video to tmy song, again late at night, so the image of the band are etched into my mind's eye, playing a private concert to me as I continue to whistle along.
The song was 'Sex on Fire' by Kings of Leon.
Needless to say I now have the album...and the four others that came before it.
You know that feeling when you hear a song you know you'll grow to love for the first time? You hold your breath cos you don't even want the sound of your own inhilation to interrupt the aural pool your ears are swimming in? Thick and fast the tunes rush past your ears and into your soul, making your blood run cold in the best way. When you want to cry while the song plays and when it ends because it's suddenly struck you that it's the most perfect song you'll ever hear. And all you want to do is listen to it again and again and again even though you know it'll never be as glorious as that first time?
When I was 15, my friend Z gave me an ear of her MiniDisc to let me listen to a song called 'Take My Hand' - the final song on Dido's No Angel album.
"Listen closely though," she said. "And close your eyes cos I know you'll love this. Listen hard though, because you can never listen to this for the first time again."
She was right. We listened to that song, all 7 minutes of it, sitting at the back of our coach in Italy where we were driving on a sunshiney day with luminous, looming Italian mountains on either side of us and I didn't see a thing. I thought I was asleep until the song finished and I realised that I'd been on a journey through strings and synths and just wound up right back where I'd started, at the back of a coach in Italy.
But I wasn't back anywhere. I'd heard that song and now I was different. A slight change, invisible to the naked eye. I was different.
As soon as I got home, I bought that album.
This happened to me most recently when I was sat on a train, flitting fickly through FM radio stations and my ears picked out the sound of a twanging guitar and a raspy voice singing at, no, to me. I sat still, afraid to move in case I rustled something and interrupted this fluffy, dark beautiful cloud of sound. Like the first time you hear your new favourite song and you demand to know who sings it but you wait patiently til the end to do so in case you miss a bit. A lovely melodic chord at the end of the song.
This song went on to haunt me, playing in my head when I woke up. Serenading me back to sleep when the end of my day found me back in my bed. I started off only knowing a bit of the chorus. You know that annoying period of time when you hear a song before anyone else, and so singing the chorus over and over doesn't spark that 'Oh yea, I LOVE that song' bit of recognition in them, which let's be honest, is the only reaction you want.
Instead I got 'Who's doing that annoying whistling?'
Weeks later, the radio people play my song again. And again. They play the video to tmy song, again late at night, so the image of the band are etched into my mind's eye, playing a private concert to me as I continue to whistle along.
The song was 'Sex on Fire' by Kings of Leon.
Needless to say I now have the album...and the four others that came before it.
posted by KJT at 2:01 pm
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