Long Musical Ramblings

I have noticed something quite a lot and that is the way many of my friends go week at the knees at a new music Album. This months ‘rage’ is Adele 21. 

I had heard it mentioned a few times and knowing our Accounts Office had a youngster who seemed up to date with the world I decided to ask her about it. OOoh she said It is AMAZING and before I knew what was happening I was listening to a YouTube clip from Adele 19 (her previous Album). I think I can safely say Adele can sing. When Adele 21 arrived it was in my pigeon hole for me to listen to.  I wasn’t taken the lyrics  seemed full of teenage angst.  I can live with that, the lass in accounts is, after all, a teenager. The problem is that the people who mentioned it in the first place are not teenagers. Not even on the inside. So. What is music/song/lyric?

I understand the idea of loving particular tunes. I have several I just love and at one time I couldn’t get enough of because they tell a story. They tell a story that is not known to anyone else and although they sing the words of my mind, they also capture the moment they captured my mind – the environment that only I am privy to.

Music is powerful, and always has been with me.  Sometimes music invades ones privacy.

The lyrics ‘Killing me softly’ sum it up:

Strumming my pain with his fingers,
Singing my life with his words,
Killing me softly with his song,
Killing me softly with his song,
Telling my whole life with his words,
Killing me softly with his song.

but only if you let it.

The first time I listened to Adele 21 I found it rather depressing.  Lyrics combined with matched music reach into ones soul, ones being, ones life and take away the privacy you thought was only yours; takes one down a path one thought would never have to be trod again.

but only if you let it.

So I have been listening to Adele 21 a lot. Finally I can understand why people love it so much. The music and lyrics fit and even if it isn’t your own thing, it can tell any story you want it to. The music takes you where YOU want it to… but it hasn’t been easy switching from one mindset to another.

Music can take you anywhere. I have always found it strange that humans sing, enjoy singing, and that singing is so delicate, so precious. So different to talking. To sing is special. It always has been.

This morning as I was listening to Adele I was wondering why people love it so much. Adele is living life but she has an avenue through which to express it – song. Through that she sets herself and others ‘free’. A song can be related to on so many different levels; perhaps that is why it is so powerful. So many of us need an avenue to express ourselves. Singing is safe if you can do it well.  It gives one privacy; it’s the song, not you that tells the story.

A singer can sing out their misery, a painter can paint out their emptiness, but what about the likes of you and me? Where is our avenue, our outlet. For me it is loneliness, the wind in my hair, but without my friends I wouldn’t be anywhere.

My tunes from long ago (the ones I will write here anyway)!

Hell – TigerLillies

Four Stone Walls – Capercaille

Cruelty – Watercress

Bruised Orange – John Prine

Logical Song – Supertramp

Where is the love - Black Eyed Peas

Feeling Good – Nina Simone

Marche Salve – Tchaikovsky

Hailie’s song – Eminem

Haunted – Poe

Wild Wood – Paul Weller

Summertime.

In the end – Linkin Park

Faint – Linkin Park

Actually, Linkin Park is one of the few bands where the whole album has walked a road with me.

What I like about music is that each one of these tells a story. It is the music and lyrics that capture me, not the artist. When a friend said when I was a child ‘listen to the words’ my appreciation of music, the chords, the lyrics and the two together were transformed. It seems today my appreciation has taken another step.