Music is LIFE

While browsing the internet last night, I somehow came across Avril Lavigne website. I don't really remember how I came to it, just that I did. Avril Lavigne was a singer that I absolutely loved when I was in elementary school and junior high. I remember when her album, Under My Skin, came out, I was so excited. Sometime during those years Avril got married and faded from the music scene. Like most people I knew, I slowly stopped listening to her music and hoping for a new song. Then, in March, I went to see Alice in Wonderland and realized that the song at the beginning of the credits had a very distinct Avril sound to it. I downloaded it and found that I really liked the song. Since then, I have found myself hoping that she will put out a new album. However, I don't really think this is going to happen.

Anyway, last night I found myself watching music videos on her webpage. Then I found myself downloading all of her old songs that I used to love. I now have over 20 Avril Lavigne songs in my iTunes that I probably won't be listening to all that often. It's good music to have, though, when I'm in the mood for it. I think it was that thought that then led me over to Taylor Swift's webpage. In general I have not really been a Taylor Swift fan. There was one summer two or three years ago when all of my sisters and I listened to Taylor Swift constantly, but, compared to years and years of 'rocking out' to Avril Lavigne, one summer of obsession of Taylor does not really make me a fan. Yet, last night I downloaded 30 Taylor Swift songs that will probably not have many play counts on them when I get around to updating my iPod again. 

Then, this morning, I opened my iTunes to listen to some music while I was waiting for my cousin, Jack, to get here for the day for me to babysit him. I turned on some Imogen Heap. Weird, huh? I haven't really been into Imogen Heap in years. My older sister, Wendy, introduced me to her a long time ago, but I was never really hooked on her. Imogen Heap songs are weird and cool. They always make me think of things that happened in junior high, though, that I really don't care to think about. So it was weird that I actually found myself wanting to listen to her music this morning.

All of this got me thinking about how music can make you feel. I think music manipulates emotions in a way that nothing else in the world really can. Not only does a song hold its own emotions that, if really good, can find their own way into a listener, but people put their own emotions into the music that they listen to. I don't often listen to Imogen Heap, not because I don't like the emotion or the music itself, but because I don't like what I have come to associate it with. I associate my own experiences and emotions with all of the music that I listen to. Switchfoot makes me think of when I was a seventh grader, fresh into junior high. I like listening to that music sometimes because I like the emotions that I have come to associate it with. Though I doubt many other people feel the same way as I do when they listen to Learning to Breathe.

Avril Lavigne and Taylor Swift have come to be associated with times spent with my sisters. Here are two artists that all of us have really liked and we have liked them at the same time. That doesn't happen very often anymore (mostly because I can't stand a lot of the music that the others listen to.) These songs have very good feelings and memories attached to them. It doesn't matter that Skater Boy is not really supposed to be a silly song. It still reminds me of the day that my sisters and I took a radio outside and tried to create a dance on roller skates to it. Picture to Burn is supposed to be a song filled with anger, but that doesn't stop me from feeling exhilarated and completely content when I hear it. The song reminds me of tubing at Pineview with two of my little sisters, screaming at the top of our lungs.

The emotions attached to the songs are the reasons that I have come to download them again. I like that when I listen to them I can be transported back in time. If I close my eyes I can be the ten year old girl skating around her front yard, singing Skater boy as loud as she can. By listening to Switchfoot I can feel the excitement of a time when every experience was new. 

Music, to me, is my life, literally. There are songs from all parts of my life that have all kinds of memories and emotions associated with them. It's what happens when you listen to music as much as I do. I wouldn't change that, though. I love that weird, almost deja vu, feeling that comes with listening to a song that you haven't listened to in a while. 

I guess that is just why I love music.