Playlists
A playlist is part of our personal lives, it's in the most personal category. A playlist tells us the thinking of an individual, the emotions one goes through. Here's what a playlist is to some of us.
Threads of my Psyche
~Shruthi Senthilnathan
“stop haunting my dreams” reads the name of this particular playlist, with the cover depicting a blurry and disembodied hand, grasping for butterflies she cannot reach, set against a black and bleak background. At exactly 32 minutes, this playlist is one of the sixty public playlists that are buried under the seemingly normal guise of my Spotify profile.
I’ve always loved hyper-specific playlists, with feelings so specific you can taste it behind your teeth, with songs that make you want to heave and cry because it speaks to that one part of you that you cannot access or put into words. Each of these playlists of mine tells a story - the title, the songs arranged within, the cover photo, and even the description - a few words from a poem or a book. In the case of the woman who’s not quite there reaching for something she’ll never grasp, I quote a poem I cannot place, “you are a sickness i can’t shake off,” lowercase intentional, of course. The story that unfolds with this is mine, birthed in the echoes of a broken heart, and yet I know the story would seem different to each person who ever listens to it.
I make these playlists as a form of catharsis - a letter that’s never sent, a speech never said, a text left unwritten. I make it with people in mind, real or fictional, and I weave a web of a story with the songs I choose to finalise their place in my head. And then I wean off every bit of emotional chokehold it has over me to that playlist. I compartmentalise the emotions I feel that take over me, that wring my heart inside-out and I place them into these hyper-specific boxes, with gentle care and wrapping around them.
I listen to them when I feel the overwhelming press of that specific feeling weigh down on my chest, listening till the feeling subsides. I’m emotional, overtly so, to the point of self-destruction when I reach the peak of my feeling. I’m scared of feeling that much, that intensely, every few days. Instead, I self-therapize and give myself coping mechanisms my therapist would probably not approve of. On days when the internal storm is too much, worse than the winds that buffet against my window at the peak of monsoon, I take my shaky hands and wipe away the remnants of tears and play my personally crafted musical story. I listen to the words of people who have gone through it and made it out and I let them soothe the surface of the water back to calmness, despite the murky underneath. I’m terrified of the turbulence within myself so I pull together a world of my own making and I craft the story and the ending, similar to my life or wedged within fantasy and reality, depending on how I felt at that time.
These playlists no longer feel like easy categories; they are testaments to who I was when I made them, whether that be overly optimistic, yearning for an age long past, or pleading with someone to save me. It is a tapestry of the threads of my psyche and the scenarios that have plagued my mind these past few years. My playlists have changed a lot since I first started making them, and through it, I can see the way I’ve changed. And still, I find myself crafting another story to tell through these songs once again - a sickness I can’t shake off.
The Curator and I
-Preetika X
There’s a black and green app almost hidden on the fourth slide of my phone’s menu tab. It’s a silent predator lying in wait for the second an unsuspecting deer falls into the trap it has laid. It’s a jar fastened with a lid and a dare to not peep in.
The world inside is rich in an interwoven tapestry of tales, a cursed short story for each mending soul. A library for the wounded, made by the recovering soldier and it all sits in another tab marked by an icon of books.
There’s one such collection in this carefully curated library of broken shards, the only one titled with a three letter word and not an acronym that needs to be decoded by a network of spies. “fun.”, it’s called because The Curator has a sadistic sense of humour.
“It’s a journey,” the Curator claims, “an in-depth painful adventure packed with the highs and lows, twists and turns that leave your soul begging for more.” The Curator remains an old pal you can’t shake off, a chink in my armour and a blessing for my enemies.
The collection spans of fourteen tracks, fifty six minutes and fifty seconds, filled with top charting artists, some of the greats. Every song is designed to lure you in, let you breathe in an emotion you’re not willing to experience on any day because the thought of simply dipping your toe into the pool and letting it suck you into disarray is your greatest fear. Or is it just me?
The playlist tells a story, one that we’re all familiar with, whether we like it or not. Two people and a film that’ll only remain a script, a what-if, and nothing more. It follows the narrative of persistence, resistance and acceptance. In some sense, it’s an hour-long period of dedicated mourning before I put on my big girl shoes and venture back into my hollow self to brave the ghost lurking in every corner I turn into.
It starts with directionless optimism, leaning into a flurry of conflict and detaching from pointless hope, finally letting my soul sit with the idea of what will never be. “Its four years of emotion zipped into an hour.” Its four years of waiting, as every piece of my heart is torn apart, strand by strand till there’s only a cavity in my chest, missing an organ that only beats to the rhythm of someone else’s choosing.
That one hour is the only time I allow myself to open the jar and let it consume me fully, wholly. I’m trapped with the curator in the collection she’s birthed. She forces me to feel every punch to the stomach, the strength of tough fingers squeezing the last drop of blood from my wounded heart. She begs me to feel it with her like an addict looking for the next fix. Stuck inside her world now, I remember that I’d rather swim in rough waters with her than accept a life with her absence.
Love in Playlists
-Misbha
There is a scene in The Perks of Being A Wallflower where Charlie’s sister gives him a mixtape. “He (her boyfriend) gives me one every week, you can have it,” she tells him. Later in the movie, after Charlie meets Sam, he makes her a mixtape to tell her how he feels about her. I was existing in a time way past the movie’s age to understand what mixtapes were. But my heart was also not grown enough to understand how putting together in one place, a string of songs, was a way of telling people how you felt about them.
I liked the boy I liked at eighteen because of the songs he used to send me. Every night, we would pour our heads over our phones and scroll through a dooming list of songs to send to each other, music that was far beyond anyone else’s reach. It was like scouring for pearls that no one except the other person could take a glimpse at. We would play the songs at the same time and listen to them together from the different darknesses of our rooms.
“I’m ready”
“Okay, now”
“Do you want to make a shared playlist?”
“Yes,” I said.
This playlist was named after what he would call me and it would go on to have fifty songs, picked from around a hundred songs we listened to together. He said fifty was a good number to stop at otherwise it would become too long a playlist.
The boy who liked me at twenty made me a playlist as a return gesture for something I did for him. “It doesn’t mean too much,” he reassured me because I resemble somewhat of a runaway bride in romantic relationships. He added songs that he wanted me to listen to. We stopped talking but he continued to add songs.
The One That Got Away by Katy Perry.
Something Stupid by Frank Sinatra
To Let A Good Thing Die by Bruno Major
Call U Tomorrow by Montell Fish
Unrequited Love (& other cliches) by Breakup Shoes
When Tom, in 500 Days of Summer, says he hears the song, ‘She’s like the wind’, each time he thinks of Summer, I thought too back then about what song I heard when I thought of the boy I liked at eighteen. I was never able to think of just one song. It was always the museum of all the songs we had put together in one place. So every time I wanted to like him more, I would listen to our playlist and I liked him more.
Sometime after the romantic endeavour came to an end. I would listen to the playlist on repeat because it reminded me of the butterflies I had nurtured for him. And I thought again and again about how my feelings were only bound to him by those sets of songs. That if they ceased to exist, so would my feelings for him.
Songs for me act as bookmarks. There are moments from our lives that are locked away, so beyond reach and songs extend their arms and undo these locks for us. Allowing us to feel exactly what these moments made us feel, reminding us of a time that is so under the rubble of dirty laundry thrown on a chair. Playlists help extend these smaller moments into longer periods where you go back not just to a particular page but to an entire chapter. Playlists have helped me know of love in a way that is outside of myself. Love that exists in some place perpetually just waiting to be revisited.
A girl’s essentials
-Gopika Krishna
I need to have music at all times. You will never see me without my white earphones that are always buried in my ears, a sight that makes both Amma and my ENT let out a disappointed sigh paired with a not-so-subtle head shake. This is not because I’m a huge fan of music. No, it has more to do with my personal need to have music tied to every moment I’m living. I have 4 playlists, spanning across all kinds of genres that you can think of but even amongst them, I have my favourites. The essentials that I carry along with me in my dirty tote filled with other important stuff like K’s stolen pen, a pomegranate lip balm, a residential umbrella that has lived there for 2 years now and a wallet that carries bits of my life instead of money. They are used for specific situations, at even more specific times.
Like how “The Night Before We Met” by Lord Huron and Phoebe Bridgers, a song that has lived with me since I was in 7th grade, is only meant for golden hours when I am paralyzed with memories of people and places I can’t fully recall. When the realisation that I can’t keep my whole life with me till the end hits, I want to go back to the moment before it starts so I don’t lose it.
Then there is “Yellow” by Coldplay, which is used for times when I miss M, mostly during bus rides back after classes, while the guilt of leaving her back in Kochi gnaws at my chest. She is as pretty as all things yellow and someone who I have loved since 3rd grade when she came to give me notes after Achan’s passing. Knowing that I’m missing parts of her life that I should be there for makes me regret my decision to move to Bangalore.
For late-night smoking, “drive ME crazy!” By Lil Yachty is my choice. This one was from C, she gave it to me saying “You sound like this song”. I sit on my balcony smoking whatever cigarette that is there, swatting mosquitoes and playing with the starfish on my feet. I still can’t figure out if I am the woman or the man in that song. C told me I am both.
“A Huge Tree in the Tsukamori Forest” by Joe Hisaihi is for the walk back from the bus stop, the time I feel like sleeping under a tree the most. “Lay All Your Love On Me” by ABBA is for the walk towards the bus stop, the time I feel like singing out loud the most.
“My Eyes” by Travis Scott is for the first smoke of the day with extra sugar coffee. K was the one who gave me this song after a movie date, and it’s been our song since then. I listen to this song to live that night again because when the beat drops, it makes me feel like I have the most beautiful eyes in the world.
These are songs that let me know that hold me together every day like a silver string, letting me know that love is there in every part of you, please don’t forget that.
MA HEH’S PLAYLIST BIG(BIG UNCLE)
- Allivia Dan Langstieh
I grew up in a family that lives off music. From vinyl records to gigantic radios to stereos, to cassette tapes, to CDs and DVDs, to the first Sony mp3 player, to now Spotify and Apple Music. Even so you’ll still hear the radio from time to time, my helpers and I play it as background music while we do our chores. Each music held its importance. I got the golden opportunity to bear witness to each transition. One time my Uncle Eli came upstairs and handed me an entire bunch of newspaper cutouts of song lyrics. “They belonged to my brother,” Uncle Eli told me as he handed them over to me.” You can keep them if you want or you can just throw them away”. I would have hated it if after my death people threw away my favourite song lyrics on paper so I quite literally snatched them from his hand and said “Of course I’ll keep them”.
I looked at the cutouts with familiarity and realised this is what Anny (my sister) would also do. Except she stuck it in her scrapbook. “I didn’t know they did this back in the day” I curiously told Uncle Eli, he proceeded to look at me begrudgingly and said, “Child, Uncle Fred started this thread”. I never got the chance to meet this man, Fred. I think I would have liked him, I was told he was a big music enthusiast. I went through each cutout, took out my phone, and started noting down the name of the song. Later on, I made a playlist on the same. Titled – Ma heh, which means big uncle in my mother tongue and also supposedly what I was to call him. I had sent the playlist to my sister and that made her a little emotional, she replied to it with “trendsetter”. It consists mainly of old love songs and also heartbreak songs. I am guessing Fred was a hopeless romantic.
That being said, I think someone’s music taste says a lot about them. If you are curious to know how someone is feeling just ask them what they’ve currently been listening to, your face and mouth can definitely get away with a lie but your music taste? I doubt it. I don’t know about you but I can tell if I can connect with someone or not just based on their music taste. It’s a language I speak without having to move my mouth. I remember back in the day when I was just a kid I would see my sister downloading songs on her Sony MP3 player and coming back with a different one, when I was old enough I eventually realised that she was exchanging playlists with her then-boyfriend. This was so endearing to me and I couldn’t wait to grow up and get an mp3 player of my own so I could do the same.
Those were simpler times, now there is this thing called a Spotify Blend where essentially you can do a blend with someone and according to what you and that person listen to, the app will give you a compatibility score based on your music taste. The app will also compile your music taste and the other person’s music taste into one playlist. Which brings me to my favourite playlist. A score of 98% with a random guy off of Instagram, at one point I had to tell myself he wasn’t my soulmate and was just someone with an incredibly similar music taste to mine. We’re good friends now. Thanks to a good playlist.
3:30 hours…playing now ‘Family line’ from 3:30
-Rishika
Playlist for me is not just a collection of favourite songs, or something to listen to just for the vibes. Playlist for me is the most important part of my day. My mood literally depends on the genre playlist I’m playing. The most valuable thing in my life is music. I cannot function without music. I need my earbuds plugged in for every task I do or I’m about to do. The thing with music is, it shifts a person’s mood so easily you can’t tell, one second you are all sad and grumpy and then immediately one of the songs by cardi b starts playing, you’re tapping your foot, humming along , and forgetting every worry in the world. Making a playlist is an art I’d say. Choosing the right songs for the right mood is actually really hard. You can’t add all of your favourite songs in one playlist , it’s supposed to be set for different moods you’re in. Like one for the hype , or when you are sad and you don’t feel like doing anything or one with all the R&B songs, one to get you out of bed and motivate you for the rest of your day, etc.
Playlists represent different chapters of my life. There are three playlists I’ve made. Each has their own story and reasons. My most favourite and most played playlist is called ‘W’ . It’s a collection of all the hype songs, 80% rap. Mostly it consists of songs by artists like Kanye West (my favourite artist), 21 savage, J Cole, Kendrick Lamar , SZA etc. This is the first thing I play when I get out of bed in the morning. It never fails to uplift my mood. It’s not just a random mix of songs, it's a soundtrack to my moments of happiness and celebration. I often play this during long drives in car, or house parties or when my friend and I are sharing an AirPod. People who have a taste for hip hop have loved my playlist and asked me to share it . I can’t really say how happy that makes me every time.
Next is the gym motivation playlist, this playlist is played for 2 hours of my day. It is carefully made to fuel my workouts and push me to do more reps. It helps me stay focused. Consists of all energetic tracks like superman, bones, disaster etc. Most of the songs in this playlist are recommended by my friends. It's a completely different genre from what I usually listen to. It’s EDM and metal. It’s actually fun and amazing.
Lastly, there’s the sad or slow songs playlist. It consists of songs by artists like lil peep, xxxtentacion, juice wrld, frank ocean , d4vd, joji etc. I named it “3:30” for no particular reason other than it was 3:30 in the midnight when I created it, capturing the raw emotions of that moment in time. This playlist was born during a challenging phase in my life. It was midnight after a heartbreak when I turned to music for comfort. I spent hours reading and absorbing the lyrics of the songs , crying and relating to the emotions expressed in the music. The songs eventually lulled me to sleep, providing a sense of comfort. Although I don't listen to sad songs often, my sad playlist is special to me. It reminds me of tough times and how I've stayed strong. Each song in this list is like a chapter of my life, making it a comforting and personal collection.
Symphonies of Life
-Shaista
You wake up in the morning, the clock shows 7:00. Yanking your towel off the hook you step into the washroom for what’s supposed to be a magical shower to wake you up. The day lacks the lustre of joy and once again there is genuine reluctance in you to carry on with the journey of existence. In a moment like this, only the melodious rhythms of Abba and Kanye possess the power to elevate your spirits and infuse the day with a new sense of excitement.
As soon as you open Spotify, two playlists appear side by side with less than a centimetre separating them: "Shower playlist for when you want to blend into the water droplets and condense into the atmosphere and let go of your humanly existence" and "shower playlist for when you’ve dreamt about Cillian Murphy getting engaged to you." Of course, you choose the latter and strip naked as you twist the shower handle, anticipating a lovely morning.
Before you know it, the sound of Adele's voice is hitting your face harsher than the water. Naturally, the realisation dawns upon you that the wrong playlist fills the air but It’s only a list of songs you remind yourself of. A little Adele and Hozier harmonising in the back of your head won’t make a difference. That was a lie. The silence echoes loud as you sit on the floor with swollen eyes because Hozier wouldn’t shut up about how he takes his whiskey neat and his coffee black and goes to bed at three, which comes off very blunt like there's no enjoyment - almost frustration and sadness. Twenty minutes of pure torture on a day you already weren’t looking forward to has now turned the day more bleak and miserable. You’re starting to feel like Bojack again and you know for a fact the day is going to go to shit.
It's amazing how even the tiniest actions, like inadvertently selecting the incorrect playlist, may initiate a series of events that completely alter our day's course. The right playlist can set the tone for the day as music has a powerful effect on our emotions, and playlists curated with songs that resonate with us emotionally can help regulate our moods throughout the day. At its most vulnerable essence, a playlist reveals itself as a fusion of precisely curated combinations, resonating artistically. At its core, it’s so much more than a messily put together combination or list of songs. It’s the melodies and lyrics that deeply resonate with both the recipient and the creator.
As humans, we often fail to realise the power playlists have over us. Music, whether consciously or unconsciously, allows us to tap into our inner subconscious and bring feelings from within us to the surface. Playlists do just that. Technically speaking, they are personalised narratives woven from the threads of our lives that have a profound impact on us.
Raagas, Taalas and Spotify.
- Ishwarya Katte
I was around 6 or 7 when I realised music is fun. The only portal I had to music was my sangeeta classes that Amma forced me to go to because I begged her for them. Deekshika, my apartment friend went for them, so obviously I wanted to too.
I was 11 when I first heard an English song. ‘Just the way you’ are by Bruno Mars, the music video came out on VH1 and I was glued to the TV, I looked at it with such awe and heard each word of the lyric with my ears open wide that I forgot that any other audio existed. Thata walked in and said, “volume kadme maadu, tumba loud ide” / decrease the volume, it's too loud and that's what broke my association with it.
Years later when I found out about Spotify from some rich bratty school kid, I desperately wanted it. Amma has always been someone who enjoys music when it comes her way, if she’s doing a mundane chore and I offer to play some music she wouldn’t deny it, but it had to be Lata Mangeshkar or Kishore Kumar else she would complain about how her head aches and subtly signals me to turn it off. My father on the other hand, loves listening to music, give him a car drive and he would bring along music like snacks. Give him two hours in the morning and he would play everything from Witney Houston to Queen to Lucky Ali. I think I got it from him. The only thing I’m proud of.
When I downloaded Spotify I was extremely new to it, there were so many buttons, I felt like Ajji when she got her first new phone, clueless and excited. I created my first playlist and titled it “ I like these songs”
I added everything I knew and liked into it, till I lost that account.
Making playlists then became a hobby. I needed an excuse to just create one. I started adding people to this hobby of mine. Everytime someone I loved had their birthday, I would make them a playlist of the songs they like and send it to them. I loved the intimate power I had of knowing what songs someone liked and making them happy by reminding them about it.
Years later it became slightly more intimate when I only made playlists for people I loved. I would create playlists for boys that would come out with me to dominos and shake my hand at the end of the day as I shyly ran off to my car, or best friends that I no longer talk to.
I currently have 28 playlists curated, all for different versions and parts of me. Some I listen to when I feel like putting on a blue kurta and silver bangles and take Amma’s dupatta and dance around to Jasn-e-bahaara, some to which I dress up to every morning because someone introduced me to a new genre of music I really loved and some to which I remember Thata and other lost loves and cry in the middle of the night, hoping it would save me.
Playlists mean more than just songs to me, it is all the people I have loved and the ones I will go on to love. Something like the sangeeta classes at age 6.
Lisa is Kool
- Khushi Devanath
Lisa and I have been friends since 8th and she is a very important person in my life. She has seen my highest and lowest and has still chosen to stay. 10th grade was a very important year in our friendship as we got closer that year. We would have extra classes during summer because our academic year started earlier as we were to attempt our board exams and portions had to be completed faster. Me and Lisa lived nearby and went together for our summer classes. Taking an auto every day to college was very expensive and hence we resorted to the local bus for our daily travel. We would meet at the same bus stand near Hennur Bande and leave. I did not have a phone at that time because my mother kept it locked in her cupboard so that I could fully concentrate on my studies. Luckily Lisa had her phone with her.
She would remove her earphones, give me one side and keep the other side to herself. I had terrible taste in music and she enlightened me with her music that summer. She had songs from the early 2000s to all the latest hits. She still tells me that I need to thank her for my amazing music taste and there is no denying that. We would listen to the songs while going and coming back as we munched on chips. When we would get really tired from all the classes and have no energy to talk about our day, we would simply listen to music. As small of an act as it is to share earphones with one, I found it to be very intimate as Lisa was not an expressive person and her letting me get a peek into her music felt like her letting me into her world.
After this covid hit like the rest of the world we all went into a mood of hibernation. I missed school and I missed spending time with Lisa, that's when the idea stuck to make a playlist of our favourite songs. I added almost 25 to 30 songs and made sure our favourite song Remind Me to Forget by Kygo was included. Lisa added the picture to our playlist which was a screenshot of me texting her Kool Lisa because of her new profile picture. We were in love with this playlist.
As I write this piece sitting in the very bus we would go to school, it reminds me of all the sticky summer days, endless talks, and wholesome moments of Lisa sharing her music with me. She is one of the koolest and most loving people I know and I'm glad to share something as common but intimate as a playlist with her. Friends make the most mundane of days beautiful and make life bearable and Lisa just adds more koolness and love into mine.
Ingredients for a playlist
- Bhoomika
I'm currently 20 years old ( getting really really old) and from the age of 4 to 16, my world was a different space. It had no connection with the outside world. I would know that a new movie was released in theatres only after seeing posters on the walls in the nearby villages when I went out once a month. I lived in a boarding school. No phones, no internet, no calls, no nothing. it was a world by itself, an isolated one but one that was filled with innocent waves of laughter and memories.
We had a lot of fun, my friends and I. We laughed, we cried, we danced, we sang. Wait, how did we listen to songs? How did we know all the new songs released?
In the initial days, it was through the radio, the FM as we named it. Every time I would be studying in a room designated for studies and my favourite song was being played, my friends would run to me to tell me about it. And I would run back with them to sit under the radio station, which was a wooden plank screwed to the wall, to listen to it. After the TV was introduced into our lives, we watched it through the music channels or in the movies. But then again TV and music came to us as a luxury during our weekends. and we were allowed to watch only certain channels. if we wanted a new music channel we had to beg the higher authorities to pay for it and get it available to us. As we grew older and mischievous, we stole a pen drive, we learned to convert a YouTube song video into an mp3 format and put it into the pen drive, connected it to our Samsung TV, and listened to songs throughout the week. Now, we would get the opportunity to add more songs to the pen drive only when the teachers were away from their staffroom. and so songs came into our lives with a lot of critical thinking.
Our playlist came in various forms, a radio, a TV, and a pen drive. But the only thing that stayed constant was our love for the music, and our willingness to add any amount and any kind of songs to these playlists. That was our luxury.
I now have the freedom to search for a song on my search bar and listen to it freely without needing to try to remember the lyrics and the tune so I sing it some other time along with my friends. I don't have to wait until the wardens are asleep to play my music softly with a faint hum.
My playlist does not just have music, it has a lot of stories. Stories that will be cherished with every song that I hear, with every lyric that I sing.
Playlists and birthday gifts
- Varsha Pai
Everyone who really knows me, also knows that I have an enormous love for music in my heart. Music for me is never limited to a certain genre or lyrics. I listen to everything. From the most soulful Indian music like that of illayaraaja to full on metal bands like Metallica or System of the down. Even though I considered myself a music junkie from a really young age, I never listened to music on a daily basis like I do now. I realised that was because my Spotify account was not premium and every 2 song I listen to next comes an advertisement and that just took away the fun of it and listening to music became a task more than a hobby because I was not as patient to let each advertisement get over so as soon as the ad came on, I would close Spotify and open it all over again. It was hectic. Around 5 years ago, I got to know that you can make playlists and share them with people. I felt like I had been living under a rock and went crazy with making playlists. I had playlists for almost anything and everything. To think back of it, I had really detailed random playlist like-
‘dancing with your enemy at a ball’
They were hopeless romantic playlists that made my bookish fantasy come true
‘your family is dead’
Yes, I know this is quite concerning but they were just incredibly sad and depressing songs
‘it is poo time’
Now comes one of my favourite playlist, it is a reference from an old Bollywood movie named Kabhi Khushi kabhi gham and is a playlist I put on when I get ready. It makes me feel like the main character.
Slowly, playlists weren’t just a personal interest and became more of my love language. It all started when my long distance friend started to miss me and as a way to comfort her, I made a playlist with all the songs we used to listen to together. That playlist was my way of giving a virtual hug to her because I missed her more than words could ever convey. I made a playlist for my boyfriend recently and it made me really happy seeing him happy. I believe that music always works when you are not able to convey your feelings through words.
Overtime, making playlists became something I was known for. Along with a gift ,I used to make my friends a personalised playlist for them on their birthday and when I did not make it for a year, she called me up and complained about it and went on and on about how I did not love her anymore. Even though we had a tiny fight related to it, I cannot deny that somewhere deep deep in my heart I was ecstatic that she was looking forward to a silly playlist this much. I have only made playlists of 4 people until now but they deserve it all and much much more.
An identity, a mother tongue
-Angelia
The love had together
Just fades away in time
And now you’ve got your own world
And I’ve guess the passion you planted
In the middle of heart
Is a passion that will never stop
- MLTR
Music is a universal language but it does have a mother tongue. It connects people culturally and personally, it whispers and uplifts the soul. From ancient civilizations to modern times, music has played a significant role in human life. It serves various purposes from entertainment, communication, its best at expression of emotions and spiritual rituals. Whether it’s a lively concert, a soothing melody, or a catchy tune on the radio, music has the power to inspire souls and heals the mind. It definitely shapes our memories like the smell of a lost perfume. It gives an identity and escape to a world unknown.
Growing up, my earliest memories are intertwined with the tunes that filled our home. Dada played music in the backyard when we had barbeque nights or even on a lazy Sunday afternoon, playing ‘Summer of 69’ by Bryan Adams to ‘Girls just wanna have fun’ by Cyndi Lauper. The 90s and 80s retro songs became a part of living now. Mother picked me up and taught me to dance ever since then I stole her show. She said I danced in her stomach and ended up costing my life (the umbilical cord got coiled around my neck).
The only way I tap into my childhood days is plugging into this. Every moment and every beat of the song takes me to a place of nostalgia. A place of warmth, a place I devotedly want to go back to. This part of life shaped my desires to learn and pursue music. This bonds my family together till today, Dad at times is surprised on how much I listen to the music he showed me.
My brother and I would head bang to summer of 69 and I would air play the guitar, this sparked a pursuit to learn the guitar which I eventually started pursuing. I played the bass on my tenth grade graduation that I consider to be a Godsend. The lyrics of this song called winds of change by scorpions goes like ‘Take me to the magic of tomorrow on a glory night where the children of tomorrow share dreams (share their dreams) in the winds of change’. It sums up my desire to listen to these retro songs and how I share it with people through my talents. We are the children of tomorrow. We listened to the music our parents heard and we somehow passed on the tradition. Music did resonate with most of my emotions. So these playlists are just mood setters, we may feel joyful, sadness, excitement, or nostalgic. There's a song or melody that can mirror and amplify those emotions, creating a sense of shared experiences who connect to the same piece of music. I wonder that even God who created it did enjoy music that seemed to reflect His taste.