Houston, we have a problem…

We all love music. It’s… musical. Nice. Singalong. La-di-daaah. But thing is we’re hard wired to love music. It stirs… things inside us over which we have no control. I don’t have much control over anything really, but for music, it’s just a matter of which bit, of which song, pushes particular ‘buttons’ in our brains.

Now don’t laugh, but the first songs which really ‘got to me’, in an emotional sense were sung by Gerry and the Pacemakers. When I first heard Ferry Cross the Mersey, I had no idea where the Mersey was, or I’d have had my audio-sensory system re-wired immediately. I probably didn’t know what a ‘ferry’ was either; we didn’t have them in East London. Only at Woolwich, but no-one ever mentioned South London in those days. Some of us still don’t. But then they released Never Walk Alone. And I would watch Top of the Pops (it was all we had and we were grateful for it, Jimmy Saville and all) holding a tissue to my eyes. It stirred bits of the proto-me that I didn’t know I had.

Since then there are many songs which ‘get me going’. ‘I will always love you’, by Whitney. When she hits ‘that note’, everything else in the world is temporarily suspended. Elvis Costello’s ‘Alison’. ‘Black Sabbath’ by the eponymous band; those 3 notes simply dig inside your kishkas (innards) and shlep (pull). The piano version of ‘Everchanging Moods’ similarly induces a form of deliriously happy melancholy, as long as I don’t have to look at Paul Weller whilst I listen.

Islands in the Stream is magical. Jolene. I know, I hate Country music but this is beyond mere ‘choice’. Virtually anything by Taylor Swift. Someone Like You; when that hit the charts I cried non-stop for 3 weeks. Leather and Lace by Stevie Nicks.

I don’t choose these songs; they choose me. They hit me.

And my latest addition, possibly my most shameful is ‘Let it Go’. The world’s most annoying song ever written, by Walt Disney (and he’s responsible for most of the Top 10 Annoying Songs, for sure), and I heard it on the radio the other day and now… now… it… affects me. I haven’t yet gone to see if I can get an Elsa dress for a 38 inch chest but it’s only a matter of time as karaoke season warms up, I’m already practicing those high notes.

Shoot me now.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx