Music and Perspective

We all listen to music right? I personally love listening to music, going so far as to wear my enormous headphones to classes, on trips, on planes, in cars, everywhere (I wear enormous ones because they have the best sound quality, plus you get the added bonus of having a ready-made excuse for pretending not to recognize the ridiculously annoying person you meet on your way to class whom you'd really rather not talk to at 8:00 in the morning). It's even better in the summer, when I wear sunglasses as well (increasing my potential to ignore annoying people), thus effectively cutting off all communication between me and the outside world during the 15 minutes it takes to walk from my apartment to campus. Just to give you a taste of what I listen to, it's usually something between this...



And this...



The first band is a Japanese group, UVERworld. I first heard of them from several OP's of different animes i've seen (for those who don't know, OP is short for opening theme of an anime, serving the same function as that super-annoying song that used to play at the beginning of Friends), but since then I've began to listen to their mainstream stuff, including the 3 full albums and 10+ singles they've released. It's ridiculously fun, energetic, uplifting music that really makes walking a lot more fun than it should be.

The next group is of course Coheed and Cambria, a huge fave of many of my friends (Shout out to Nate and Judd). No explanation needed as to why they're cool. Just listen to the music and you'll figure it out (yeah the centaur + mermaid is a little weird).

But then again, these are just my interpretations of the band. I really think we all get our own feel, our own vibe when we listen to a song. A lot of people ask me why I like Japanese music so much when I don't understand the words (I kinda do now, since I've taken almost a year of Japanese, so I can make out about 2 words in 5, whole phrases if they're simple). But I really feel that music is so much of an experience beyond just the lyrics. The lyrics are simply what the writer believed the message or story of the song should be. In a way it's sort of forcing his/her point of view on to you. Whenever I listen to a song, I try to disregard as much outside opinion as I can, in order to form my own opinion based on my own observations, not someone else's words. So when I listen to music, it's much less about what the song is saying, and much more about how the song makes me feel, what sort of emotions the song elicits from me. When I listen to UVERworld, I feel happy, energetic, able to conquer any task by simply working to the rhythm of the song. In that way, the singer is really just another instrument, and not so much the directive force of the song.

Same goes for Coheed. A lot of the songs are very dark, and in some ways, during some times, this is a good thing to me. Emotions are like a spectrum and to be truly experiencing life, we have to experience them all in good balance. But most of all, the music makes me feel a certain way. Each song gives off it's own image, extracts unique mixtures of feelings and emotions from me. Thus, whether it's to have fun, let out some energy, mellow down, or wallow in misery, each song has it's own purpose to me.

In this way, I feel that everyone should seek their own interpretation of a song. Just because someone else said a song is good, doesn't make that song good. Just because someone said a song is bad, doesn't make it bad. Music is an experience, both pleasurable and insightful. And what one gets from music, whether it be entertainment, comfort, energy, or tranquility, is entirely up to oneself and no one else.