The best ones creep up on you. You buy an album and listen to it through a few times. Slowly a tune seeps into you subconscious and then makes its way to your conscious mind. Maybe it’s the melody that starts to register. Maybe it’s a line in the chorus. Something starts to connect. Then one day it grabs you by the throat and says listen to me damn it; really listen to me. When it does, you feel it down to your sole. That song speaks to you. It moves you. Maybe it even changes you.
These moments are rare. It’s never the song you like the first time you listen to an album, and it won’t be the song you hear on the top 40 station. It’s that song that could easily go unnoticed. It may not resonate the same for anyone else, but for you it’s authenticity is almost the truest thing you’ve ever felt. That moment, that song are yours and you should cherish them. They are a gift from the artist and gift from all that it is good in the universe.
I have had this experience a few times in my life. Most of them happened when I was young and open to such irrational, idealistic and exuberant emotions. It was Drowning Man on U2’s War. It was Howling Wind on The Alarm’s Declaration. It was the Waterboys’ A Pagan Place. It was Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Stones in the Road. I cherish them all and still am stirred when I listen to them today.
A bit more recently, I downloaded Bruce Springsteen’s High Hopes. I listened to it over and over. One day, a song near the end of the album started to work it’s way under my skin. The words came into focus; the imagery resonated; the story tracked and I connected. That song was The Wall. Enjoy.
6684ft 