Sit back and grab a quick snack. I’ve decided it’s a yapping day. Sorry!
So, I had a thought recently, one that I have had before but one that I sat on for a little while longer.
Music as an emotional archive.
Music has always been a form of media that has fascinated me, not only is it a way to communicate but it allows us to feel. Music has the power to send us to a different dimension, that dimension being the past.
One moment you could be cleaning the kitchen, driving to work, doomscrolling and avoiding responsibilities, doing something completely mundane when a song will come on and you are sucked right back to a brief moment in time.
Like a very disorienting Time Machine that makes you think, what just happened and why am I feeling all the feelings that I am feeling right now once you’ve come out of it.
This experience is not just a coincidence, and it is not a one-time occurrence it WILL happen again.
This experience is known as autobiographical memory, defined by the National Library of Medicine as a core of the self, organized into semantic and episodic memory.
In easy terms (because I need it sometimes too) means that music can be tied to specific moments in our lives unlike a photo or a video that simply captures the moment we experience, music allows us to relive it.
A quick example of this in action, autobiographical memory becomes increasingly difficult for those struggling with Alzheimer’s and music therapy is often used for patients who are struggling and allows them to return to a time where they could remember.
It brings them peace. It allows them to tap into early memories, happy ones, ones that make them smile
For my Oma, that song is, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon & Garfunkel.
Music does not hold the same meaning for everyone.
Now here is an example, “Renegade,” a song that went viral due to a TikTok dance during COVID. For some people it may bring back the boredom and isolation or the sound of your mother corralling everyone together for a mental health walk. For others it may be about learning the dances and making goofy TikTok’s to send to friends.
For me, “Renegade” brings me back to doomscrolling through the social media void for hours and then randomly deciding at 12AM that it was time to learn the dance, and perfect it.
Yes, it took me a couple of hours to perfect. And yes, I ignored all student responsibilities and stayed up all night.
I didn’t do my schoolwork, but I did learn a new dance.
Even now when it plays, I find myself starting to do the moves, like its etched into my skin fully attached as a part of me.
This reflects an idea that digital media provides us with the emotional relationship we build with media. Like that of an evocative space, music shapes our memories.
Over time these attachments and feelings towards certain songs may change. There are songs that were once loved that no longer hit the same way, but not because the music has changed, but because we have.
Listening to an old playlist can feel like a time capsule of past selves. Maybe a past version of yourself you miss or one you don’t even recognize. Music allows us to mark the personal growth that has occurred between then and now. It tracks who we were, what we felt, and how we were moving through that stage in life.
In the sense of emotional archive, songs store pieces of us. They hold past relationships, phases, small moments that we forgot about without a second thought suddenly feel important again when thrown back into the moment.
Like listening to “Landslide” it triggers an almost immediate emotional response. There is an almost unspoken rule amongst young women that this response is the realization of change, growth, growing older and all the beautiful, scary things that come with it.
So many feelings can be held in one single song.
Sidebar, I did actually test how frequently I would cry to this regardless of my mood.
Always. The answer is always. Both versions.
Although we may all be feeling some kind of way about a song and those feelings may differ music is both an individual and collective space.
“Renegade” is part of a shared cultural moment where MILLIONS of people took part in the trend online, a participatory public if you will. That moment can be deeply personal.
Music in regard to an emotional archive but also regarding it in digital media is super intriguing. We can have the space to ourselves to interpret the music individually during the past and the present, but we can also interpret it as a collective group allowing us to connect deeper.
In the end, music does more than remind us of the past, it allows us to re-experience it. Whether the memory be good, bad, or downright awful songs have a way of bringing emotions back to the surface with an intensity that few media can match.
Music is a personal diary, a healing technique, and a cultural artifact documenting not only where we have been but who we were when we were there. #nostalgia
So yes, maybe there are some songs that catch us off guard that you did not know would evoke such a response, but hey. It’s not about the song itself (though it could be) it’s about everything we subconsciously stored inside that song.
Let me know what song evokes an old feeling out of you.
I’ve supplied you all with a playlist of my memory inducing songs, and I will give no further context.
Cause I am a mysterious, elusive figure.
JK, I am pretty predictable but that’s super vulnerable and I’d rather you stay guessing!
Ok! Ciao!
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