Three Songs That Changed My Life
When my daughter was declared breech just days before her birth, a friend advised me to lie in an inverted position with headphones low on my bulging belly and use music to try and coax her to flip. Facing a possible C-section, I was game. So I did my damnedest to prop myself up into a quasi-shoulder stand and fed my incubating dumpling a continuous loop of Pink Floyd's Dark Side and Pearl Jam's Ten. Theory was she would gravitate to the music and right herself. Old wives' tale? Perhaps. But when my daughter was born a couple days later, she came out screaming, all pink and squishy—and headfirst.
Music is a great motivator. The right song can help push us through fatigue and get us to run that extra mile. It can alter brainwave patterns much the same as yoga and meditation do, and induce a state of deep relaxation where the mind is more open to problem solving. Music offers comfort and helps us heal. It has the power to manipulate moods. It both soothes and incites. When we listen to a piece of music, we share the artist’s feelings on a visceral level. At its essence, music is recorded emotion that can create profound emotional experiences.
Around about the same time that Deep Purple seduced me and turned me from a budding folkie into a pit-loving animal, Led Zeppelin released their masterpiece, "Stairway to Heaven." Say what you will about "Stairway" being overplayed, overblown, whatever, I was completely and utterly bewitched by the song at first listen and remain so some four decades on. The song stops me in my tracks without fail. No matter the thousands of times I've listened to it, "Stairway" is always fresh to my ears. It funnels in and clutches my heart, squeezing mercilessly.
When I married ages ago, I didn't dare ask the priest that "Stairway" be played as my wedding march, so I asked the DJ that I'd hired to play it at our reception instead. Because it wasn't exactly danceable, my request was unceremoniously denied. "Stairway" will, however, be played at my wake, if I have to come back from the grave and play it myself.
Running at a little over 8 minutes, and composed in several distinct sections—beginning as a slow acoustic-based folk song with recorders in a Renaissance music style and moving gradually into a slow electric mid-section, then an intricate guitar solo by Jimmy Page before the faster hard rock final section, and ending with a short epilogue that echoes the introduction—"Stairway" was unlike any piece of music on the airwaves at the time. It is irrevocably interwoven with memories of black light and first love in my memory.
These are just three of a multitude of songs that have impacted my life and left indelible memories. Your turn. What are some of the songs that make up the soundtrack of your life?
