Amy and I had a connection long before either of us knew what to call it. We met in third grade. Her family left Peru when we were in fifth grade, and when they came back during our sophomore year, that connection was still there. Only now there was a lot more to figure out.
Survivor’s “Is This Love” takes me right back to that feeling. The singer is trying to decide whether what he feels is more than a crush, and the fact that he can’t stop thinking about it only makes the question harder to answer. That was the chaos of falling in love as a teenager. I couldn’t have explained it half as well at the time. I’m glad Survivor took a shot at it.
That’s one of the things I miss when I listen to a lot of mainstream music today. I want to hear something that catches me off guard and gives me words for a feeling I’ve been carrying around. Or something that makes me turn up the volume before I’ve even finished my coffee.
What I mean by “safe”
There’s plenty of young talent out there. I’ve found artists I’m happy to follow, though I often have to go looking for them. What reaches me through the mainstream can feel so polished and predictable that one song blends into the next. I miss hearing musicians take a chance on a sound or a performance that could only have come from them.
Record companies wanted hits when I was growing up, too. We had manufactured acts and more than our share of songs that followed a formula. What feels different to me is how much the business now seems to reward music that’s easy to market and can keep people’s attention over and over. I wonder how much room that leaves for musicians to develop a sound of their own and find a big audience for it.
Think about the devotion people still have for bands like Kiss, Rush, Metallica, or Iron Maiden. Fans organize gatherings and trade stories about what those bands meant to them. Some will tell you the music got them through the worst period of their lives. A song can start out as something you play because you like the guitar and end up being something you lean on for reasons you couldn’t have imagined when you first heard it.
A song can change the whole morning
Some songs have a lift that can change my mood almost immediately. A few come to mind.
- “You Make My Dreams” by Daryl Hall & John Oates
- “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis & The News
- “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire
Others make me want to stick with whatever I’m doing, especially when I’ve had about enough of it. Here are a few of those.
- “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty
- “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey
- “Invincible” by Pat Benatar
Ask me tomorrow and I might give you a whole different list. I’ve got decades’ worth of songs that bring back a face, a frustration, or something I once thought my life would turn into.
Growing up in Peru, music in Spanish was part of that same mix. A song like “Las torres” by Los Nosequien y Los Nosecuantos could make me laugh at a chaotic reality I recognized. There was something familiar in the way it found humor in what was going on around us. That feeling belongs to the same years as the Survivor song, even if the two have very little in common musically.
And sometimes I want a song for the simplest reason in the world. I want to party my brains out. There’s an art to making people get up and dance, and I’m always happy when somebody gets it right.
Then my son wanted to watch KPop Demon Hunters
I still find new music that gives me some of what I’ve been missing. Dirty Honey has that blues-driven rock sound I’ve loved for years. With High Fade, I hear the precision it takes to make a fast funk groove feel loose. There’s a pleasure in hearing people play that well together, especially when they sound like they’re having as much fun as you are.
And believe it or not, there’s “Golden”. My son wanted to watch KPop Demon Hunters, and I ended up taken with a K-pop anthem from an animated movie. That chorus is catchy, but listen to what the singers have to do to pull it off. The melody climbs, the notes hang there, and the whole thing has to sound like a burst of confidence. The song is about finding the courage to be yourself, and the performance makes me believe it.
I’m glad “Golden” found a big audience. It has the energy and optimism I keep saying I want to hear more often, and I might never have put it on if my son hadn’t picked the movie. I still miss hearing more songs like that in the mainstream. I’m also happy to be surprised by what comes out of the speakers, especially when someone else gets to pick.
