I’ve loved listening to music since I was a child. Like many of you, I have maintained my own set of songs throughout the years, adding new ones, and deleting few that don’t agree with me anymore. I’ve had smooth and rough patches, through each of which I had music by my side, and I am thankful for that to all the artists, composers, producers for making it possible.
But sometimes, my playlist is quite against me. A couple years ago I realized that I had a lot of music that was sad and depressing. I had picked them up from my times of despair, and kept them with me even after progressing to a different phase altogether. After all, the music and instrumentation was brilliant, I couldn’t delete them. So I decided to separate my positive music from the negative, and to my surprise, the positive ones made up a much smaller percentage than I had anticipated, with music about strength, love, magic, imagination, hope. The larger part were songs about break-ups, anger, fear, mockery, confusion, disappointment and so on. I couldn’t understand why I had so much of it. Leaving that aside, I still listened to it when I was upbeat.
Am I the only one who does that? I don’t really know, but I’d guess not. I think not many people put enough effort to change their playlist often enough to match their mood. There may be very few who do it, and honestly, I’ve seen none. So when I was dissatisfied with this discovery about my music, I decided to change it, and filtered out everything that wasn’t constructive – which meant around 70% of what I had. It was really difficult to adjust to such a small list of songs at first, I felt claustrophobic in the limited space, but the result of stripping down my music was fantastic. I didn’t feel low as often as I used to, and when I did, I didn’t really have a reason for it. I was happier about the smaller things that mattered, and life in general. I felt more complete in myself than I did since I was twelve years old. It was a fantastic experience, and anything that got the better of me before, now had to put in a lot more effort.
Eventually, I also realized that I had a certain unique feeling associated with each song I had. I needed to change up my playlist again, because I couldn’t listen to the same set over and over. I had always done this often, maybe once in a couple months, so that I don’t listen to too much of the same thing. This one time though, I felt a different emotion attached to each piece I had, and I didn’t even have to play the song to feel it, just scrolling over the name did it for me. I was in awe of how deeply I had associated myself with all my music, and that I had never noticed it before. By the time I was done deciding what music I wanted to keep for daily play, I was emotionally worn out. I couldn’t bare any kind of emotional stimulus for the rest of the day. But later when I listened to what I had picked out, it was totally worth it – I was closer to detecting what kind of music was on the same wavelength as myself, it was amazing. It was amazing that choosing specific songs from the tons that I had could make such a great combination. I was elated, since music is such a huge part of my life, and even after spending so many years on it, it still had so much more to teach me.
For anyone out there who loves music, I recommend you try filtering your playlist with any variable, it doesn’t have to be the one I used. I’m sure all of us can discover new heights by doing so. Please share your thoughts, I would love to hear about your experiences as well.
And for those who need to be uplifted, here’s a set of songs that might help you out. I hope you enjoy them!
1. Rebel Beat – The Goo Goo Dolls, Magnetic
2. Counting Stars – OneRepublic, Native
3. Firestone (ft. Conrad Sewell) – KYGO
4. Strawberry Swing – Coldplay, Viva La Vida
5. If I Lose Myself – OneRepublic, Native
6. How I Became The Sea – Owl City, All Things Bright And Beautiful
7. A Sky Full Of Stars – Coldplay, Ghost Stories
8. Alligator Sky – Owl City, All Things Bright And Beautiful
9. You Get Wat You Give – New Radicals, Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too
10. Off The Wall – Michael Jackson, Off The Wall
11. Into Yesterday – Sugar Ray, Surf’s Up OST
12. I’m Yours – Jason Mraz, We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.
13. The Fighter (ft. Ryan Tedder) – Gym Class Heroes, The Papercut Chronicles II
14. P.Y.T. – Michael Jackson, Thriller
15. Replay – Iyaz, Replay
16. Angel – Shaggy
17. Beautiful Soul – Jesse McCartney, Beautiful Soul
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