It’s really a rare occurrance for me to fall in love with a song upon first listening, or even second. It’s an experience… they grow on me over time.
The first time I found appreciation for and understood the true power and colour of music was when I first heard Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Op. 8, RV 297, “L’inverno” (Winter) when I was 8.
The first time I heard High and Dry by Radiohead was when I was sitting in a train station in Stockholm, waiting for a standby train to Copenhagen, not knowing if I’d ever get there after a gruelling 11 hour bus ride to the transfer city. I have no idea why but I wish I took a Polaroid of my sudden smiling face when the song came on for the first time. I imagine it would have been a four minute and 18 second look of genuine, inexplicable satisfaction. That’s what happiness should feel like. Inexplicable, uncontrollable…a satisfying smugness about it like there’s a big secret only you’re in on.
I fell in love with another song today: Duet by Rachael Yamagata and Ray Lamontagne (music post below). It’s a beautiful song that in some ways is fitting of where I am in life, but in other ways I’d want sung in a funeral. But more than the lyrics, it’s the way it’s sung and Yamagata’s intoxicating voice that has me captivated. Her voice never fails to break my heart and bring out the deepest emotions, the way every great piece of art should, but in this, it’s the combination of what she’s saying and the longing, dying way she’s singing it that has me.
Enjoy!
