Lyrics Create Powerful Internal Connections through Stories and Emotion
“...but it’s the little things, the little things,
not expectations
that make life worth living, worth living.”
Spare Change at On Broadway, Helena, Montana (Photo credit, Angie Fiskum)
Those were the lyrics I was hearing in my head over and over again as I processed the previous two weeks of drama at our house. My husband had discovered this song by JJ Grey and Mofro, and had suggested we work on it to perform with one of our bands.
The first time we practiced that song, it was everything in me to sing it without tears dripping down my cheeks. The soulfulness that JJ Grey infuses as he performs it, through his tone, his phrasing, and his emotion, is captivating and heartbreaking.
I hadn't heard of JJ Grey before we started learning that song, but it didn't take long for me to find a few songs that were equally powerful.
As I performed it for the first time at a gig, I closed my eyes as I reached the chorus:
“Glory glory, hallelujah
The sun is shining, shining down
Glory glory, hallelujah
I’m alive, and I’m feeling, feeling fine.”
I opened my eyes and the restaurant had become very quiet. Many of the conversations had stopped momentarily, and I noticed the host and a server standing at the edge of the dining room, listening. For the first time that evening, I had the attention of the busy customers and staff. Finishing the song, I could see from the expressions that the song hit its mark.
Later that evening, as I was visiting with another musician who had come to support us, she asked me about the song. “I could tell it was really meaningful to you, Sarah.”
I couldn’t stop thinking about the response of the audience to that song as I tried to go to sleep that night. It struck me how powerful lyrics can be, and I started to wonder what it is about songs, lyrics, poems, and other forms of art that reach into your heart and soul and grip them in fierce joy and devastating sorrow.
What is it about music and lyrics that make us BELIEVE them? Why is it that we believe that there is truth in them, without any knowledge of the songwriter's credentials? Is he a psychoanalyst? How does she KNOW?
Think about the song you listen to when you’re sad, when you’re happy, the music that helps you process experiences. They tell stories with messages in them, and for some reason, even with no data or research to support the assertions, we believe them. Why?
Maybe it’s the fact that they speak to a human condition, common themes that we experience in life, isolation, pain, love, heartbreak. All the things we experience on a unique, individual level, but that resonate across all human life - even as we say: “You don’t understand” to someone who tries to help.
Spare Change at Draughtworks, Missoula, Montana 2019
Isn’t it puzzling that we respond in that way, to our parents, to our friends, “you don’t understand”, but then listen to a song written by a total stranger and find great comfort that he or she understands, even when the lyrics have nothing in common with our actual, individual experience?
My friend Trent doesn’t believe in empathy, and I can understand why. He says that when we say: “I know how you feel,” we’re shifting the conversation and making it about ourselves. How can we possibly know how someone feels if we cannot hear the internal voice that’s screaming at them?
And yet… we know, thanks to neuroscience, that we often cannot help mirroring - reflecting the emotions of another person. Which is basically the definition of empathy. But that’s not actually FEELING what someone else is feeling. It’s reflecting our version of their emotion, based on our own experience and internal messaging.
I do believe in empathy. I believe some people can actually feel what another is feeling, in terms of emotion, otherwise music and lyrics simply wouldn’t have the impact they have on us. And I don’t believe empathy is something we can or should teach. I would much prefer to help people learn compassion by learning to observe the emotions in others, and maybe have a sense through those observations about their happiness and pain through our own lens of experience.
Lyrics and music speaks to our humanity, our common language of the spectrum of emotion from euphoria to sorrow, bringing us comfort by demonstrating, through the songwriter and performer, that we are not alone in this world, that someone, somewhere went through something similar and came out on the other side.
I’m a big believer in identifying theme songs for different situations in our lives, selecting songs that speak to us when we’re feeling insecure, sad, lonely, or absurdly happy and satisfied.
I’ve found that when I have my theme song in my head, James Brown’s I Feel Good, before I step in front of an audience for a keynote, my energy is almost immediately transferred to the people in front of me.
What will your theme song be the next time you’re stepping out of your comfort zone? What lyrics will you have in your head that bring you comfort, that you believe to be absolutely true, to know you’re not alone as you step into the spotlight?