Imagine my surprise when I was watching a YouTube video of a song being played at a music festival…and suddenly found myself crying. Not a cute, little, tear-streaming- down-my-face type of cry, but full-on sobbing, complete with shoulders shaking and wailing.

What in the world? 

Your first thought might be, “Well, the lyrics must have been really sad, and brought out memories of something that was painful.”

Nope.  

Something about the tone, the build, and the mastery of sound and instrument all combining together at a particular moment simply caused a massive release of emotion.

In those moments Bart kind of just looks at me, his all-knowing eyes asking me, “Are you okay?” And when I try to explain to him all of the reasons why it happened, words fall short. But he definitely “gets it.” 

The old saying, “Where words fail, music speaks” certainly rings true. Music has a way of allowing emotions to move, express, and resolve without needing words. It is a safe container for grief, joy, rage, and love. 

I’m sure we have all had the experience of a broken heart. In those painful moments, turning on those sad, “lost love” songs seems to strike something inside us, vibrating that emotional resonance throughout our whole bodies like a plucked guitar string. To feel deeply when music pulls at us grounds us into our very natures as human beings. There is something raw and real inside of us that is laid bare when music speaks to the depth of our emotions. 

When we took our son, Xander, to see Eric Clapton in concert last year, the only way we could describe what happened was this: the people who left that concert were not the same people who arrived. In the most beautiful way possible.

There is a short film (18 minutes) on Netflix called “The Singers.” The opening scene is set inside a bar where a man claims he is the best singer in the bar. The bartender claims the best singer is actually an older gentleman sitting at the bar with oxygen tubes in his nose. A bet starts, and the bartender offers the best singer $100 and a free beer. This turns into an impromptu sing-off. The men who actually really sing in the show are dripping with the rawness of human emotion and a life lived. Sincere, gritty, sad…we catch a glimpse into the kind of emotions the men have deeply experienced without them telling us anything about their life stories. 

Why is that? How does this happen? 

A friend of ours, Den Lopez, recently shared a podcast with us. Victor Wooten, a world-renowned, five-time Grammy-winning electric bassist, producer, and author was the man being interviewed. The title of the podcast is “Victor Wooten Explains What Most Musicians Miss,” and he said some extremely profound words about playing music versus playing an instrument. 

Have you ever thought about the fact that by the time a child is 10 years old, that child has been “playing music” for 11 years? They aren’t beginners, they’re professionals. They can sing popular songs, dance along to them, and “play” music. They don’t know what the key of C is, how to play a major scale, or understand voicings, but they don’t have to. They can sing a song in the key of C without knowing it is in the key of C. Just like a child doesn’t have to know what a noun or a pronoun is to speak, or know how to spell milk in order to understand what it is. Music is innate in us.

We are surrounded by musical instruments, but all of them are silent until we pick them up. Why? 

Because we are the music. We are what gives instruments a living animation.

Our world is leaning into technology at a speed that has been leaving a lot of us feeling quite dizzy lately. It’s almost like we are all running as fast as we can to keep up, knowing we never will. Screens have quietly become the things we look at and talk to the most throughout our days. We’re experiencing less human contact with each other, and connecting with others (and especially ourselves) is becoming something we have to work harder and harder to choose. The irony is we will sit and watch a TikTok video about how to have hard conversations, but then scroll straight to the next one, and the next one…and never actually end up having the conversation.

But music has the power to cut through all of that and bring us back to ourselves. 

Music is the language beneath our language. It activates instinctual memory and bypasses the mind to speak directly to our nervous systems. You have probably noticed this when music has evoked an emotion, a memory, or even an altered state. I’ve personally noticed that certain songs calm me instantly, while others instantly agitate me. There are days I am way too tired to go play pickleball, but if I turn my favorite pickleball playlist on…something shifts. Suddenly I am ready, willing, able, and full of energy to go play!

We can use this intentionally. Music can bring us back to center, instantly change our emotional states, or calm an overwhelmed nervous system. And, as mentioned earlier, we can use music to help us feel, release, and resolve emotion without needing to analyze anything or make it heavy. 

But there is a flip side that we should also take seriously. Music can just as easily keep us stuck in depression or less than ideal emotional states. As you probably already know, if you keep listening to that sad breakup song over and over and over again…you’ll stay sad and depressed.

Music can also stoke the fires of anger, normalize things that should disturb us, or quietly destabilize our nervous systems. Music carries emotion the way a wave carries energy - and that wave doesn’t just pass through you, it lingers. Over time, repeated exposure to certain tones and messages of despair, violence, or self-negation can actually shape the way you think and feel. The playlist you return to every day is doing something to you. The question is…what? 

As you play full out in your life this week, we invite you to become intentional about the soundtrack of your life. Notice what music you reach for and how it leaves you feeling, not just in the moment, but after. Take the time to curate a playlist that either calms your nervous system, or puts you in an emotional state that you enjoy being in. Let music be a tool for returning to yourself, not escaping yourself. 

And…the next time a song moves you to unexpected tears or fills your chest with something you can’t quite name, love every minute of it. That’s you, fully alive.