From the composition of instrumentals, to the impact of lyrics, music has been helping the human race cope for centuries.

I know that I have playlists galore in my music library. Each one is oddly specific and named the same way. One is titled “Wee Morning Hour Floor Time”, which means that on that playlists are songs I listen to while laying on the floor at 2 am. Crying is optional. Listening to certain songs can sometimes intensify feelings I have, so I can feel them in a healthy way before moving on. Or, if I’m not in the mood to deal with emotions, I can completely change my feelings by playing other songs. Sometimes, I even play music for my friends as a way to express how I’m feeling. It’s been too many an occasion where I’ve played Up The Wolves by The Mountain Goats, and told my friends that was how I was feeling. 

If I’m completely honest, I do this alone, too. If I’m totally alone, I’ll use a bluetooth speaker to blast my playlist “Screaming My Head Off”. This playlist includes P!nk’s song, Perfect, Taylor Swift’s Forever and Always, as well as Jackie and Wilson by Hozier. This playlist is full of songs I’d gladly lose my voice for. 

It’s not necessarily a happy screaming, all of the songs I listed have lyrics that force me to deal. 

Perfect in its entirety forces me to deal, but the lyric “You’re so mean when you talk about yourself, you were wrong. Change the voices in your head, make them like you instead”, gets me every time.

Forever and Always contains the lyric “And you feel so low, you can’t feel nothing at all”. Which doesn’t apply to my current state, but one I’ve been in before, and this lyric helps me process that.

Jackie and Wilson holds the lyric “I need to be youthfully felt, ‘cause god, I never felt young”. I myself have never felt young either. I feel as though I grew up too fast as a result of my upbringing. 

Music can make or break us in the blink of an eye on any given day, the playlist of your day is up to the individual.