Music and My Life -by Grace McDonough

I’ll always love listening to my dad’s music on long car rides. When I was younger, we would often listen to these mixtapes my dad made for my mom. Before I was born, he received the album The Eminem Show for his birthday, which includes the song My Dad’s Gone Crazy. The song features Marshall Mathers’ daughter, Hailie Jade, as a little girl. My dad must’ve been inspired because these mixtapes he made included short audio-clips of my sister speaking when she was little and would say spontaneous cute things. I’ll never forget that. Listening to the songs on those tapes is a feeling I can’t describe, deeper than nostalgia. To me, music is a universal language, with the power to wrap people up and tie them together forever. As I write this, I’m having a little trouble trying to find the words to say how I feel about music without using vague, cliche lines. But it’s true. Music is so much more than what I can say with only words. 

Initially, I had a bunch of ideas for things that are important to me because hello, I am a Scorpio and that means I am way too passionate about many things. I really wanted to write about music especially and all the different facets and cool things I like about it.  But then my friend Mia pointed out that her birthday is in January (the day I am posting this (the day I meant to post this because it did not go up when I scheduled), love you xoxo) and it would be very nice of me to write about her. I was distraught because what kind of friend am I to say no to that?

When I think about it though, music is what led us to becoming so close in the first place. One thing that Mia and I always do is walk laps around the cafeteria during lunch because she likes to increase her step count on her Fitbit. She almost always offers me an airpod so we can each have one and listen to her strange assortment of music. I think it’s safe to say we both adore music and we have changed each other’s taste in subtle ways. Constantly, I try and expose her to the anthems of my middle school days. My Chemical Romance, Good Charlotte, Bowling for Soup, Simple Plan, and many, many more bands that I should probably be ashamed of. I desperately want her to share my unexplainable and obsessive cravings for One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer, but that might be even harder than trying to introduce her to the eclectic taste I’ve developed for funk-infused prog-rock, like Dance Gavin Dance, Polyphia, and Thank you, Scientist. I will be forever grateful and indebted to Mia for letting me enjoy all these things without judgment, or at least only a little judgment. We became friends just by listening to music together in academic assistance in eighth grade. One fateful day we were sharing headphones and listening to Bo Burnham and the rest was set in stone.

My fav album right now is Fine Line by Harry Styles

Come to think of it, I’ve had so many crazy phases of music that I can barely keep track of it anymore. When I was lonely and finding where I really fit in around the sixth and seventh grade, I had (sorry Mrs. Kopp) Ninja Sex Party and Tenacious D to make me laugh as I looked out the window on the school bus longingly. Before that, in elementary school, and this is honest to god truth, I pretty much exclusively listened to classical music, symphonic arrangements from video game soundtracks, and One Direction (of course I mention them in this blog twice). Eighth and ninth were my explorative years, lots of Daft Punk and other things that I thought made me look intellectual. And let’s definitely not discuss my musical theatre phase. In a word: yikes. I still love them but I have some deep-seated shame I’m not ready to expose yet. Right now I’m just kind of mixing everything I like together and going with the flow. I try and let new stuff wiggle it’s way in and play whatever suits my mood. Music makes my life mine, without it, I’d be someone else.

Fav song currently: Chromology by Thank you Scientist