Song Travel

The Power of Music

Music is so powerful: it has an impact on our mood, our memory, performance, and wellbeing. Music is a language, a language of emotion. Much of the emotional significance that we find in music comes from our own life experience: we learn to associate the music we hear with the emotional environment we hear it in. 

A particularily powerful song in my life is “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol. This song was reportedly written by the lead singer of the band, Gary Lightbody, after he became sober after a binge of white wine, in the garden of song producer Jacknife Lee’s Kent cottage. According to Lightbody, “It’s the purest love song that I’ve ever written. There’s no knife-in-the-back twist.” The phrase “Chasing Cars” comes from Lightbody’s father, in reference to a girl Lightbody was infatuated with and the lyrics of the song tell a story of a man who wants to spend enough time with the woman. 

My Story

Ever since I was little I have held a special bond with my dad over music and our mutual love for classic rock. When I was 10 years old my dad gave me his old iPod. Of the limited music downloaded on that iPod was the album “Eyes Open” by Snow Patrol. This album is what sparked my interest in music and in many ways has developed the taste in music that I have today. The song “Chasing Cars” in this album has always been my favorite.

When I hear this song it ‘transports’ me back to my last summer before I started college. On one of the last days in up in Ontario, Canada with my family we were gathered around the campfire listening to music and telling stories and this song came on.

As the slow piano tempo came on I was suddenly overwhelmed with a flush of emotions. It hit me. That moment I’m sure many of you had before you left for college. The fear, the excitement, the uncertainty, the pain of knowing that you would be leaving everything and everyone who has brought you to this very moment. This was an incredibly emotional moment for me. It finally set in that I would be leaving behind the family that I loved so much and embarking on my own adventure. Put quite simply, in this very moment, I was a helpless wreck. My eyes watered uncontrollably and the tears melted down my face. As I stood there watching the embers crackle in the fire my dad came up to me and wrapped me in his arms. The simplest and yet most meaningful kind of love. Every time I hear this song I am brought back to this very moment. 

At that moment, I didn’t quite know how to say what I felt. Never had I once wanted to forget my reality and the world around me so badly. My favorite lyric from the song depicts this perfectly:

“If I just lay here would you lay with me and just forget the world.”

How badly I just wanted to stay there in my dad’s arms forever, to be transported back to our days exploring our backyard with my headphones plugged in shuffling this album, and “forget the world.”

October 2nd, 2020