Ever wondered why the radio seem to sound so good in the car? Driving by yourself, rushing a friend to their train, a passenger in a tightly squeezed three-door travelling too fast; there is something different when you hear a song through the radio waves, something a little bit more intoxicating. You can be sure to find some form of scientific explanation as to why you feel like that, that bores me a little, reducing emotions down to synapses seems too easy and I don’t understand myself any more than I did at GCSE biology.
The truth is, music can be incredibly lonely, and the reactions we see from ourselves when we play a song that somehow captures the entirety of our emotions seems to be beyond belief, so we are actually anxious to let anyone else hear because they might find out too much.
Remember the first time you were somewhere public and assumed your earphones were faulty, only to then realise you’ve been playing your favourite song out loud for the entire library/bus/public toilet to hear… You were embarrassed, and not because being accidently loud is a crime, it was because you hated the fact people you don’t know were allowed to know how you feel through the song you’ve invested within. It’s personal, and because it’s personal, we are scared to share. But then you hear it on the radio…
There is not control to what comes on the radio, there is no hiding place, and there is no reason to feel embarrassed. For three minutes, a piece of music that means something to you can mean something else to thousands of people, so it becomes, often worryingly, very easy to slip into a musical coma and blare out each lyric (even if you give away your odd Script obsession).
Music has an overwhelming ability to connect people, and often what we find is that there is no such thing as ‘good music’, there are only good feelings because of music. So next time you listen to the radio, and that one song you know better than the back of your hands comes on, relax, enjoy it, and take comfort in the fact someone you don’t even know exists is just as excited as you are.
