My earliest memory of being moved by music is playing on the stairs of our Carlisle Street maisonette while singing along to The Beatles’s She Loves You Yeah Yeah Yeah. That particular song has eluded my search so I’ve started this post with a Beatles video from the same era, singing Love Me Do in 1962. My first singing memory hails from a little later, 1964 when I was three years old, though the song She Loves You came out in ’63. From then on, songs of the early sixties enlivened my existence and became imprinted on my psyche as the radio formed the backdrop of daily life in our home and my Dad played Bob Dylan records religiously.
I continued steeped in popular musical culture throughout the seventies during my early teens, firstly with The Osmonds, The Jackson Five, The Carpenters, Gilbert O’Sullivan and Slade, then on to T. Rex and David Bowie. But it was during a high school music lesson and an encounter with Stravinsky’s The Firebird that the full blown power of music hit me. I will never forget the way that piece penetrated every fibre of my being and created such an intense visual world that I can see it in my mind’s eye to this day.
Later favourites included Abba, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Disco, Sade and Simply Red. As I researched music and mental health for my thesis-turned-book last year, I realised that it is also tremendously therapeutic for mental health recovery as well as general well-being.
Today, I love all kinds of music and get a great sense of energy and uplift from many artists’ work. I recently had the pleasure of finding a great music blog here on wordpress which stimulated this post – thanks Rich Brown at Good Music Speaks. One of the most exciting bands of this century has to be The Killers (much favoured by my daughters), which is why I end with this absolute gem of a song. Thanks for tuning in, let me know what music fuelled your memories; and until next time, happy listening 🙂