Defining Lyrics

For as long as I can remember, movies and songs have been the touchstones of my emotions.  I shaped my notion of who I was by the songs that ‘sang’ to me.  Brenda Lee’s “All Alone Am I” defined the pain of a summer-long parting from my boyfriend but, years later, along with Simon and Garfunkel’s, “I am a Rock,” the lyrics somehow came to define my memory of who I was as a teen - too mature and too trapped in my head to ever feel part of any group.

In my radio days, these were called ‘trigger songs’ for the memories they triggered in baby boomers, bringing them back to a youthful place and time, to an event or an emotion.  PBS has made a pretty penny trading trigger song programming for cash.  There’s gold in ‘them there tunes’.

If for many of us, music defines our past, is it possible that it also can direct our future?  If music is a mirror of a mindset, does it tell us something about where we are going?

The other day, I was listening to Galaxy Oldies while doing my Pilates. Two oldies, played back-to-back, unsettled me enough to make me wonder if perhaps our futures were not defined – possibly shaped – by the songs we cleaved to as youth?

I knew a man whose two favourite songs, “Rhythm of the Rain” and “Just Walk Away, Renee,” were brimming with abandonment and regret. He was 18 years old when the heard the first one. 

Fifty years later, I can read the entrails of these lyrics and see how a future was shaped by the words. 

Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain
Telling me just what a fool I've been
I wish that it would go and let me cry in vain
And let me be alone again

The only girl I care about has gone away
Looking for a brand new start…

-          Rhythm of the Rain by The Cascades (1962)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9c5rWhrCF0

Married almost three decades, I believe this man loved his wife but could not accept that he could be loved in return.  In the end, she gave up trying to prove him wrong.  Maybe as a result of some inability to see himself as lovable, he finally convinced her that he was right.

His other favourite song became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Just walk away, Renee
You won't see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You're not to blame

From deep inside the tears that I'm forced to cry
From deep inside the pain that I chose to hide…

-          Just Walk Away, Renee by the Left Bank (1966)

I grew out of my loneliness and have become adept at re-invention which explains why, at different times in my life, I found new songs to define myself by. Sadly, not everyone does.