I love music. Music is like an expression of the soul. It understands you in ways that you can’t put into your own words sometimes. I’ve listened to music when I’ve wanted to cry, when I’ve wanted to laugh, or just when I wanted to hear something other than my own thoughts. It’s a doorway to the soul and connects people to others and even to themselves.
Living with my best friend, Abby, this summer really caused me to fully experience just how much music can change your mood. We both are avid listeners and tend to fall in love with similar tastes, while also showing each other things we didn’t realize we’d like. I started to realize we could tell how the other was feeling by simply walking into the living room and seeing which Spotify playlist we’d chosen that day.
Abby is more put together artistically and emotionally than she realizes. She is colorful, aesthetic, and well thought-out. When I need advice, I can turn to her because I know she will put my mangled and jumbled emotions into fine boxes that I can work through one by one. She can frame things in ways that are articulate and finely polished, the same way her Spotify playlists are.
While Abby separates her music into perfectly curated playlists for every emotion, season, person, and version of herself, I have spent years throwing everything into the same place. My liked songs are less of a playlist and more of an archive. Somewhere in there is the person I was at fourteen and the person I am at twenty. Songs I haven’t deliberately chosen in years can suddenly play and return me to a version of myself I had almost forgotten existed.
And maybe that says something about me, too. Abby knows how to take emotions apart, label them, and put them somewhere they make sense. She is someone I can turn to who will tell me I am wrong and tell me how I am right, too. She understands me in ways I don’t let Spotify fully experience because I don’t want to hear it yet, but she knows when I do. I tend to carry all of my emotions with me. I sift through them. I rediscover them. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m feeling until something starts playing and I think, “Oh. That’s it,” or Abby says something and I grumble and refuse until I realize she was right.
Maybe that’s why we both love music so much, despite using it completely differently. She finds the playlist for the feeling. I find the feeling somewhere inside the playlist.
I can also walk into a room and tell which Abby I will get that day based on the way she looks, the same way I can tell based on the music she chooses. She is easy to read, to me, because she is open with her emotions, to me. I am let into her mind the same way Spotify is. Her playlists are easy to read because I know her and I know they are a gateway into her soul.
That’s the beautiful thing about music. It reflects us, what we’re feeling, and our exact mood. It also reminds us that we are not alone. There is someone out there that no matter how much fame or money or people their life has brought them, they’ve gone through the same teenage heartbreak we don’t think we’ll survive. Olivia Rodrigo lives a glimmering life I can only hope and pray to obtain, but she too has begged for a man to notice and to care. Although Abby is someone I deeply admire and strive to be like, she too has turned to music for reassurance and comfort, the same way I have. These people who we admire and idolize are similar to us too in the shared comfort of music.
While Abby can help me name my emotions through her words and through music, artists like Olivia Rodrigo can also help us find that connection through music, too. There’s something oddly comforting in the idea that the human existence is one we all share.
We all are living for the first time. We are all experiencing these emotions for the first time. We’re never going to get it right. We might not know how to put these things into tiny, thin boxes, but whether it’s Olivia Rodrigo or my best friend, Abby, someone out there will. And their music will flow through them and reside plainly on their face the same way it will for us.
Music is emotion. And music can very much define your mood, the same way your friends can.