Each of the following poems was inspired by the mood conveyed through each song. Click here for the accompanying playlist.
“Ashes” by Stellar
Red is the color of heat, warmth, passion
It’s the drive and desire to start something new,
The Inexplicable urge to move, create, grow.
Red also symbolizes destruction, the all-consuming ambition to improve, to push on until you can push on no longer. It’s sleepless nights fueled by coffee, monster energy, something else — anything else you need to finish your passion project.
Red is self-destruction of the most beautiful kind, where you improve yourself and reinvent yourself and change yourself until you are virtually unrecognizable
even to yourself.
“Best Years” by 5 Seconds of Summer
Orange is the warmth of family, the familiarity of friends, and the intimacy that is forged
when spending time with loved ones.
Orange is slow hazy days, the nostalgia of a lost summer love.
Orange is crisp,
bright,
the crunch
of a persimmon on a cold winter night.
Orange is the fuzzy feeling when you’re surrounded by the people who love you,
the butterflies in your stomach when you sneak out for the first time
to go to a bonfire
with your friends.
Orange is the bitter taste in your mouth when you’ve realized you’ve outgrown someone,
The dread in the pit of your stomach
where there were once butterflies
The empty arms, aching heart, open wounds
sleepless nights where you wonder over and over again if you did the right thing, the green text messages
that no longer send.
“Istanbul” by They Might Be Giants
Yellow is the color of the sun on your face on a warm summer day.
It’s the rustling of cornfields in the autumn, each crisp leaf waving in the wind.
Yellow is joy of the purest kind.
It’s the undeniable connection you have with someone who truly understands you. It’s pure unbridled freedom, the will to do whatever you want.
It’s the feeling of peace just after it rains, the earthiness of freedom and honesty of petrichor.
Yellow is the fear.
The inexplicable, irrational terror that fringes on the edges of your periphery.
That unsettling something you can’t quite put your finger on but you know it’s there.
It’s the shadows in the edges of your room at the darkest hour of the night,
the loaded silence,
the chill on the base of your spine when you’re alone, the discreet indiscretions.
“Every Piece of Me ft Echoes” by Illenium
Green is the color of the grass beneath your toes on a warm spring day
It is solitude of the best kind, a graceful youth. It’s life in the purest form, green-tinged nights with your friends, long walks in the city when you have the time
Green is wild, the dark secrets of the wilderness. It is a quiet morning in a foggy forest, the babbling of a brook in the spring, the softness of the first snowfall. It’s the secrets you keep tucked away, buried in your heart and soul so deep they will never come to light, not even if you bring them to the sun
Green is harsh too, the color of the lies curdling off your lips, the green-tinged truths that you just somehow forgot you omitted, the empty feeling of factless fabrication
The hollowness,
the exhaustion of spinning your web of half-truths and misdeeds.
Green is slippery.
“The Sea” by Haevn
Blue is the feeling of water,
the sound of waves crashing on the shore and gulls crying out overhead. It’s the salty air and crisp morning
The serenity of a quiet morning just before the sun begins to
bleed
through the horizon.
Blue may be the color of heaven but it is also isolation.
Blue is the suffocation of diving to the bottom
of the swimming pool as a child, where the pressure
makes your lungs ache and your eyes blur and your vision greys but still you swim
Onwards
“New Bohemia” by Transviolet
Purple has a quiet dignity about it.
If red symbolizes power, then purple symbolizes strength.
Purple is the bridge between worlds, a spiritual awakening if you will. Purple is quietly regal, waiting for her turn in her long-awaited spotlight, for his turn to speak his truth. Purple is for them, for everyone.
Purple is inner strength, quiet dignity, an assured grace.
Purple is luxury of the most gruesome kind.
An excess of excesses.
The kind that makes your eyes water and your skin crawl.
Purple is hedonistic decadence.
“Your Bones” by Of Monsters and Men
White is the absence of color.
It is cleanliness, a blank slate. Purity.
White is also sterility. It’s the alabaster hospital walls, the inside of a panic room, the blank emptiness of nothing. White never lasts.
It yellows and greys and chips away until it becomes a shadow of its former pristine self,
a cold reflection of your worst truths, your messy lies, a stark reminder of your insignificance and temporality
and nothingness.
“lovely (with Khalid)” by Billie Eillish
Black is all the colors at once, a cacophony of elegance and equilibrium.
Black is warm, rich, ubiquitous.
There’s a reason black is universal,
it’s the emptiness of space, the mystery of the unknown
and the beckoning of knowledge
Black is dark but dark isn’t evil.
Darker than the darkest night, inky ribbons of rich nothingness. A stark reminder that you are but an infinite speck in the universe.