From a young age, I had the misfortune of always being the weaker link within my circle of friends, and this led to a constant roller coaster of verbal bullying. I had a lot of things working against me: I was an art nerd who spent most of her days in and out of art classes; I was shy, resulting in me never standing up for myself; and, my musical taste was very different from that of my peers. Thankfully, I had an amazing upbeat mom who initiated small dance parties on the way back from school to songs like “Leader of the Pack” by The Shangri-las and all of Elvis’s top hits. Rather than growing up to the current top 40, I grew up with the top 40 from the 1950s and 1960s, and I loved it. Music was my escape.

Once high school began, my playlist changed from upbeat, old school music to slower, softer, and sadder music. I began to read sadder books, paint darker paintings, and close myself off to people who I once considered closest to me; and, with that, my social life became difficult. My brother now likes to call that time my “weird emo phase we should never talk about.” Although I would not call that the highlight of my musical timeline, it brought me to the music that I enjoy today. My “emo” music was replaced with bands like Bon Iver, The Head and the Heart, The Lumineers, Of Monsters and Men, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and singers like Agnes Obel, Kate Nash, and Ingrid Michaelson.

All these musicians have something in common that has become very important to me: They all have stripped-down, soft melodies with deep lyrics that come before strong beats and auto-tuned voices. However, with softer music comes deeper thought, and with deeper thought comes deeper emotion. I found myself crying in my car a lot more than I care to admit when certain songs played. For a long time, I thought that something was wrong with me and that I was possibly depressed. After years of confusion about my uncontrollable crying, a friend who I had confided in pointed out that I was not depressed in anyway, just empathetic. With that, a sort of calm washed over me, and my personality began to make a little more sense. When music begins to play, my emotions change. If the lyrics talk about lost love or heartbreak, I feel it deeply even though I have never actually been in love. Music has allowed me to feel things and care about things that I may not be able to experience in my actual life, which makes it that much more important and exciting. It has shaped my personality, and I believe that it has made me a better person in many ways, making me realize that everyone goes through certain struggles and feels things as deeply as I do.