Music of our lives

Isn't music amazing? There you are just toddling along, when on the radio comes a piece of music that just makes your heart smile. Doesn't have to be a particular favourite, just one from your past that has good vibes.

I was as always, half listening to my fav radio station... Smooth Radio, which does what it says on the can and plays loads of cool music, especially Motown. And if there is one thing that makes me smile, it's old Motown records from my youth.

Natalie Cole (Nat's daughter) came on with her first and probably biggest hit, 'This will be' and I just stopped dead in my tracks as the music worked it's magic and I found myself just grinning like a loon feeling good with the joy of the music.

There are so many pieces of music that are important in our lives. The ones that mean the most attached to particular times in our lives. So a crucial year for me was 1968..... All you need is Love, The Beatles, Procal Harem, Scott MCkenzie and my all time fav- Albatross by Fleetwood Mac and all the stuff on the Woodstock movie which I saw that year. Any time I hear music from those formative years I am immediately transported back to that 14yr old who was on the cusp of life.

There are others throughout my life that hit the spot, Vidor's wedding march is a real tear jerker. Carmina Burina is one of those 'lose myself totally' pieces. The hymn Jerusalem reduces me to tears and I know all the words!

I can hear anything of Marvin Gaye's over and over and never get tired of hearing.

I think our love of a particular era's music is age dependant. In that I believe it is our formative years that make the music special, from say 13 up to mid 20s. We are finding out about ourselves and the world. Everything is new and never before experienced, from that first tentative kiss to love to heartbreak. And music heard at these times forms the backdrop to our history.

So although I can really like some music from the late 70s and in to the 80s they weren't the songs of my life in the way that 'I heard it through the Grapevine' was.
Or Summer Breeze by the Isley Brothers, which I feel in love to for the first time at 17, when I David the man I had fancied for a while asked me to dance at the disco.
Or Shaft by Issac Hayes the piece that was playing, when we asked his sisters friend we were staying with if she was okay with us sleeping together.

And on and on.... Then there is the music that represents our childhoods. My Mum singing Magic Moments or Catch a Falling Star, songs that I still hum to myself, and did to my children when I was trying to get them to sleep all those years ago.

Whether it is the lyrics or the tune doesn't matter, as all these songs whatever they are have a direct line to our hearts within the first few cords. We never forget them, even if we don't remember them every day. It only takes The Happening by the Supremes to be played and I'm internally bopping round by handbag and feeling oh so good.

And as for hearing Frank Sinatra singing New York New York, that memory is just one of the best.

So what music does it for you? What makes your memory banks go into overdrive?