Love Letter to Music

 Music is really important for me and with good reason. I play an instrument and have actual music taste instead of just listening to whatever's on the radio or the top 100 on spotify. I didn't always have this connection though. In my younger years I listened to all kinds of shit, mostly NPC music, (basically radio music, but the people who listen to it think it's "unique" like it's true Norwegian black metal or some shit(a really brutal and underground metal scene in 1980's Norway)) or whatever I thought was cool. It was like this until I realized that my music taste was shit. Like really shit. So I started listening to actual cultured music. 

I Found the Police. One of the best pop rock bands ever. I still listen to their songs and still know every word to classics like "Don't Stand So Close To Me" and "Message In a Bottle". I also found Sting. Sting's one of my favourite singers ever. I know some good songs of his too like: "Englishman In New York" and "Shape of My Heart" This phase I really loved, it still means a lot to me and it was unique. It was me.

Then on a random ass day in Autumn I hear something on the radio about Nirvana. And how Kurt Cobain died. I still don't know why, but this lit a spark in me. So when I got home I went on youtube and listened to Nevermind on repeat for days. It was great! I really loved the guitar and the vocals. My brother is a guitarist. And this combined with me listening to music that had guitars in it inspired me to play the instrument. I picked up the old acoustic and learnt some one string riffs. And the rest is history.

After I started playing the guitar I dug into the music my brother listened to and found: METALLICA. I had just enough skill to learn those songs and that was all I listened to for a while until I found The motherfucking FOO FIGHTERS.

A Love Letter to the Foo Fighters

I was scrolling through YouTube Shorts and found an ad for Ultimate Guitar that had a tutorial for "Everlong" After watching this ad a few times I fell in love with the melody and learnt the song. Then I looked into the band and began listening to their greatest hits album with their legendary songs like "The Pretender" , "All My Life" and "Monkey Wrench" . (I'm listening to them right now while I'm writing this. I'm listening to their song "Aurora".) I was in love. No, not just in a hypothetical sense, in a literal sense. I met my girlfriend around the time I started playing the guitar ( This was like a year ago damn) And Everlong just kind of resonated with me. It became our song with me and my girlfriend.

Why I absolutely love Everlong

Dave Grohl wrote it when he was going through a divorce (when I told this to my girlfriend she freaked out saying that our song is a breakup song), but this is not the main theme of the song. It's finding love. Shocking right? It's about new love. Just resonating with a person singing together in harmony. Dave wrote it with the feeling of finding love, but technically still being married. It's just a beautiful song. I can't put it into words.

I started listening to their other work and they're a very consistent band and have a bunch of bangers. The other thing that helped was that my coach was also into the Foos, so I was encouraged to be on aux on the workouts. This is a band that I hope will be played at my funeral. 

"The only thing I'll ever ask of you, you gotta promise not to stop when I say when."

My Guitar Journey

I picked up the guitar a year ago, compared to that I've come a long way. Let me explain the spectrum of difficulty that a non-guitarist would understand.

Bands like Nirvana and the Foo Fighters are at the bottom, they're pretty easy and they're mostly for beginners.

Then we move on to the medium stuff like METALLICA.

After that we get to MegadetH   which has the hardest songs that I can play.

I'm proud of my progress on the guitar, because I find it fun and calming to play the instrument. I recently even started singing to what I play and it gave the songs I play a new life.

I found this new passion for music fascinating and wanted to aid it more, so in turn I bought a CD walkman and some CDs because I hate the people who run streaming services and love physical media. So now my background activity has become a main activity, sitting down to listen to an album daily.

Look. I found this passion for music that moves me. It can truly move some mountains. And I don't plan on leaving it. It has helped me too many times just for me to leave it. Music is also an escape for me, filling my head with beautiful rock anthems and heavy riffs instead of rather negative thoughts. 

I love music and I hope I gave you some inspiration with my story.