Music As A Window To The Past
Graphic by Maryam ElSharkawy
Some people have said that a scent is the closest thing to a window into the past, but I believe that this has grossly underestimated the power of music. To anyone who lives a life surrounded by music (which is basically anyone living in this current timeframe), a familiar song can knock us right back into the flashback of a memory as effectively and as entirely as anything.
When we listen to music, it triggers and stimulates multiple parts of our brain including the parts that evoke emotions, as well as parts of the cerebellum and cerebrum that involve our motor ability. This is likely why, no matter where we are, we can’t help but get up on our feet when “Single Ladies” by Beyoncé or “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls start playing .
There are two types of memories: explicit and implicit. Explicit memories include what we ate for supper last night or basically anything that we have to work to remember (such as any simple or complex math equation, in my case). The second covers the longer-term memories that are stored in the subconscious. According to an article on BBC Culture by Tiffany Jenkins entitled ‘Why does music evoke memories?’, the hippocampus and the frontal cortex of the brain play a large part in choosing what we remember, which is most likely why so many of our beloved indie band’s song lyrics are forever stuck in the back of our minds.
Generally, these memories tend to stick around because they’ve been linked to intense or new emotions. “I heavily associate albums with time periods. When I was listening to Pink Floyd, it was around the time I was first developing feelings for someone I’m still with now,” confessed Emma Taila, Unpublished Magazine’s fashion and beauty copy editor. Affiliating music with our loved ones can be an incredibly intimate way of keeping them with us wherever we go, but this can also lead to a lot of unwanted pain when the time comes that we’ve let go of such a person or simply when we find ourselves no longer in the same state of mind that we used to be in when these songs were the anthems to our lives.
“If a song brings back a memory that is sad or painful in some way, I’m less likely to return to it, but that doesn’t mean I never will.” Golda Grais, a music writer for Unpublished Magazine, revealed to me. The obvious problem with attaching core memories to a song, is that once something goes wrong, and you no longer want to remember these memories, it will become incredibly difficult to appreciate the music in the same way that you once did. Lizzy McAlpine’s “you ruined The 1975” that went viral on TikTok is a perfect example of such a circumstance.
“I love how I felt in the past, but if I don’t remember any positive memories of listening to the song on my own, I avoid it like COVID-19,” explains journalist and activist writer Zora Viel. Playlists can be hard to revisit once we’ve grown past the versions of ourselves that we once were, and especially once nostalgia has turned bitter. Zora brings up the idea that, in order to avoid certain bad feelings, it is better to base our appreciation of music strictly on our own personal tastes and individual perspectives.
“‘Cleopatra’ by The Lumineers reminds me of driving out in the mountains by where I live and being truly alone for the first time, but having no attachments or responsibilities, and feeling such a sense of comfort in knowing that I had so much open-endedness in the future. It was fall, and it was the first time I felt intimate with myself,” a staff member wishing to remain anonymous explained. If I close my eyes, I can picture this memory as if it were a scene from a movie I’d watched mere minutes ago. After all, isn’t the music we chose to base ourselves around really just the soundtrack to the movie of our lives?
Most of my favourite memories that are attached to music are those of times when I was driving down the highway with my friends, blasting some new song. The windows were most likely down as we swallowed the refreshing air and sang along to every word at the top of our lungs. As it happens, I am not the only one. “Immunity” by Clairo reminds Emma Talia of car rides home after late soccer practices and driving around downtown; while “1989” by Taylor Swifts reminds her of admiring Las Vegas from her car window as a kid and listening to the album through her iPod Nano. I have always assumed that the shared experience of complete euphoria and carefreeness was the cause of my brain saving a spot for these particular memories, but it turns out that the all-encompassing emotions that are brought up by these songs are only partly due to the actual emotions we once felt. The rest lies in the act of movement whilst the song was playing.
As it turns out, music, emotion and movement are all interconnected. A song does not only tune into our sense of hearing; it also appeals to our motor ability, and can be tied to a memory that is connected to any of our other senses. This is why it is easier to remember anything to a beat. This is also why a good soundtrack can completely change the memorability or overall impact of a movie or show.
Nostalgia can be tragic, and it can be intoxicating. Like any other emotion, we must take it in carefully healthy doses. Or else, it can cause us to make playlists with titles like “Regressing To My Emo Phase” or to listen to One Direction’s entire discography on repeat. As another anonymous member of our staff so beautifully explained to me: “It’s not healthy to find present feelings in your nostalgia since it is the past. Whether or not [nostalgia] is positive or negative, living in the past somehow begins to seep into the present time and affect how you look at life.”