SoundTrack Your Life
[Music]
the song penny lane by the beatles
do we all know it yeah okay what do you
think of when you hear that song
for me i hear my childhood i hear my mom
playing it in the car and telling me the
back story
i hear my parents telling me they got
engaged on pennylane
i hear them splitting up a couple of
years later
but it’s still my dad’s ringtone for my
mum to this day
that song it means so so much to me
and the fact that someone else can hear
us and not get the same feeling of
nostalgia that i get
intrigues me my interest in this topic
started around early december of last
year when in music class
we watched a documentary which followed
neurodegenerative disease patients
and their journey through musical
education and therapy
there was amazing conclusions from their
studies
such as the fact that socially shared
musical activities
help develop personality skills and
cooperative efforts
and that musical education helps develop
the co
the cognitive effective and psycho
and psychomotor aspects of human
development
now while these drawbacks were amazing
it’s not what stunned me
what stunned me was the personal stories
of these people
people who haven’t been able to
communicate with their family members in
years
come alive at the sound of their
favorite song
my music teacher then asked us to do a
project to make a soundtrack for our
life
this is when i stumbled across penny
lane of course and i was met with the
great wave of nostalgia
i shared my story with my nana about how
finding this song made me feel such
intense feelings
and she shared a story with me a story
of how she was in the kitchen
just there just ironing and keep a
country was on
and a song that she hadn’t heard since
1971 played
she said she was met with just a wave
of this pleasant feeling
of just calm and connectivity with her
younger self
of being 18 just married and moved into
a new house
a connection with her younger self she
couldn’t even remember the name of song
just the feeling gave her
unfortunately later on that december my
other nana passed away
as all funerals are it was a really
really difficult day
inputs of stories from the priest
from her children from her grandchildren
made this image of the life of my nana
rita become clear
to everyone there it was at the
crematorium
when her chosen song played we really
heard her humor and her personality
it was top of the world by the
carpenters
the music it just gave us a piece of her
that the stories while beautiful just
couldn’t it gave us this extra bit
that she was in the room with us
communicating with us
my nana was really fond of an old back
garden sing-song
we’d all be sitting around the table and
my mom
and my nana and maybe my auntie they’d
all sing old songs from the 60s and 70s
all the grandkids would sing what’s on
the radio my nana wouldn’t have a clue
whether we could also sing irish folk
songs
now god forbid we know the words to any
of these songs
but it was just the connectiveness
the the feeling we got
whenever my auntie is in times of
anxiety she sings a song that she hasn’t
heard
since my mom sang it at her junior
infant’s christmas recital
but any time she gets slightly anxious
or troubled
she sings it and it grounds her my mum
and i
in the car whenever we’re going
somewhere like the airport or the
hospital
we sing old christian primary school
hymns
not for any religious reason but because
of the feeling
of the connect and the grounding and the
familiarity of these songs
that bring us together folk songs have
emerged over centuries
as a form of entertainment that could
also be used for education
and it could provide wellsprings of
resilience and rebellion
and sedition for the working class
ballads and broadsides
have helped historians paint an image
of some of society’s most marginalized
because music
is a media that can be spread without
censorship
and passed down through oral hourl
traditions through generations
i’m only 16 and
through listening to music from my
childhood i’ve learned a lot about
myself
and about the people around me so when i
switch on the radio or when i turn on
spotify
i know that i’m building the soundtrack
to what will be the soundtrack of my
teen years
so think back think back to a song that
you had on repeat for months
or a song that your parents played in
the car for years
because making a soundtrack for your
life
it can teach you things about yourself
things that maybe you didn’t know or
didn’t remember
thank you
[Music]
you
[Music]