I found myself at the end of a long day worn out, physically and mentally. With two hours of basketball and two applications undertaken, classes, book clubs, and tutoring, I was beat. I tend to keep my bedtime consistent, around 11pm, whether I’m tired or not, so I had about an hour and a half to burn. Rather than trying to be productive, though lacking any juice with which to propel myself, I decided to throw the headphones on, kick back, and listen to some music. Anyone who knows me, even a little, understands that I’m a Zach Bryan aficionado. So, as I was sitting on an old leather couch that I collected a few summers ago helping turnover some apartments, I relaxed as the slow, often sad, folk-country tunes twanged on. As I was slowly twitching my foot to the beat, the songs evoked various emotions, which were a soothing reprieve from the exhaustion of the day.
The Meaning in Music
Since I can tend to be (definitely) too analytical at times, I started considering the sensation. I was curious as to why music speaks to us, what in these songs specifically call to me, and why it is deeply reinvigorating to be still and listen. Well, as I listened to fiddles crying away about loss, guitars holding down the rhythm of a story, and banjos bridging the gaps in songs, it’s as though images of places, people, and experiences hover and flash in the back of my mind. Yet, none of them are fully formed, sitting in some area between the familiar and unfamiliar. I recognize themes in tales I’ve never lived and sigh in sadness for people I’ve never met. It’s as if I find myself being enmeshed with and experiencing a story via the song. Yet, the entanglement with the story doesn’t seem to end when the outro is finished; part of my existence still feels filtered through the lens of the ballad. The themes, specific lyrics, and the stories within them softly imprint themselves on my soul, following me into the aftermath. I say soul, as the insight isn’t exactly intellectual or emotional, but some deep conglomeration of both; something more existential.
I think music calls to us because of this; because we can live a story that we can’t or haven’t yet, which teaches us about life that we haven’t yet come across. We can be a cowboy riding out to “Tishomingo,” weary soul suffering from “Wanderlust,” or a “Tradesman, playing with some tuned-up tired string band.” Yet, it isn’t just lyrics that teleport us, but the musical fusion of instruments helps lift us to new heights or resonate in our lows. Something about the iconic outro solo in “Free Bird” is truly liberating; the subtle finger picking to begin “Chicken Fried” invokes that ‘the weekend is here’ vibe you get when you’re ready sit back and relax with your buddies with a cold one on the way; and the methodical thumping away of Zach Bryan’s chords in “Purple Gas” help you resonate with the beatdown “flatland boy.”
Something about the harmony of the notes, played with the timbre of a variety of instruments, communicates something more that seems to strike a chord in the human psyche. It’s why composers like Hans Zimmer receive 12 million monthly streams because they can capture emotions, stories, and hearts with sounds. If it was purely about the content, religions wouldn’t have choirs of basses, tenors, sopranos, and baritones. Something about the joint singing completes, nay perfects the lyrics, lifting them up higher in worship, affecting the singers and expressing praise all the more. This is why music quality matters in addition to poetic songwriting as the music sets the scene for the story told by the lyrics. Theatrical performances employ backdrops, costumes, and accents that paint a broader picture than the lines themselves could ever draw.
We Need Stories
It seems we most crave stories, though not just stories, but feeling like we are in a story. Arts like music provide us a backdrop, a setting, a frame in which to read our lives. When tears stream down our faces after breakups and losing family, sad songs like Zach Bryan’s “Letting Someone Go” don’t dissipate the pain, but make it mean something. The pain then becomes part of a grander story, and it almost feels right, in a way, with the song as a backdrop. When we’re deeply in love, another Zach Bryan classic like “Holy Roller” lends the language to the love story you want to be, and largely are, in. I think that’s what music does: it provides an enchanted frame of reference that elevates our world. We become entrenched in a world of color and splendor, of meaning and significance; where we aren’t just performing the mundanities of life, but instead taking place in a great drama.
Thus, we need more stories. We need more paintings. We need more songs. We need more art in our lives, as it colors the world in which we live; the world would be different shades of grey blurring together without the magic of the arts coloring the lenses of our lives. That is why my moment of exhaustion is one I look back fondly on: it was given color by the beatdown, lonely, and discouraged songs of Zach Bryan, Kade Hoffman, and Sam Barber. Ultimately, my experience was given meaning by these songs, as I was transported from a place of discouragement to a place of recharging; it was part of my grander story, where I had put in the effort and done well, and now I was resting before the next fight. Listen to more music; feel more stories; find more meanings.
Noah McRoberts
P.S. Listen to the songs below or check out my Spotify playlist Rugged West
P.P.S. I don’t know that I have a specific podcast, book, or piece of content I can directly point you towards in influencing my thinking here. However, there are a few folks that I have listened to or consumed media by that have pointed me in this direction. Dr. Jordan Peterson has more recently begun discussing the intersection of stories and psychology, influenced more directly by Carl Jung, and in a similar manner to Joseph Campbell. For a sort of introduction to this, I would check out Campbell’s interview with Bill Moyers, of which there is a YouTube Interview here. Chris Williamson, a fiend for quotations and bits of wisdom, has often reflected on the power of framing in our experience. He often gives the example of sweating, breathing heavily, and feeling weak to the point of collapse. This would be evidence of a job well done in the gym or of a heart attack if in a car. Framing is important…or something along those lines. I would also encourage looking into William James, Emile Durkheim, Mircea Eliade, or Clifford Geertz, as each of these men are stalwarts of the study of religion, which overlaps with some of what I discussed above.
