Let the music play

A trip down musical memory lane plus five songs I'm listening to right now

It’d be terrible to live without music

Ah, the summer holidays!

That time of the year when one feels finally free to forget about the world and embrace a whole new personality in a foreign country.

What did you say? You don’t? Is there anything wrong with you?

I spent a week back home, visiting the motherland in the depths of La Mancha to enjoy the festive atmoshphere during feria, and 30 years of English jumped out of the window the moment I touched the ground of my home country and I was wrapped by the warm embrace of 37 C degrees. I’ve been back for a few days and I’m still trying to reset the system back to the English settings, mentally, physically, and morally.

Let’s say it’s fortunate that I didn’t have any client meetings straight away upon my return to work. Otherwise people would have thought I was having an aneurism when in fact I was just trying to retrieve the words for “Great to meet you.”

Part of this momentarily linguistic oblivion has to do with the fact that English is nowhere to be found in my hometown, which is something I am deeply grateful for. The music playing full blast at the swimming pool? At the bars? In shops? At the rides during feria? The songs the live band plays at the Fiesta del Vermut? The musical programme in the evenings at the main square? Niet, rien, niente, nothing. N-A-D-A.

The only English I listen to during a trip back home comes from the cd player in the car if I happen to feel like listening to something in the language of Shakespeare. More often than not the background music to my driving when I’m home is that of Jarabe de Palo as the voice of the late Pau Donés and the band’s latin rythms are a balm to my senses and take me straight back to a previous life when I was a different person.

I have lots of cd’s back home. A reminder of a time past when music was listened to in a physical device of your choice, or your means, and it took up space in one’s home, a visual mark of someone’s interests. Today music is stored somewhere intangible and accessible through the same object we used to make and receive calls on where people spend hours scrolling short videos and listening to the same five seconds of a song over and over again.

Call me nostalgic, but I do miss the time when you heard a song on the radio that you loved and you spent your afternoons glued to it in the hope they’d play it again and you’d be able to record it.

Music may not have been as instantly available when I grew up but I remember it was a lot more diverse as the same radio station would play Roxette, Oasis, Maná, Metallica, Estopa, Laura Pausini, Alicia Keys or Franco Battiato. It was an exhilarating musical Russian roulette as you never knew what or who would be up next, our very own analogue Spotify of sorts where you always hoped that in the shows where people called to dedicate a song they’d pick the one you wanted to hear.

I also remember the pain of rewinding tapes with a BIC pen -the only one with a perfect grip that didn’t come out at every half-turn-, and the fear of running out of batteries in the walkman or CD player first, and the MP3 player later, while I was out and about and I couldn’t do anything to avoid the agony of an upbeat song slowly transitioting into a terrifying psychophony.

Like books, music has been an integral part of my life since an early age.

Securely belted in the back seat of my parents’ car, I was exposed to their musical taste since before I can remember or could complain. They used to go on long car rides at weekends, especially during the summer, that always ended up with me feeling dizzy and eventually delivering the contents of my breakfast without much warning after the first road curve materialised. In hindsight the scene was almost comic. There I was, projecting with all the force that my 5-year-old self could master the contents of my stomach on the collar of my father’s immaculate white shirt as he, oblivious to the effects of a winding road on his offspring, hummed along the lyrics of Soy un truhán, soy un señor.

Once the inevitable happened, my father would get very angry at me for 1) vomiting 2) vomiting on the car he had bought to go on weekend trips 3) vomiting on the shirt my mum had just ironed. And yet the following weekend on we went on another car drive through equally vomit-inducing winding roads in the heat of the Spanish summer. I spent the week fearing another trip while my parents expected somehow that in that time frame my gut had evolved into that of an adult. We did this for years. I have long stopped trying to understand anything concercing the parenting style, or lack of, that I was raised on. I suggest you do the same for your own mental sanity.

Funnily enough, the pattern of “weekend car drive-Julio Iglesias-breakfast out” didn’t condition me to hate his music or resulted in any kind of post-traumatic stress disorder associated with cars or driving or breakfast. Quite the opposite. Breakfast is my favourite time of the day, in part because I now retain most of it in my stomach. I also love driving and I can’t do it without music. Besides, these Julio Iglesias songs became part of the soundtrack of my childhood along with those of Rocío Jurado, Rocío Dúrcal, El Puma, Juan Pardo, José Vélez and Nana Mouskouri.

Every now and then, when I happen to realise that my best years are already behind me and that I will never be five again spitting my guts out through my mouth in the back of a car with tears in my eyes due to the strain while my father shouts at me, I listen to one of the tracks of my childhood and all is well again in the world. Some kids learned to self-soothe to the tunes of Baby Shark. My mum, on the other hand, thought Bailemos un Vals was more age-appropriate and that’s what you’ll find me singing in times of trouble.

I am always fascinated by the power of music to help us retrieve memories, more vividly perhaps than the written word of a book. In music, without being consciously aware of the process, I found a tool to feel my feelings and regulate -or exacerbate when needed- my emotions.

The music of my childhood and pre-teens was greatly conditioned by the taste of my parents, who mostly listened to it while driving, but in equal measure, and perhaps more instrumentally, it was also shaped by my mum’s sister, my aunt Lidia.

Eleven years younger, she was not even 20 when I was born so when I spent time at my grandparents, my aunt was still living with them. She worked as a seamstress in a room that was at the back of the courtyard at my grandparents’ home, where I used to join her for hours as I loved looking at the fashion magazines people brought to her to show what outfit they wanted. Most importantly, she had a modern radio that could also play tapes -unlike the radio my grandparents listened to- and she listened to music while putting together garment after garment, one seam at a time, to the rythm of the sewing machine and the latest track of the week.

It was thanks to my aunt and her radical different musical taste that I transitioned from the more classic melodies and styles my parents favoured to the vibrancy and playfulness of the 80s as I was introduced to Cherry, Cherry Lady, Part-time Lover, Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, Faith, and perhaps a bit precociously to Like a Virgin.

I had no idea what any of these songs said or meant as I was still a child and I ignored everything about life and English, but there was something in these melodies that felt as if I had found, at last, the soundtrack my childhood and I really deserved.

Absorbed in those fashion magazines full of elegant women competing for who wore the shoulder padding better, there I was playing with fabric scraps pretending to be one of them as I sang my heart out to Vogue and my aunt produced perfectly fitting dresses, blazers, coats, plaited trousers, and blouses with an ease that to this day still amazes me. The hours spent with my aunt in that room are responsible for me associating fashion and music and seeing them as powerful yet subtle ways to express yourself and how you feel at a given moment in time.

And in fact, when I transitioned to my teens both my music taste and sense of style -if we can refer as such to the ill-fitting cargo pants and hoodies most of the people in my school wore in the late 90s - evolved once more and they were reflective of the times. My consolation from that time, besides the fact that social media didn’t exist, is that at least the music was far better than the fashion.

This is when I discovered The Beatles - Come Together is to this day one of my all-time favourite songs- thanks to a friend whose brother was a true melophile and had an extensive vinyl collection that he took great pride in. Every visit to my friend’s house ended with his brother putting on record for us to listen to as a way to educate our musical taste.

While it may sound that he was inflicting on us his obscure preferences, like many people often are guilty of, the reality is that at 18 my friend’s brother had already developed a great taste and he is one of the few people I can think of who every time he said to me, “You have to listen to this” and played whatever he felt I couldn’t live without listening to, I always asked, “Can you put it on a tape for me, please?”

Thanks to his musical mentorship I also discovered The Fugees. And thanks to that I arrived at Lauryn Hill, who to this day is one of my all-time favourite artists and whose music has the power to shake every cell in my body in a way that not even the weekend car rides of my childhood did. In her voice, and her lyrics, I discovered something visceral and raw. Something that I felt deep inside myself and I couldn’t find words to express. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill came out at the time that I fell in love with someone who would become one of my biggest heartbreaks and Ex-Factor came to be the defining track of that doomed relationship.

When I decided that enough was enough, I quit the guy and with it this song as it was too painful for me to listen to. It would take almost 15 years to listen to it again without breaking down in tears. Now everytime I come across it, it is a smile that forms, and not a poodle under my feet. I have finally been able to detangle a beautiful song from the pain it used to put music to and now there’s only the sheer emotion in Lauryn Hill’s voice for me to rejoice in.

As I went to university and then started travelling abroad more and more artists became part of the soundtrack of my life, each significant in their own way and linked to shared memories and languages with people I crossed paths with. Many of the songs I’ve come to love, dance to, play on repeat, or hate but secretly sing to when no one listens, irrupted in my life thanks to someone else loving them, dancing to them, or playing them on repeat as we briefly inhabited the same time and space.

It was in the car rides during my time in the US -where luckily I didn’t vomit not a single time- where a friend from El Salvador introduced me to the luring beats of reggeaton and the not very subtle lyrics of Noche de Sexo while both of us sang it to the top of our lungs. As they say, we all have a past.

Another friend from Argentina brought into my life Soda Stereo and Miranda!, while everything got a sprinkle of Thnks fr th Mmrs or Hips Don’t Lie as they played everywhere. Similarly to Gwen Stefani, whose Rich Girl, The Sweet Escape, Hollaback Girl and What You Waiting For? were a staple of every house party, basement party and frat party I went to.

Unfortunately so were 50 Cents’ Candy Shop, Ludacris’ Move Bitch, Kayne’s Gold Digger, and Timbaland’s The Way I Are so their highly politically incorrect lyrics are ever since engrained in my neural system provoking an incontrollable desire to dance to them dangerously close to a sweaty stranger in a dark basement the moment I hear the first notes play. I told you we all have a past.

These songs, like the songs of my childhood and my teenage years, marked another stage in my life and the person I was at the time. And while I may not listen to them regularly now as I have left the experiences I associate them with behind, I only need one note to be transported to a time where the future still held many possibilities, usually in the form of which party to attend to, and where my only care in the world was to choose wisely who to team up with for beer pong. Ah, those were the days!

I’ve been reminded of all these musical memories as someone recently asked me how I find new music. We were discussing my love of Two Door Cinema Club and how jealous I was that they were to Reading -where this person lives- but not coming to London (no, sorry, I’m not travelling outside London), so we started talking about music, which in turn brought to mind another conversation that I had forgotten.

A few years ago, as I was tidying up my room, my flatmate told me that she loved the music I was listening to. I shared with her the artist -I can’t remember who it was now, but surely one in the many playlists I have made throughout the years- and mentioned they were on Spotify so she could look them up if she liked them.

She stared at me as if I had started speaking in a foreign language instead of the Italian we usually communicate in. “How do you know which music to look for?,” she asked.

“What do you mean? As in which styles?”

“No, not the style, but the music that you know you’d like”

“Well, I don’t know what you mean exactly. I love music and listening to it so usually one artist leads me to discover another, and so on. Do you have any preferences? What kind of songs or melodies you usually enjoy listening to? Maybe you can start by exploring more of that”

“I don’t know, I just want to find music that I like”

The conversation went on in circles for a few more minutes until I understood that my flatmate was perhaps not as much into music as I am. Which is fine, by the way. We all connect with music in different ways and while I don’t conceive a day spent without listening to music, or couldn’t live without the joy of going to live music events, other people may not even feel its absence for long stretches of time.

The high of listening a song for the first time that you connect with, that embodies every feeling you are experiencing in that moment and you hadn’t been able to define, has to be one of the most powerful things I’ve ever experienced. But so is the reassurance of listening for the tenth time to a melody knowing exactly when your favourite beat comes in and savouring it with anticipation. Or the emotion of that first note after the lights go down and the orchestra at the Royal Opera House starts playing.

Not to speak of the shared excitment of chanting the chorus of your favourite song in a crowd of strangers that are giving it their all, amplifying by tenfold the way you’ll come to remember this particular concert and song. Unless you are like

Nick Hornby

‘s friend and your recollection of a concert vanishes the moment it is finished. Or the unexpected joy of discovering a new artist that you didn’t even know existed and who goes on to become an integral part of your personal musical biography.

The thing I love the most about music is that a transforming piece can find you at any time in your life. Its impact and the emotions it will awake in you are not bound by the constraints of time or even language. Whether it’s the overture of La Gazza Ladra by Rossini, 50 Special by Lùnapop or Le Dînner by Bénabar, I believe in the power of the right melody to manifest in your life at any age and make you feel giddy and excited, unable to believe that you weren’t aware of the existence of such masterpiece until then. That’s after all what propulsed Sophie Ellis-Bextor back to the top 10 two decades after Murder on the Dancefloor was released as the film Saltburn introduced her classic disco tune to a new generation that fell in love with it and couldn’t stop playing it. Rightly so, I should add. This is a modern classic.

I struggle to understand how people can’t find music they like. I seem unable not to. Music, unlike love, is all around us.

The song that makes you think of someone.

The song that made you get through something.

The song that you cry to when you need to let go of everything.

The song that gets you out of bed in a split second as you can’t help to move your whole body to it.

The song that played during your first kiss. Or the one you first heard when a new love was forming.

The songs that you listened on repeat when that someone was stuck in your head.

The song you know your friend always sings at karaoke.

The song that your other friend always plays on the car.

The song your friend knows you like and sends you randomly every now and then to let you know they’re thinking of you.

The song you send back as a response because you know they like it.

The song someone has as their ring tone.

The song playing at the pub, which happens to be one of your favourite songs and you have to stop mid-conversation to make sure it really is that one and proceed to exclaim, “Can’t believe they’re playing this song!”

The song that you listen to when you’re getting ready to go out and makes you feel sexy.

Or the one that calms you down before a difficult conversation.

The song someone chooses as their goodbye to you, to all, to the world.

The song you can’t stand but know by heart.

The song people dance to on their wedding day.

The song playing in that ad, the one that goes, ”nananananana,” oh, come on, you’ve heard it a thousand times. You know the one. It’s a classic!

The song that you have on the tip of your tongue but can’t remember.

These thoughts on music aren’t casual.

Back to London after the holidays, one of the first things I did on the journey from Heathrow was to listen to music. To my London music, more specifically. To the songs I normally listen to here. As I did so, I realised how different they are from the music I listen to when I’m back home. Or travelling somewhere else. Almost as if the tracks that play while I’m in London were physically anchored to the city and unable to come with me when I’m away.

Which of course I know it’s not the case, but I find a certain comfort knowing that when the day to leave this place finally comes, I will always have some songs to remember it by and they will take me back to the memories I’ve built here throughout the years.

Many of those are linked to first times in the musical sense as London is the place where I’ve come of age in terms of defining my cultural preferences, with music being the one most impacted by my years here as I’ve been able to experience the vast musical scene of London. From private gigs for less than 30 people to the O2 arena, passing through the Ronnie Scott’s, the Royal Opera House, the courtyard of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, the streets and pubs of Camden, Southbank in the summer, the Blues Kitchen, the buskers at the tube, the Roundhouse, the West End musicals.

London is a city made for music lovers and it is impossible to live in this city, to walk down these streets, without a song coming to mind that speaks of them. Whether it’s the specific reference in Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Actions or the more ambiguos desire to set Camden on fire. One cannot ignore the influence of the city on music and its close connection to it.

This is something that didn’t happen back home. Arguably it is a small town and our key strength is producing wine, not Billboard top 10 hits. Besides, as I mentioned earlier, all the music, or most of it, is usually in Spanish. Which means that for a blissful week I could enter a bar, a restaurant, a shop, walk down the street, visit family, switch on the tv, go the airport, to the train station, to another city even, without being assaulted not even once by the notes of Cruel Summer.

In the years to come, I know this song will come back to haunt me and take me back to the summer where everyone secretly seemed to have agreed to play Taylor Swift 24/7 every-fucking-where, from buskers to restaurants, to shops and rickshaws and the only respite I got was when I left London to go on holiday. In a few weeks I’ve been more exposed to this song than I ever was to Ludacris and yet I can’t help to sing “Move, bitch, get out the way, get out the way, bitch, get out the way,” whenever someone walks slowly in font of me, so I already know there is no hope for me. I tend to form very strong links with the songs that I listen to repeatedly, wheter it is with or without my consent.

In the not so distant future, when the notes of Cruel Summer will inevitably trigger the lyrics and I’ll surprise everyone I’ve ever told I’m not a Taylor Swift fan by singing to the top of my lungs, “I’m drunk in the back of the car and I cried like a baby coming home from the bar,“ as if I was myself performing it on the stage of the Eras Tour, I can always offer, by way of explanation, that when I was a child my parents used to take me on these long weekend car rides in the summer and it usually didn’t end up well for me.

So me singing this song will be, in fact, a delayed expression of the frustration and anger I felt but couldn’t verbalise at the time. And as long as no one asks why a five-year-old was coming from a bar drunk, everything should be fine and my parents should avoid a fair trial. Even if I’ve often thought their parental choices were criminal.

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Before moving on to the five songs I’m listening to right now, I should disclose that a late-night incursion into the steppes of social media led me to a serendipitous finding and that is the real reason you have been reading my thoughts on music.

I bumped into a post by yami_club, an Instagram account where people are asked what their favourite song at the moment is and then that song gets played to the next person they ask that question to, who gives it a vote out of 10 before sharing what they are listening to. I confess I was caught off guard by the undercover Swiftie.

yami_club

A post shared by @yami_club

After watching a few videos, I thought this was a much better way to ask someone about their music taste than to expect them to tell you their all-time favourite song, artist, group, album, etc, given how much this fluctuates as music, more so than any other artistic expression, can be important and relevant at different times and integral to people lives in a way that allows for more of it, not less, to be incorporated to one’s lifetime soundtrack, which makes choosing just one track, singer, band or composser nearly impossible. I don’t know how people who go on Desert Island Discs manage.

However, we all go through phases and while most of us still have our core artists that we regularly listen to, I am of the opinion that if you love music, you also love discovering new music that becomes your whole personality for a month (No? Seriously? First the holidays and now this. Are you sure you are normal?) and listening to things that you may not have chosen but that life, an ad, a friend, or why not a London rickshaw has put in your way to push you a bit out of your musical comfort zone.

So if you’re looking for new music but don’t know where to start, checking out this Instagram page and what people are listening to -it varies greatly- at the moment can be an option. Lauryn Hill gets two mentions in the few videos I’ve seen (Ex-Factor being one of them), which is all I need to determine these people have good taste.

And now here are the the five songs I’m listening to at the moment:

1. Who Am I? The Struts

Choosing just one song by The Struts is hard because I believe they are the ultimate rock band of the XXI century (with influences from David Bowie, Queen, The Darkness, Aerosmith, Oasis and The Smiths among others) but at the moment this one is playing on repeat. It has a subtle “Da You Think I’m Sexy?” vibe to it that I’m obsessed about.

2. National Treasure by Barns Courtney

The bluesy voice of Barns Courtney and the energy of his songs should suffice to make you weak in the knees when you listen to his music. He’s opening for The Struts in October at The Roundhouse and I can’t wait to see both live at my favourite venue.

3. Stay Golden by Saint Motel

Saint Motel has long been a favourite band of mine and I’m finally seeing them live in October. Stay Golden has been a ray of hope in the greyness of the English summer and I listened to it back home as it matched the warmer temperatures and brighter days perfectly.

4. C.E.A.R.T.A. by Kneecap

Did I ever expect to love hip-hop sung in Irish? No, but this is what seeing a film (twice) about the history of Kneecap did to me and after the cinema I needed more of their sound. And they too are coming to London in November so I might need to brush up my Irish if I want to sing along.

5. Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift

I’m as shocked as you are, believe me, but if you can't defeat your enemy… Truth be told, I quite like this song. Yes, my ears have bled listening to it everywhere in London for the past month, but I wasn’t totally displeased by it. In the end it has found the way to my heart. Like Despacito did after years of fighting against it.

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Abroad is an independent publication about identity and belonging, living in between cultures and languages, the love of books, music, films, creativity, life in London, and being human in the age of artificial intelligence.

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