After going to a Demi Lovato concert with a few friends last night, I realized how much music speaks to me and the world. Demi, as a 25-year old star, has battled depression, bipolar disorder, drug addiction, an eating disorder, and many other unfortunate, yet self-defining and influential struggles in her life. These struggles, mixed with love and heartbreak, sexuality and identity breakthroughs, and family divides has made her who she is today: a strong female singing about these issues, reflecting on such dark times, and touching the hearts of so many people, myself included, as she emerges as a strong and more confident woman.
This concert brought together friends, family, significant others, and strangers all jammed in one place to sing songs about love, heartbreak, passion, fun, struggles, discovery, pain and many other themes. Whether I knew the person to the right of me or not, we both sang our hearts out holding fake microphones to each other, commenting about certain songs, and feeling the energy of each other through certain phrases, words, or entire songs. There is an energy in a packed stadium when concerts like these happen, and it is a release of so much energy for a lot of people.
I never used to hear, and I mean hear lyrics. I would listen to a song and be able to sing all the songs but honestly never paid much attention to what was being said. One day when I was younger, my mom turned to me in the car and said, “what is this music and how do you like it?” It was at that moment that I realized singing was just like riding a bike, or brushing my teeth-I never really thought about it or what I was doing, I just did it.
From that moment forward, I started to hear lyrics and the power of these artistic words is incredible. There are songs that speak so clearly regardless of the day, time, feeling, mood, or place. A song has the power to transform my entire mental state, and when I really get into it (and think I can sing, which I can’t) the power reaches new levels. Volume gets louder, words get emphasized and all the feels are palpable. Words put together in ways that inspire and affect. Music as an art has the power to unite strangers, make people feel less alone in the world, and give people an outlet for any feeling state in life.
Keep listening. Keep singing.
SEROTONING 