Green Lighting It

Do you have a song that turns you on? I don’t necessarily mean sexually, although it may. I mean a song that lifts your mood, gets you out of your funk at work, gets your body out of its hunched-over desk chair state, and makes you move. A song that makes you dance, bob your head, drum your steering wheel so energetically that your traffic jam neighbors can’t help but smile? A song that makes other people jealous of your good mood? We don’t nearly appreciate these things enough, even though they are small things that can make dramatic changes in our mental states.

Every couple of years there’s a song that does the above to me. This year it’s “Green Light” by John Legend. (Check it out here)

You may or may not agree. That’s ok – it’s rare for two people (let alone many) to agree on musical preference. When I was getting my Bachelors degree I took a Jazz History class, and the professor used to ask people to bring in samples of their favorite music and play them for the whole group. Students rarely did it - everyone was too self-conscious to expose such a private part of themselves in front of a potentially critical group of their peers. It’s funny, isn’t it? When we go on first dates we’re often worried that the music we play in our cars won’t make us seem [insert adjective] enough. Emo enough. Cool enough. Brooding enough. Artsy enough. Sane enough. Independent enough. Strong enough. Socially aware enough. Sensual enough. You name it - someone’s worried about it. Even people in life-long relationships don’t get the same feeling out of the same song. My parents have been married forever and it’s still a dinnertime struggle between Alan Jackson and E.L.O.

So whether you’re into Nine Inch Nails and Japanese Pop like Lex or a Celtic/Emo connoisseur like Cian, blast that song that turns you on today and delight in the aural pleasure of being suspended in the music, being just exactly who you are.