The Musical Connection

Music is something that established a deep connection with me early on. Like most kids I began listening to a few of my parent's songs and recording the ones I enjoyed onto a blank cassette tape. (People born after the mid-to-late nineties may have no idea what I just said. That's okay, just stay with me.)
I graduated to songs belonging to my own generation as a teenager, and many a quiet day when my family lived on the boat was passed with my trusty walkman. (No, I never dropped it overboard.)

Music is still a big part of my life these days. Not that I'm at all musical myself in that I can't carry a tune - my husband will confirm this - nor can I play an instrument. Well, I did learn the recorder along with two dozen other forth-graders and I can play a mean Mary Had a Little Lamb. Or is it Hot Cross Buns?

Despite my lack of musical genius, I still have a deep appreciation for a variety of instruments. Sometimes I find myself drawn to a particular song primarily because of one instrument, and one of the earliest examples of this is Bond's 'Explosive'. Prior to hearing this song I'd never really been a huge fan of instrumentals but this one is so wholly electric it's impossible for me not to like. The violins are out of this world.
 

A more recent example is Bastille's Pompeii, one of the very rare songs I didn't like when I first heard it. It's one of the few songs that grew on me, and it happened after I began to listen to the drums. Now it's one of my all-time favourites, and my 'de-stress' song that I play to sooth me when I'm worrying about something.
Be warned, if you're going to watch the music video, there's NOTHING soothing about it. It's quite creepy.

In the case of some songs, the drawing instrument makes up the entire selling point of the song. Such are the trumpets in Jason Derulo's song titled after the instrument itself - I didn't think much of it until the trumpets started to play and then I quite liked it!

 

This one I felt the connection through the music video. A touching story of a bullied boy finding inspiration in falconry and going on to be a wing-suit glider is beautifully portrayed. I do like the song - it's on my driving CD right now - but the appreciation of the music came about because of the clip itself. Rudimental and Emeli Sande make a perfect collaboration here, and what impresses me most about the wingsuit footage used in the video is that's it all real-life footage of an extreme-sports professional, Jokke Sommer, flying through the Alps. It's like magic!