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Songs/Albums that Changed Your Life

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buckeyefool said:
I love music, and love a good band but I can say that no music has ever "changed my life" Way to many other important things that effect someone's life to have music be a life changing moment.
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I also find it strange to say a song or album changed one's life. Maybe this is just me being an intellectual snob, but how does a 4 minute song or a one-hour album change a person's life? I can't imagine a significant enough amount of time actually engaging the ideas present in the song or album to cause a shift in one's perspective on life.

Perhaps "changed your life" means something different to others than as I define it???????
 
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buckeyegrad said:
I also find it strange to say a song or album changed one's life. Maybe this is just me being an intellectual snob, but how does a 4 minute song or a one-hour album change a person's life? I can't imagine a significant enough amount of time actually engaging the ideas present in the song or album to cause a shift in one's perspective on life.
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You know, you are able to listen to that short song or album over and over.:tongue2: I don't know that anyone's claiming that their life changed in 4 musical minutes, though I wouldn't rule that out either: someone hearing the opening riff from Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" back around 1970--or their first Metallica in the 80s--could have their eyes (and ears) instantaneously opened to a new range of possibilities in the world around them. Or maybe it's more gradual, like having the Moody Blues "Question of Balance" or George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" slowly seep in and alter one's moral understanding of their place in the world.
 
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Can 4 minutes of music change your life? I was flying home from Vietnam, lost in a world of questions about the war, about what I had seen and done, about the men I left behind, about the ones who would not be joining me on this, or any other flight, about what the future held for me. The pilot pointed out the Oregon trail and the Little Big Horn River and at that moment the largo of Dvorack's The New World began, the part that uses the spiritual, Going Home. The thoughts and the music seemed to flow together, like the score to a movie, and I was able to cry in joy and anguish and if that isn't a life changing moment and experience, then I don't know what is.
 
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cincibuck said:
Can 4 minutes of music change your life? I was flying home from Vietnam, lost in a world of questions about the war, about what I had seen and done, about the men I left behind, about the ones who would not be joining me on this, or any other flight, about what the future held for me. The pilot pointed out the Oregon trail and the Little Big Horn River and at that moment the largo of Dvorack's The New World began, the part that uses the spiritual, Going Home. The thoughts and the music seemed to flow together, like the score to a movie, and I was able to cry in joy and anguish and if that isn't a life changing moment and experience, then I don't know what is.
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but it wasn't the song that changed your life
 
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Perhaps if I saw more examples like that related by Cincibuck I could be convinced, though I still am trying to figure out how the song itself changed his life. Sounds more like a summarizing event that resulted from a bunch of other things that changed his life.

Again, maybe I am defining change differently than others, but I think about the last two major changes in my life and I don't see how a single song or album acting on its own can compare. The most recent change was the result of being married, which completely changing my lifestyle and responsibilities, but even this did not occur all at once on the day I was married, but over the process of many months. The second change occurred in 2000 and was the combined result of developing a close friendship with a radical libertarian, starting graduate school, at least four books, leaving Catholicism the year before, and the election fiasco in Florida that year. I don't see how a single song or album can compare.
 
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cincibuck said:
Can 4 minutes of music change your life? I was flying home from Vietnam, lost in a world of questions about the war, about what I had seen and done, about the men I left behind, about the ones who would not be joining me on this, or any other flight, about what the future held for me. The pilot pointed out the Oregon trail and the Little Big Horn River and at that moment the largo of Dvorack's The New World began, the part that uses the spiritual, Going Home. The thoughts and the music seemed to flow together, like the score to a movie, and I was able to cry in joy and anguish and if that isn't a life changing moment and experience, then I don't know what is.
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nice post cincibuck.
 
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buckeyegrad said:
Perhaps if I saw more examples like that related by Cincibuck I could be convinced, though I still am trying to figure out how the song itself changed his life. Sounds more like a summarizing event that resulted from a bunch of other things that changed his life.
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Hey, if it hasn't happened to you, there's probably nothing we can write on this forum that will convince you. It's like falling in love: it just happens, and you can't necessarily explain why. But music has indeed been changing people's lives for hundreds (maybe thousands) of years.
 
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BayBuck said:
Hey, if it hasn't happened to you, there's probably nothing we can write on this forum that will convince you. It's like falling in love: it just happens, and you can't necessarily explain why. But music has indeed been changing people's lives for hundreds (maybe thousands) of years.
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Well....there is part of the problem. I don't believe people just fall in love either. To love is a choice, but I know that is not a popular view in modern society, so I'll just leave it at that.
 
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buckeyegrad said:
Perhaps if I saw more examples like that related by Cincibuck I could be convinced, though I still am trying to figure out how the song itself changed his life. Sounds more like a summarizing event that resulted from a bunch of other things that changed his life.

I don't see how a single song or album can compare.
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Well, If the song that came on at that precise moment had been something I was unfamilar with, or if it had been say, a jumping arrangment of It Was Just One of Those Things by Oscar Peterson, it wouldn't have pushed the experience the way it did and I'm not sure I would have had that moment to savor, to feel blessed. I have no doubt that the music and the connections it made to my life, past, present and future at that very moment were critical.
 
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buckeyegrad said:
Well....there is part of the problem. I don't believe people just fall in love either. To love is a choice, but I know that is not a popular view in modern society, so I'll just leave it at that.
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I actually share the view that love is a choice, but our western conception of romantic love works a little differently in that choosing it means giving yourself over to it and its mysterious ways. Same could be said about music: you have to be open to that kind of powerful aesthetic experience for it to work its magic on you. But then, maybe you are just being an intellectual snob...:tongue2:
 
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