songs i cannot live without

I love music, always have, always will. For a lot of people, music is a safe space, a place of comfort and security for when days are bad or times are tough. For me, music is home. There’s never a time when I don’t at least have some little tune stuck in my head. In my mind, music is always playing, even when I can’t hear it. It helps me to think, it helps me to write. It helps me to be me.

With all that music I listen to, you’d think it’d be hard to pick favorites. And it is; I have playlist upon playlist of songs I love enough to call favorites.

But some songs are too good to be just any old favorite. Some songs can reach inside you and twist your insides around and leave you on the other side a different person than you were before, and they still manage to leave that twisty feeling every time you listen to them.

My favorite songs are relative, superficial; but the songs I need to breathe are more important and real than anything else in the world. These songs often come from the deepest parts of ourselves, the parts that we don’t often let other people see. The songs that we hold nearest and dearest to our hearts are the ones that let themselves in without even needing to pick the locks on our hearts because we’ve opened the doors the moment we heard the first line. The songs we come to love wholeheartedly are the ones that help us the most. We discover them at times of high emotion, where that be euphoria or dysphoria or anything in-between. They stick with us, and we stick with them.

The songs that I fall head-over-heels in love with come from nostalgia and reminiscence and longing. They come from isolation and destruction and despair.

But they also come from joy and love and hope.

These are ten songs that came to me at the point in my life when I needed them most. Some are new, some are old, some are dark, some are gold.

But these songs are the ones that continue to make me who I am.

  1. starlight // muse
  2. oasis+savannah+baby // relient k
  3. secret for the mad // dodie clark
  4. i wanna get better // bleachers
  5. she lays down // the 1975
  6. saturn // sleeping at last
  7. rivers and roads // the head and the heart
  8. home // edward sharpe and the magnetic zeroes
  9. hey jude // the beatles
  10. heathrow // catfish and the bottlemen

Author: Madison Cox

madison: known for being very loud and very short and also a little sad. finally embraced her inner hipster. typically can be found listening to music or writing something. very fond of sweaters, hugs, and chucks. thinks capital letters are overrated. enjoys typing like a child but speaking like an adult. really wants to write books one day.