What Music Means To Me;

Childhood;
As a child, music didn’t really have any deep meaning to me; I remember watching top of the pops on a Friday night and listening to whatever was playing from the charts, always enjoying a catchy pop song or whatever my older brother and my friends were listening to. I used to always get the ‘NOW that’s what I call music’ CD’s for Christmas as this had all the popular chart music at the time. This meant that I have memories of lots of songs from my childhood but none that really stand out as special to me; however the songs I’ve chosen have silly memories attached to them that now remind me of how happy I was.

One song that I vividly remember as a favourite of mine was ‘Witch Doctor’ by The Cartoons. I remember the song being played on top of the pops and the band where wearing silly outfits. I reckon I liked the song so much because it was aimed at a young audience, despite being successful in the charts and featuring on ‘NOW 42’ which I had at the time. It had a really catchy chorus that I loved singing a long to but looking back at it, the song was rubbish.



Another song that was one of my favourites as a kid was ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee)’ by Eiffel 65. The song was about a blue world and I remember that I loved imagining everything was blue as the song played. Looking back it seems that I loved listening to songs with a really catchy chorus made up of just noises like “Da Ba Dee, Da Ba Da.” The songs where both typical, gimmicky 90’s songs which wouldn’t really popular if released today, but as a child I thought they were great fun.



Early Teens;
As I hit secondary school, music started to mean a little more to me and I started having favourite bands. I’ve never really had a favourite genre and I like to listen to all sorts of music. I still listen a lot to bands I liked from my early teenage years, and the old albums that I have are some of my most played on my iPhone. Maroon 5, Arctic Monkeys and Blink-182 are some of my favourite bands from when I was twelve or thirteen and I still listen to them a lot.

One of my favourite songs even now is from the Arctic Moneky’s album ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not.’ I bought the album on CD after seeing ‘I Bet That You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ on Top of the Pops and loved all the tracks but one that stood out as my favourite was ‘Mardy Bum.’ The song has really catchy lyrics and it’s a great song to sing a long to with your friends. Arctic Monkeys have been my favourite band since I bought that album although recently they’ve changed their style of music and become a lot more pretentious which I really don’t like.




Blink-182 are another one of my favourite bands, I really like their music and I can listen for their albums on repeat for hours without getting bored. I have a lot of favourite songs of theirs so it’s hard to pick just one but I would probably say ‘Carousel’ is one of my favourites. I saw them at Reading Festival in August and it was one of the best experiences of my life. I was so happy to see them live and they said that it was one of their favourite shows of all time.




Now;
I wanted to choose a song that I currently like and listen to a lot to but also is part of an album that I really like. I download songs a lot more than buying CD’s now but I still download a lot of albums. Before the start of summer I downloaded Eminem’s new album ‘Recovery’ and it’s one of the few albums that I can listen to almost every track and enjoy it. It’s had a lot of chart success with ‘I Love The Way You Lie’ which features Rihanna. I really like this song because it has the variation of rapping and singing and the lyrics are quite deep and meaningful. Eminem is one of my favourite artist’s and I think he’s really talented.