They're Playing "Our Song"

Above almost anything else, many people relate how they feel about their relationship with a song. And looking back at songs throughout the written and oral history of the planet, it’s safe to say that has always been the case.

What is it about the romantic (or heartbroken) state of mind that urges a person to lyrics? Poetry is the same way. The depths of joy and pain felt towards those who were loved or lost seem to bring out in humans that need to quantify the emotion in prose. And maybe with a melody.

Many animals are the same way. They seem to feel a need to emit sounds of joy and loss over their mates, offspring and loved ones too.

When I was 19 and in college, I met someone I thought I couldn’t live without. We had a whirlwind courtship that lasted a mere 10 weeks. Just as my family was starting to think we might be becoming boyfriend and girlfriend, he and I eloped. A popular newly released song at the time that seemed to perfectly describe our feelings was “Truly, Madly, Deeply” by Savage Garden. That was “our song”.



Time wasn’t on our side though. We’d dove head first into a marriage without first checking to make sure the ocean of our love wasn’t too shallow. It turned out to be more of a puddle. We had virtually nothing in common and while we both grew in many ways struggling for several years to make it work, by the time we called it quits our theme song had become Linkin Park’s “Numb”. If divorces get songs like weddings do, that would have been our divorce song.



It might seem juvenile sometimes to have a song, but it may be that the song not only gives us an idea of where our head and heart are at the time, it might help us express to others how we feel when our own words elude us. And it could be that if a song comes on the radio that reminds you of someone, it might indicate what you subconsciously think about them or a unconscious realization of how realistic a chance the relationship has.