One of the most powerful things about music is that it is the soundtrack of our lives. Fellow music fanatic Sharon Hepworth started a music challenge on Twitter for the month of July. Each day, fans around the world will select a song from their life and describe what it means to us. These are my songs. #SoundtrackToYourLife
Day 20
So much of our life soundtrack is tied closely to love, loss and laughter. Perhaps we look back at our soundtracks and cringe a little bit. How were we so naive? How were we so this or so that? On Day 20, that’s where I find myself. This is the song that a girlfriend and I played constantly. We saw Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and bought the soundtrack. I was head over heels for this girl. And she was absolutely the wrong girl for me. How ironic that the song we listened to together was tied to the story of Romeo + Juliet: two star-crossed lovers from opposing families.
The interesting thing about “Angel” is that it was written before Romeo + Juliet, despite feeling like it was made just for the movie. The song mirrors the complicated situation that the main characters found themselves in. Like my then-girlfriend and I, they were helplessly in love to the point where it becomes impossible to put the brakes on it despite the impending doom. Flanked by gorgeous swirling synth layers, Friday’s falsetto feels like the whispering angel on one shoulder at times and the deceitful demon on the other. Everything seems ethereal and euphoric when you’re in love. But sometimes there’s something darker and deeper lurking beneath the surface that we’re blind to.
“Angel.... hold on to me, love is all around me.”