The Effect Some Good Old Music Can Have On Your Mood

I admit I am partial to the 60′s, 70′s and the 80′s as my favorite decades and my memories tend to be wrapped around the songs I constantly heard.

Today, thanks to the internet, I no longer have to shuffle around my collection of 500+ audio cassettes to make a playlist (yes, I still have them). So I’ve got compilation tapes…and it is all good for when I play my bedside radio (yes, I still have one of those with a cassette player!)…still – the joy of digital music is something else! While my taste in music is eclectic, I am partial to the 80′s rock and pop.

I can’t live without music. It literally drives my day and my mood. I have a song for every emotion I go through. Sad songs, happy songs, fun songs. Do you feel that too? I associate everyone I know with some song or other. And it serves as a mnemonic to remember them.

My time-management is more or less around song-lengths. Since I have the privilege of working from home, I enjoy listening to music as I work. And oh yes, I have playlists for different types of assignments. Sometimes I enjoy singing along. When I feel super-energetic, I turn up those speakers and cheerfully tackle house maintenance.

I grew up with radio, mostly until the 80′s. Then came TV. I remember how fascinated I was when I saw my first music video! I would eagerly wait for the one available TV channel to play that half hour of “western rock and pop” music once a week. That excitement carried through the week building up the anticipation for the next episode.

We also saw some fabulous TV sitcoms around that time. My favorites were I love Lucy, Faerie Tale Theater and Diff’rent Strokes – does anyone remember any of these?

As I go about my day, I hum my favorite songs and this always keeps me in high spirits. Sometimes I go crazy trying to recall the name of a song, even though the tune is stuck in my head. It is like seeing a familiar face and wondering where we know them from. Luckily, it is possible to go search online these days. And there are some lovely sites dedicated to old music. One of my favorites is for free oldies music is iOldies. I remember the first time I landed here and saw Now playing “I love Lucy” and I was ecstatic. Click here to enjoy a snippet.

A fond memory – the folks in our apartment building, back in the 80′s, called me “Lucy” – after the sunshiny Ms.Lucille Ball. Funny how I found out. We were planning some festival celebrations with an entertainment program that included music, dance and skits – and formed a committee to organize it. Someone was supposed to come up with the responsibility list and circulate it later in the evening that day. Under “Master of Ceremonies” and “fillers” – for those funnies and musical bits between items on the agenda, they wrote “Lucy”. I wondered who that was – and laughed my guts out to find out they meant me. So hilarious. Oh yes, those were fun times.

Sigh! So many memories. Music has always been my best friend. No matter how I feel, humming a song always lifts me up!

I found some amazing artwork here by Princeton-based artist Erika Iris who has created various portraits of famous musicians using recycled cassette tapes. She imagines that humans are just like cassettes—our thoughts merely wrapped in our awkward ‘body’ packaging. I like it!