“Sunday Bloody Sunday” by U2 live from Red Rocks. Before that, I just listened to whatever was popular or whatever indie stuff my older sister was bumping—I figured I could siphon off some of her cool if I listened to one more Mura Masa track. 

The summer before ninth grade, my dad and I redecorated my room with his old vinyl, none of which I could name. To fix this, he made me a playlist of his favorites that I first heard on a flight to North Carolina: “Roxanne” was fine, “Losing My Religion” didn’t land, but then came this live version of “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”

I had no clue what The Troubles were; my biggest concern was beating my cousins at paper football. But this song cut straight through me. The guitar carved out a space in the white noise of the plane, and Bono’s voice hit with the rare clarity of someone who means every word. With Larry Mullen Jr.’s martial snare driving him forward, Bono belts with the electrified crowd, “No more! No more! Wipe your tears away! Wipe your blood away!” I didn’t understand the politics, but I felt the conviction, launching me into a full-blown U2 obsession that shaped my incipient music taste and deepened my bond with my dad. It was a watershed moment in the band’s history—one that cemented their reputation as an extraordinary live act—and here it was, thirty-six years later, still working its magic on a teenage me.

My uncle called him “Slash”—he was a cigarette-smoking, tattoo-clad guitar god whose curly hair spilled from beneath his iconic hat. There was no denying it: this guy rocked. He’s the guy who convinced me that music is special, and so are the people who can master it.

I must’ve been 12 years old when my uncle first played  Guns N’ Roses for me in the car—probably “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” or maybe it was “November Rain,” either way, it caught my attention immediately. My GNR addiction grew and grew until my parents were probably concerned that all I wanted to do in the car was blast “Welcome to the Jungle.” Listening to GNR exposed me to everything  classic rock has to offer, but perhaps more importantly, it gave me my icon: Slash.

Slash was him: effortlessly cool, endlessly talent, and woefully nonchalant. From the first time I saw him drunkenly messing up “Welcome to the Jungle” in some old GNR performance I found on YouTube, I was obsessed. I begged my dad to take me to one of Slash’s live shows with his solo band, and my dream finally came true when my I found my little 14-year-old self helplessly out of place amongst the sea of middle-aged white bodies in Atlanta. But the music spoke for itself—and hearing it live was everything.

After that, there was no stopping me. I quickly outgrew my rock obsession, moving onto nu metal, hip-hop, and, eventually, jazz, indie, EDM, and more. And it’s all thanks to Slash—that forever-young, hyper-talented, and endlessly cool guitarist who captured my attention from the very first note.

I’ve dabbled with instruments my whole life. The violin lasted a few months, the flute two years until high school came around and I got embarrassed. But when school started to feel like too much, I realized something was missing.

My dad’s been saying “this year I’ll learn guitar” for as long as I can remember. He’s obsessed with The Who—our basement walls are covered in red, white, and blue targets, and his Who sweater hangs framed above his bed

I bought a second-hand Fender from a rummage sale and started lessons. I stumbled through Green Day songs and eventually made it to playing “Wonderwall.” One day I finally built up the courage to try a song by The Who.

I picked “Behind Blue Eyes” from Tommy. The song played in the background in every memory of a late night car ride or Saturday night sitting around the fireplace.  Halfway through (after butchering maybe every fifth chord), I saw my dad in the doorway—foot tapping, head bobbing. He looked proud in that quiet dad way.

That was the moment I understood the power of music. It isn’t just something to listen to, rather something to share. Music taps into a communication that is hard to encapsulate in plain language alone. I’ve since hung up the guitar, but that song will always feel like a bridge into my father’s mind. 

I was a ballet kid. From the age of three, at least once a week I was being dragged to different classes, associating movement with beats and keys on the piano; everything felt mechanical, automatic, nothing compared to the radio hits I would scream to on the way home. I thought the “old” rehearsal music was boring, relics belonging to my grandparents, lining the walls of my grandfather’s house, encased in plasticky, colorful records.

I did not know I loved music, nor that I could love it in the way that I do, when it started. While my cousins turned their noses up at movies whose entire soundscape was crafted for the purpose of replacing dialogue, scores  of ballets and operas emanated from the screen with aplomb, emphasizing dramatic exclamations and cries, building dread and despair, sealing it all with a happily ever after. To me, it was magic. Suddenly, the tracks I once so longed to replace with bubblegum pop in my dance classes breathed life into my favorite films and so, too, invigorated my dance classes, took point in turning me around the room, lifting my arms in the air, sending me leaping (mildly ungracefully) around the room. 

Now, twenty years later, I cannot claim to flounce around in a tutu anymore, but I still adore music and its enchanting allure.

It’s late spring in 2019. The air is still cold but pollen season is basically over. My dad and I were driving to New Hampshire for the weekend, about four hours from our home in Massachusetts. In the photos, I’m wearing a Twenty One Pilots shirt. I have bangs. There’s a lot of eyeliner involved.

I had spent the last three years exclusively listening to bands like Panic! at the Disco and Paramore, believing that music died the day My Chemical Romance broke up. But for those four hours in the station wagon, my dad was on aux. He was playing SiriusXM 34 Lithium, a collection of nineties grunge and alternative. Music may have died in 2013, but I realized it was born long before 2005.

I just found the playlist of songs I ripped from the station six years ago. It’s full of Jane’s Addiction and Bad Religion. It has “Say Hello 2 Heaven” by Temple of the Dog—my dad remarked that it’s not a particularly good song, and I agree, it’s not. There’s “Sabotage” by Beastie Boys—much better—and “Brick” by Ben Folds Five—excellent. We sat there listening and talking: my dad’s tales of the nineties, The Smiths lyric in his high school yearbook, and a crash course in alternative. We heard “Everlong,” “Lightning Crashes,” and “The Distance.” 

What is needed to fall in love with music? I have a list: four hours of traffic, a watered down iced coffee, stories of a far off time, and the radio.

Some of the first music I really loved was on Lorde’s Pure Heroine. When the album came out in 2013, I was around 10 years old. Like many other 4th graders, my exposure to music was mostly from listening to top 40 in the car. I’m sure this is exactly how I found Lorde: “Royals” and “Team” were unavoidable every time I turned the radio on. I remember my friends and I remarking on why there was an “e” at the end of “Lorde” and musing about what “[cutting] teeth on wedding rings” meant. While I couldn’t necessarily relate to Lorde’s references, Pure Heroine captured a nostalgia of growing up that was palpable to me even at such a young age. “400 Lux” and “Ribs” are evergreen and continue to be some of my most played songs every year. In 2014, my parents took my friend and I to see Lorde at a music festival near us. It was my first concert, and watching a 17-year old Lorde sing some of my favorite songs while flipping her billowy hair around deepened my love for her and my appreciation of music in general.