It’s 1.43 a.m. The world outside is dark, and the sleeping silence seeps into everything. I’m lying down on my bed with my headphones in, staring, though not too hard, at the faint glow of the fairy lights draped across the wall on the other side of the room. We’re In Love by boygenius is playing, and I’ve never felt so at peace — until the next motorcyclist decides to be a show-off to an audience of no one, revving across an empty road.

I’ve been thinking about how music can evoke something in us, and I’m curious to know why that is. How can a song bring us back to a moment so vividly, maybe even stir up something in us — emotions that we never knew we were holding on to?

To me, some songs take me back to reliving a moment. Wasia Project’s U Deserve is an example, because it brings me back to the first day of poly — I had been listening to it when I stepped into my first class. In this case, the song shapes to become a part of the memory, and that’s pretty intriguing. Listening to the song again now brings me back to that moment again and, for a small, fleeting moment, I can feel what I’ve felt back then: the small hint of optimism, the uncertainty and how things would go, and the excitement to finally get back to doing something after adequate rest.

But other times, songs can go even deeper. More curiously, they can evoke the feeling of a moment, and not just that moment itself. There’s nothing momentous about staring blankly at a wall of fairly lights late at night, but the feeling of serenity I feel comes to the foreground. Maybe it’s something about the instrumentation of the song — really makes you feel like you’re weightless, floating in space — that beautifully lets you breathe out and drown the burdens of the day, even if it’s just for a little bit.

The best songs, to me, are ones that mix your own personal experiences with the right music and lyrics. We’re In Love is beautiful to me because it talks about the fragility of life. It talks about a friendship so strong that it might span lifetimes, and how your deepest friends are the ones you’d recognise in a heartbeat no matter the lifetime.

Consider a song like this that has a lot of meaning to you. What makes it stand out to you? Did it find you at the right time? Did the words in the song resonate with the memories you’ve had?

Maybe this is what music is meant to be: a personal, deep connection that an artist has with you based on the works of art they produce, just like poetry written by other people that touches you, and maybe not in the same way that the author intended. As listeners, we decide how much music touches us, and it all boils down to the environment we’re in, our attitudes at the time, and the memories we’ve carried with us.

I find it beautiful that music serves as a function of memory: that it invokes, brings you back, and reminds you of a time once passed or the feelings that you’ve felt. And once we’re done, the music leaves an impact on us — either as a memory to remember, or the feelings that enveloped you as you listened. There’s something so purely picturesque about appreciating the art in that manner.