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Music has always had a strange hold over me. I can’t sing, even at gun point. I barely understand music and have had no training of the sort. I even struggle to repeat lyrics word to word. But yet, the rising tempos, the rhythmic notes and the metaphoric lyrics make a significant impact on my ears; Perhaps, even more so, on my mind.

While songs come and go, some artists and their creations have stayed constant, as if echoing between my ear drums. And while I can’t comment on the quality of their composition, these songs have an innate ability to transform me to past times, places I have been, things I have done and emotions that I have gagged on.

Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” makes me feel like a short chubby kid with shorts on a bicycle and no worries besides the upcoming unit tests. U2 “With or without you” takes me to my first amorous adventures which, not surprisingly, did not end well. Bob Dylan’s “All Along the watchtower” further confused me during my adolescent years until an unlikely hero in Eminem rescued me. Eminem early numbers remind me of a time where I felt unbeatable, on a 150 cc motorcycle, sans helmet but with enormous ego and nonsensical bravado.

All through engineering, I stuck with Eminem. Little did I realize, that I would draw upon both U2’s “One” and Eminem’s “Rap Game” to make it through my first depressing winter at Michigan. I still cannot shake of the shivers, when I think back to a time, where I walked backwards in blistering windy snow to avoid freezing my face. I had snaked the walk-man headphones (yes, a cassette player) through my inadequate jacket and my cap to listen to “Rabbit Run” at full blast.

Of course, as adulthood came about, the music went to Floyd. “Wish you were here” became a permanent lullaby until Dave Matthews’s crooning switched me out of it. But nothing could compare to the emotional turmoil I went through with Coldplay. On the best of days, “Amsterdam” would awaken my tear ducts. On the worst of days, Coldplay would make everything better with “The Scientist”. I was quite convinced that Coldplay was the only band that could literally change my mood in four and half minutes.

Soon though, I got comfortable with Radiohead. Listening to them long enough, deciphered Yorke’s incessant mumbling into something poetic. Radiohead’s “Nude” and “reckoner” should be declared downright illegal for the effect they have on me. Radiohead has helped my embrace my new found adulthood.

For the past couple of years, I have gone into a lull with music. Almost as if it synced with my slowing nature of life! However, yesterday, as I pushed her on Michigan’s back roads, the Lotus continued to roar me back to life. It was so unnerving to have her stay flat in a bend, to not squeal her tires, to not dramatize the sheer sublimity of her perfect chassis.

And in this noisy, non insulated cabin, my brain started repeating Temper Trap’s “Sweet Disposition” over and over again. The song is a certain precursor to unadulterated feelings of love, with sometimes meaningless lyrics. Yet, when the artist swooned of a “reckless abandon” and “like no one is watching”, I was further convinced of my stake with cars.

Now, only if I could have sung this out.