The Music That Made Me: Wires by Athlete

This is a song that I can never listen to without crying. It has a potency for me like no other in terms of how it reaches into my very essence and squeezes my heart. It seizes me, like a long lost brother and takes me back to a period of my life which was hard. Very hard.

But ultimately, what I receive when I hear this song is gratitude. People talk about gratitude coming in waves, a clichéd phrase and yet, that sense of relief and happiness and things being right that comes whenever this song comes on my playlist takes me and crashes against me, like being lifted by the swell of a surging sea. Every time. What it also does is transport me to a place where my life could have been very different.

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The song is from Athlete's second studio album Tourist and is for me the stand out track. It is based on the personal experiences of the lead singer and his daughter who became ill after birth and was rushed to intensive care. I have also read that she was premature but can't confirm this as fact.

The song is slow, starting quietly, almost contemplatively and the repetition of "wires" is weird, especially in the context of the mention of skin. Is this a science fiction piece? As it progresses to the chorus, "corridors" and "automatic doors" give context, and it is soon clear that it is a hospital.

The song builds, layered the further and further it continues, repeating lyrical phrases as well as musical phrasing, gradually lifting and, for such sad subject matter, it is an uplifting piece. However, there is an element of uncertainty and desperation about it. It is the strange mix of fearful hope running alongside euphoria at all being well that marks this song and makes it powerful.

Towards the end, this is seen more clearly where "Running down corridors/Through automatic doors/Got to get to you/Got to see this through" is overlaying just a guitar again before coming back more powerfully instrumentally to a crescendo. It then quiets again, almost like the lull after an emotional surge that has pushed the singer/father on to this point, and now, he is allowed to feel the relief that all will be okay, reinforced in the quiet repetition of "First night of your life/Curled up on your own/Looking at you now/You would never know".

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I love this song. My son was born prematurely and this song is like a script of my life from that time. The frantic visiting, making sure I was there down the corridors and through the automatic doors, the wires, the lights, the dried blood, the plastic box of an incubator, him spending his first night on his own in that box. I don't think that there is another song on this planet that resonates more for me. It encapsulates the way that I felt at that time: the emotion, the uncertainty, the hope, the fear, especially in the lines of "Got to get to you/Got to see this through". That drive to get there, to be present, no matter what I'd have to face is present in those words.

And it is the refrain of "First night of your life/Curled up on your own/Looking at you now/You would never know" that never fails to bring me to tears, especially at the end where the singer almost says it and you can feel the wonder and the gratitude emanating from it in the hesitancy and softness.

This song takes me back to imagining a time when I had to believe it would be alright and the lines "I see it in your eyes/You'll be alright" summarise the optimism that I snatched at on a daily basis, even when it felt like it was a mere wisp.

My tears are happy tears in the main. My son is 17 and a wonderful, wonderful kid who I love dearly and who despite his start, you would never know that he was ever a scrap of flesh, with a wrist the thickness of my thumb. Some others in that hospital did not share my experience, were not as lucky and I cry for them too, when I hear this, for the fact that we brought him home but they suffered a loss, a loss I felt could present itself personally to me every day I was there.