The Soundtrack of My Life

The Soundtrack of My Life

If my life had a soundtrack, it wouldn’t be a tidy playlist. It would be a mixtape — scratchy, uneven, sometimes offbeat — a strange blend of pop, folk, heartbreak ballads, and songs I swore I hated but knew every word to. Music has always been my secret language, the invisible thread stitching moments together long after the people, places, and details faded. Every chapter of my life has a song, and in each, I find a version of myself I almost forgot.

“Yesterday” by The Beatles — The First Lullaby

Before I could even form words, my mother’s voice would fill my room in the evenings, humming to “Yesterday” as if the melancholy lyrics weren’t meant for a child. She claimed it was the only tune that could lull me to sleep. I have no memory of those nights, but years later, when the song drifted through an old radio at a thrift shop, I felt something in my chest unravel — a warmth, a longing. That melody isn’t about heartbreak for me; it’s about safety, about the way her hand would rub my back until the world slipped away.

“Mr. Brightside” by The Killers — The Anthem of My Reckless Twenties

If there’s a single song that defines my twenties, it’s “Mr. Brightside.” Not because it’s profound, but because it was everywhere. In every sticky dive bar, every road trip playlist, every half-drunk house party where I screamed the lyrics alongside friends whose names I’ve long forgotten. It was the soundtrack to poor decisions, midnight confessions, and mornings with a pounding head and a vague sense of regret.

That song reminds me of the night I danced on a table in someone’s basement, wearing a leather jacket too warm for August. It reminds me of the first time I kissed someone out of sheer impulse, and the strange electric thrill of feeling untethered, reckless, and young. I didn’t know it then, but those moments were fleeting — their sharpness dulled by time, their consequences softened by nostalgia.

“The Blower’s Daughter” by Damien Rice — First Heartbreak

I was nineteen when I first had my heart properly broken. It wasn’t cinematic — no rain-soaked street corner or dramatic farewell. Just a simple message: “I think we should stop seeing each other.” I remember sitting on the floor of my bedroom, the soft glow of a desk lamp, and “The Blower’s Daughter” on repeat, the raw ache in Damien Rice’s voice syncing perfectly with the hollow space in my chest.

That song taught me that heartbreak isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s a quiet unraveling, a kind of loneliness that lingers in ordinary things: the empty space in your bed, the silence of your phone, the unfamiliar weight of time stretching endlessly ahead.

“Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac — When I Lost My Father

I didn’t expect grief to have a soundtrack, but it found one. “Landslide” came on the radio as I drove home from the hospital the night my father died. The tremor in Stevie Nicks’ voice, the lyric “Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life?” hit me like a blow to the chest.

In that moment, I felt impossibly small. A daughter without a father. I pulled over, sobbed into the steering wheel, and let that song stitch my heart together just enough to keep driving. It became the song I played when I missed him most — on his birthday, on the anniversary of his death, on the random Tuesday afternoons when grief arrived uninvited.

“Dog Days Are Over” by Florence + The Machine — A New Beginning

There was a year when everything changed. I left a toxic relationship, moved to a new city, started a job that felt like a lifeline. It was the year I learned how to be alone, how to like myself again. “Dog Days Are Over” blared through my tiny apartment the first night I danced alone in my living room, wine glass in one hand, joy blooming wild and unexpected in my chest.

That song is my anthem of survival — a reminder that you can claw your way out of the dark, that happiness can arrive like a freight train when you least expect it, shaking the dust off your bones.

“Holocene” by Bon Iver — Where I Am Now

Now, my life is quieter. I’ve traded late-night parties for early-morning walks. I fall in love with sunsets, with books, with the smell of rain on concrete. “Holocene” plays softly in the background as I write, as I cook, as I learn to live a slower, softer kind of life.

“And at once I knew, I was not magnificent.”

That lyric humbles me. It reminds me that it’s okay not to be extraordinary, that there’s beauty in the ordinary, in the quiet moments no one else sees.

My soundtrack isn’t perfect. It skips, it crackles, it surprises me with old songs I didn’t know I needed to hear again. But it’s mine — a patchwork of love, loss, recklessness, and resilience. And when I’m gone, I hope someone finds my old playlists, presses play, and learns a little about the life I lived between the notes.