Music is very important to me, and when I listen to music I listen to ALL of the music. When I say that I mean; lyrics, composition, and the emoting of the vocalist come together to form the mood and feel of the song. In order for me to connect with a song and be moved by it, all these elements must work together. You can imagine then, I can be very serious when listening to music and the message the music promotes will be interpreted. This makes me an interesting critic because some people will say that if the beat is good, they don’t care about the lyrics or the melody, and so on, this is not the case with me.
It almost feels like everyone at this moment is loving to hate Miley Cyrus. While I agree that she is in some kind of massive change trying to find herself, and I am not a huge fan, her recent release “Wrecking Ball” caught my attention one day because of one little line. I have not watched the video, and I do not think her current behavior is acceptable, but I am not trying to write here about Miley Cyrus, I am talking about the potent message that the authors of this piece send with the blend of lyrics and music.
The actual authors and composes of this song may have chosen Miley Cyrus to express it for them simply because she is in a place of reconstruction herself.
The line that caught my attention is this one;
“All I wanted was to break your walls; All you ever did was break me.” – Lukasz Gottwold, Maureen Ann McDonald, Stephen Moccio, Sacha Skarbek, & Henry Russell Walter. (That seems like a lot of authors for one song doesn’t it? But perhaps this team needed each other to bring it all together.)
So what do I hear? I hear music that calls to me from my childhood because it feels like a power ballad, almost as if White Snake should be belting it out. I hear the minor chords and I feel broken, lost, hurt, and wondering. I also feel that moment of realization.
I think so many times people go into relationships thinking they can “save” the person, or they can “fix” the person, or they can “control” the person. I can unequivocally tell you… Anytime you think you are going to march into someone else’s private soul and start a home improvement project you should expect to become collateral damage.
No one can change a person, only an individual can change themselves. When we commit to a relationship we are not committing to re-building someone else. We are committing to walking their road of change with them; they hold the map, they make their own destination. In healthy relationships, two people blend their roads and walk each others as support.
I can tell you from experience, anytime you think about forcing someone to drop their walls, stop before you rush in like a bull. Those walls are there for a reason, and even if you don’t understand them, or you think they are not important, think again.
Every relationship makes a person vulnerable. Do you really want to add flying shrapnel?
Beth's Journey 