Last summer, I went through a massive slump. After celebrating one of the greatest and proudest moments of my life at the end of June, I was feeling very low whilst also more or less counting down the days until the next time I would be returning to London the following September for various reasons.
Music played a big part in helping me get through the rest of the summer. Rachael Yamagata, Jonsi & Alex, Radiohead, Daft Punk, Imogen Heap all helped immensely because if I wasn’t listening to music, I was thinking. And at that time, I just didn’t want to think for, again, various reasons.
Around that time, I spotted a tweet from someone I follow on Twitter with a Last FM link to a song.
“At 11pm, go outside, Put headphones on, close your eyes & listen to this,” it said.
So at 11pm that July night, with still the smallest semblance of sunlight, I went outside, I put earbuds in my ears, shut my eyes and listened to it. Start of Time has two sides to it. Its first half has a relaxing, if perhaps slightly melancholic, opening as guitars and Gabrielle Aplin‘s vocals fill the air.
But the second half goes into a big crescendo with drums and organs that feels as dramatic as you’d expect it to be. ‘Start of Time‘, even with its dramatic finale, still has a sense of relaxation for it – at least for me anyways – where I can sit down in a public place on a patch of grass and listen to it non-stop. It was when I listened to that song that any anxieties and worries I had that summer somewhat faded away. At least, that’s what it did for four whole minutes.
It was also within those four minutes the only time that summer where I allowed myself to think.
Hit this for the CWS playlist on Spotify.
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