How Music Shapes Memory & Identity & Is More Than The Soundtrack To Our Lives
Drawing from neuroscience and personal anecdotes about why music & certain songs take us back & make us the people we are
My tryst with music is deeper than time can imagine. Perhaps it comes from some past life or whatever was inside me as a child. Fast forward to today & I’m a musician, music producer & composer making music in my free time & putting music out as an artist under my stage name Ghost Intent.
I distinctly remember listening to Jim Morrison’s voice on ‘Riders on the Storm’ by The Doors when it played on the radio when I was a child. I was immediately awestruck by the music & lyrics & Morrison’s haunting voice.
“Into this house, we're born. Into this world, we're thrown. Like a dog without a bone. An actor out on loan. Riders on the storm.” — The Doors ‘Riders on the Storm’
I used to record songs off the radio onto cassette tapes & curate my own little library of mixtapes.
This eventually evolved into me burning mp3 CDs & selling them to my school friends, to spending my late teenage years DJing at the most happening pub in my college township of Manipal after I was hired as the DJ of the pub in my second year of college.
It was my first part-time job at the age of 19. I did that job for three years straight, playing the music at the pub every alternate night of the week.
Those sonic sets. Those nights. They were the glory years.
I still distinctly remember my first visit to the pub called DeeTee, sitting at the table facing the blackened windows, and hearing Metallica’s ‘Unforgiven II’ play. We were in a group of twelve or so, seven of us guys and five girls from first year. The music, lyrics, the vibe & mood and alcohol & the girl I was hitting on, all hit me together. I’ll never forget hearing that song for the first time.
“Lay beside me, tell me what they’ve done, speak the words I want to hear, to make my demons run… What I’ve felt, what I’ve known turn the pages turn the stone… Could you be there because I’m the one who waits for you… Or are you Unforgiven too?” — Metallica ‘Unforgiven II’
It’s a strange aspect of music in how it etches itself into memory. A few seconds into a song, and suddenly, without warning you’re back in your college dorm, or reliving past moments in a bus, train or car or your apartment watching the rain hit the window, or walking alone at night in the early hours of the morning after 2 am going to buy cigarettes with headphones on and the world blurring in the incandescent street lights around you.
They say music “takes us back,” but in truth, it resurrects memories & emotions, and exactly who we were in a particular moment.
It doesn’t just transport you to remembering the event. You remember you: the thoughts, the clothes, the feeling, the emotion, the event, the moment, exactly etched into your head.
But why does this happen?
Neuroscience offers some clues to this strange aspect of music. Studies have shown that music activates more parts of the brain than almost any other stimulus or any other kind of art form.
The auditory cortex processes the sound itself. But the hippocampus and amygdala, which are regions linked to memory and emotion, light up too. This multisensory engagement creates rich “contextual encoding,” embedding not just the song, but where you were, who you were with, and how you felt.
You don’t just remember a song. You remember the self that lived that song.
The Playlist of You
If someone asked you to make a playlist of different phases of your life, you could probably do it instinctively. This isn’t just because the songs are objectively great, but because they carry you in them. The way a picture can bring back a person or a place, music brings back a version of yourself you’d forgotten.
A track that played the first time you went to a place or travelled alone. Or the beat that looped while you were building something or working late into the night. Even the sad songs you wouldn’t play now still matter because they remind you of the person you once were.
Music isn’t just about playing out moments & but it also shapes your identity and helps construct it.
Psychologists call this autobiographical memory, and music, especially from adolescence and early adulthood, is disproportionately stored in this part of the brain.
That’s why your teenage playlists hit harder than most music you discover later. Your brain was still wiring its emotional framework, and music became part of that blueprint.
For me, they are several songs by Blink 182, or Green Day, and Audioslave in my school days, especially “Holiday” by Green Day, “Send The Pain Below” by Chevelle or “Drowning” by Crazy Town. Those were the songs of my school years.
Or the music I played frequently in my sets at the pub like Radiohead’s “Karma Police” or Audioslave’s “Be Yourself” or “I Am The Highway” or Pink Floyd’s “Time” and “Pigs” or System of a Down’s “Toxicity” or David Bowie’s “Bring Me The Disco King (Lohner Remix)” or MIA’s “Paper Planes” or Mos Def’s “Six Days”, Goldspot’s “Friday” or the Hindi song “Nayan Tarse”.. ah I could go on…
Songs That Time Forgets, But You Don’t
There are a lot of songs we outgrow. And then there are songs that outgrow us, but they lie dormant for years until one day they return, uninvited, unplanned and undeniably striking a chord, not failing to move you.
You hear that opening riff or the first bar of a vocal sample and something inside says: “Oh f*ck, remember this?”
And you do.
You remember that walk home at dusk. Those old friends you lost touch with. Your past loves. That particular moment at a bar or event. That article you were writing. The song becomes a bookmark in the story of your life.
In that sense, music is the closest we have to a time machine. But of course, you don’t travel through time through historical events or places; it takes you to the quiet, personal instances of your own life.
The Music You Don’t Remember Remembering
Some of the most powerful musical memories aren’t even yours, they’re inherited. The lullabies your mother hummed. The spiritual chants from your grandmother’s temple. The static-filled radio in your dad’s car.
For me, these were the songs my late grandmother sang to me or this Carnatic music CD my Dad played in our car when he drove me to school, or Blink 182’s “All The Small Things” that we played in my friend’s car that his driver drove us to school in a carpool.
“Late night, come home, work sucks, I know!” — Blink 182 ‘All The Small Things’
Those lines above lingered & have stuck with me even today.
These songs & sounds lodge themselves in your memory not as conscious recollections, but as part of the emotional makeup of who you are.
In many ways, you were formed and shaped by them.
Why It Matters
Some people think of music as just background sounds or productivity fuel while working, or to play at parties or gatherings. However, music is one of the few things that anchors us to ourselves & our lives.
When you find a song that feels like a phase of your life, cherish it. Live it & let it play! Even if your taste changes or your head tells you it’s “outdated.”
Those songs are timeless, like the songs I’m playing just now as I write this piece.
Maybe that’s why we return to them, because it doesn’t just take you back to a past memory, but rather it’s an integral part of living life & who you were & who you are.
In a world saturated with endless automated playlists and algorithmic discovery, it’s easy to forget the deeper role music plays, which is why I’ve created my second YouTube music channel, after selling my first one.
It’s called #1PlaylistAWeek, wherein, as the name suggests, I try to post a playlist every week. You can find it & subscribe to it here: https://www.youtube.com/@1PlaylistAWeek
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