When Music Rocked Our World

Writers share musical life experiences

May 17, 2025

My earliest musical memory is watching The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights. Of course, everyone knows it was where The Beatles were introduced to America, kickstarting Beatlemania, and I remember my seven-year-old self falling right into it with everyone else. It was a thing for the 8th grade girls who sat in the back of the school bus to sing Beatles songs on the way home after school. I can still hear “Love Me Do” in their lilting soprano voices in my head.

One of the magical things about music is how a song can transport you back to a particular experience or time in your life. Certain songs can manifest the exact same feelings you had when it was important to you, even if it was 39 years ago, like the one at the end of this post. “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel will always be a carefree Summer week on the beach at Gulf Shores, Alabama in 1986. It calls my name. I remember the wildly creative music video for this song and how I watched closely every time I caught it on MTV, back when MTV was all music all the time. (What a pitiful joke it is now!) I still think the video is super cool.

I particularly enjoy reading music-related essays and stories by writers who love listening to music as much as I do. It’s interesting to read why that song evokes their emotional response. I collected a few stories that I enjoyed for you to enjoy. Dive in!

WHITNEY AND ME By Dorothy Chin in Syncopation Literary Journal

Nights after the last customer left, Mrs. Hosaki would let us turn the music way up and we would boogie to Whitney while we wiped down the soy sauce jars. How will I know if he really loves me/I say a prayer with every heartbeat…Even Angel, the portly prep cook who made all the sushi rolls, joined the after-hours party.

Strike a Minor Chord by C.W. Blackwell in Reckon Review

When I went home at the end of the summer, I swapped the acoustic guitar for a Fender Stratocaster and an amp with a decent distortion channel. By the end of ‘91, it was clear that whatever had broken loose from the Seattle music scene wasn’t soon going away.

Dumb by Nirvana by Shome Dasgupta in Stereo Stories

There’s this Nirvana song where Kurt Cobain sings, “Or maybe I’m just happy / Think I’m just happy,” and I haven’t listened to it in roughly twenty years or so, but those lyrics continue to float around in my mind as I sit here in my car in the Academy parking lot, looking at the sky and a solo bird flying across the sun.

Rocky Ground by Bruce Springsteen by Martina Medica in Stereo Stories

You sang along to it in the car that day, and you sang it often for the next year or two. You sang it at your grandparents’ houses. You sang it at daycare. You sang it at home in our studio, into a microphone and on video, something we are looking forward to sharing with the world at your 21st birthday. We all sang it while driving, or walking, or cycling over – yep – rocky ground.

To Be a Street Musician by Matt Dennison in The Wild Word (reprinted in SugarSugarSalt Magazine)

Every day I would get off the streetcar at Canal Street and carry my guitar through the French Quarter, heading for a favorite street corner or spot in Jackson Square. And one day I realized it was the very same thing as carrying my fishing pole through the woods, that setting down my tackle box, baiting the hook and making that first cast was the same act as setting down my guitar case, opening up and beginning to play.

God of Blunder by JD Clapp in Revolution John

We wandered all over the Sports Arena for the next thirty minutes, shrouded in a haze of dope smoke, weaving through thousands of stoned teenagers, face-painted fans, and sloppy drunks, all trying to buy beer or KISS t-shirts. We were on a mission, two loyal privates in the KISS Army.

Last Dance By Sheree Shatsky in her Substack, Shared Madness, and originally published in Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art (print)

She rummaged through her keepsake trunk and struck college gold with the find of her Walkman and a shoebox full of old audio cassettes. She chose Mary Jane’s Last Dance to begin her self-imposed punishment…

If I Could Just Crash Here Tonight by Maggie DuBois in Memoir Mixtapes

Was it just coincidence that I had ended up with him all those years ago, my given name being Mary, nicknamed Maggie? If he were Jesus, then had I been his Mary Magdalene all along?
He liked to call me "Magpie" from the Donovan song, but that’s not the song in this story.

Turn it up loud!