5 Songs That Help Me Navigate The Darkness

Here’s my emergency kit … what’s in yours?

Can music save you from yourself?

There are moments when the inner seas rise with such might and turbulence that we may find ourselves struggling to swim back to the edges of the known. When the storm hits us strong, we are faced with the sudden onslaught of a mental torment that otherwise stays quiet, simmering in the background. As it bursts open howls and cries emerge, deafening, and we stumble past the security of identity, teetering towards our inner cave for shelter.

Instances of grief, anger, loss, heartbreak or despair come to tip the otherwise stable ship of “self” over. As the inner landscape implodes into self-warfare, it can be difficult to keep still. Our bodies and our minds—these elements that are meant to shelter us—start to work against us, and it feels like we’re being swallowed whole at an alarming pace.

In those moments, plugging in some headphones and immersing ourselves in a symphony of scintillating vibrations can be the most healing escape, and it may ultimately sway us back to the peaceful centre. It can be a life raft.

I’m interested in how music can help change our immediate state in situations of emergency—how it alleviates the alarm and calms the seas of inner torment. I have spoken about how it helps me contend with the immediate physical pain of tattooing. Presently, I want to explore how music can also help us in moments of emotional hardship.

I thought I’d share with you some songs that have helped me resume a sense of balance amidst the chaos. I’m curious to know yours.

So, light a candle, put in some headphones, breathe deep, and press play.

Best for : Dramatic Weeping and Wallowing

DEPTFORD GOTH : Lions

This one is for crying sessions.

There are moments when you have been gifted the time, space and resources to fully engage safely with the emotions that bubble up. Heartache over love lost is such an instant for me. In the past, I’ve derived a weird comfort from mourning a romantic rejection. I suppose that by delving so deep into the sadness I was able somehow to meet its neighbour, joy, in the process.

As such, weeping often comes to underline the beautiful notion that something—or someone—mattered to you deeply, even though it may have been wrong, or painful. The vocal, and very real, act of crying comes as a heartfelt send-off, a proper burial of the affair. It helps you move on.

Crying comes to honour our subjective understanding of the experience. At this point, there’s no going back, there’s no more bargaining to be had. As Roy Orbison would wail : it’s over.

Excessive (and slightly performative) solitary crying may not always be healthy—as love comes to entail so many projections and skewed perceptions, especially when one is young—but it certainly can be healing.

Meaningful lyric to blow your weepy nose into :

“No one is undone Say you’ll remember this”

Runner Up : the distinctly funereal quality in Andrew Bird’s Three White Horses

Best for : Powerful Catharsis and Rage

GOJIRA : Esoteric Surgery

What is better than heavy guitar riffs to come and accompany the self exorcism of sorrow?

There is usually a latency in the process of engaging with a challenging emotion. A limbo state where you may acknowledge it from afar, but are not fully ready yet to welcome it. In those moments, I consistently return to this album by French metal band Gojira.

The melodic loudness of the music engulfs me like a warm embrace. It numbs me gently, but it also elevates every sensation in my body as my pulse accords itself to the relentless symphony.

Listening to this is a positively redemptive process that effectively washes away any fear I might have about embracing the discomfort that the emotion brings. It helps me approach the challenging emotion in a new way, buoyed by my own strength, ignited as I stand after listening to this song and its powerful lyrics that speak to the inherent force that resides inside all of us.

Meaningful lyric to chant like a mantra :

“There is a secret code, the structure of the mind, You have the power to heal yourself”

Runner Up : the epic, and suitably cinematic, crescendo of Clint Mansell, Death is The Road to Awe

Best for : A Shot of Hope Straight to The Heart

THE ENEMY : You’re Not Alone

There are chapters in your life that are steeped in music and the sense memory that it provokes more than others. The early twenties and its inexorable building of individuality is one of those eras.

The years between 2005 and 2009 seem to be built only through music for me. I was roaming a huge new city on my own, wearing my state of the art MP3 player like an amulet. Through the prism of music, I witnessed British culture through endless bus rides and trips on the tube, observant of the mannerisms of my fellow citizens. I visited Camden Town when a young Amy Winehouse was rising to the top of the charts, and when Pete Doherty made the news with all the trouble he caused. I followed their footsteps like a silent ghost, gathering songs along the way.

The Enemy was one of the bands I discovered at that time. The singer’s pronounced Brummie accent felt so wonderfully exotic to me, and so alive with defiant hope.

On a recent bus trip to see my therapist, this song came on my (now updated) MP3 player, and its raw power and simple message still shook life into me, even years after listening to it.

While I suspect that the song itself speaks more to a sense of political self determination, the lyrics personally reverberate with the profound struggle against meaninglessness that we all may face—especially during seasons of our lives where every single endeavour that we undertake seems to fail.

The rhythm and verve in this anthem of a song inject a categorical new lease of life into my soul.

Meaningful lyric to bump your fist in the air to :

“There’s just too many dreams in this wasteland for you to leave us all behind.”

Runner Up : Pink Floyd’s Coming Back to Life contains a promising sense of the hope that tomorrow brings, and reminds me that the fog usually lifts by morning.

Best for : Connecting To A Higher Power

BEETHOVEN : Piano Concerto №5

As the inner voices busy themselves towards annihilation, you may start to feel like you’re shrinking, sinking into yourself.

In those moments, these melodies stir you up like a benevolent force as it picks you up with its giant hand and reminds you of your place in the grand scheme of things. There is life to be had beyond this moment, it seems to say. There are histories to create and stories to twine over.

Melodic universes like this one offer a refuge that never fails to inspire me to see beyond the ailing moment that I seem entrenched in. When I tune in, I zoom out and I see the indelible place that I, and everyone else, may hold in the world. I’m reminded that we all play a part in history.

I think to myself that if someone as tormented and afflicted as Beethoven could create such glory, then surely we all have gifts deep inside that are waiting to be shared with the world—and it is in the contribution of such gifts that we may find a sense of fulfilment.

Runner Up : Nils Frahm’s Says rises—like the aforementioned Mansell track—to a stirring climax that seems to annul in its magnitude all the torment that may weigh us down.

Best For : Moments When You Want to Feel Held

EDITORS : The Weight of The World

Circling back to those formative years in the late 2000s, I remember trekking up to Mount Pleasant Sorting Office in Clerkenwell, London, and it appeared as epic as the name suggests—a vast building that stretched out its imposing presence, and seemed to hold within all the undelivered treasures and secrets of an entire city.

I went there to pick up a delivery of CDs that I’d ordered online from this new band from Birmingham I’d heard about on the radio.

Strongly reminiscent of Joy Division, the band nonetheless had some more upbeat lyrics than their Manchester bred influence. While Joy Division have become my go-to band for embracing the darkness and using it for a creative purpose, Editors have ended up being a massive conductor in the engineering of a sense of hope in my inner world, with soothing lyrics and melodies that swirl around my head in times when I’m being trampled by malevolent voices in the fog of meaninglessness.

Meaningful lyric to savour like a prayer:

“Every little piece of your life Will add up to one Every little piece of your life Will mean something to someone”

Runner Up : there is an airiness that evokes a vast space where everything was beautiful and nothing hurt in Bruce Springsteen’s Paradise which I love returning to.

Thanks for reading. What are the songs that help you? What feeling do they provide? What emotions do they assist in navigating?

I’m curious.

You’ll find here a playlist that accompanies this article—thank you Paul Combs for the inspiration to create this!

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