When you meet new people around our age the conversation eventually gets to the standard question: “So, what do you do?” When we say, “We’re musicians,” the conversation almost always just… ends. “Oh.” And then silence. No one really asks anything further. No one says, “Would I know your music?” or “Have you been in a famous band?” or “What kind of music do you make?” It’s fascinating really, because music is one of the few things almost everyone consumes every single day. People soundtrack their lives with it. They drive to it, cry to it, celebrate to it, fall in love to it. Music follows people through decades of memories.
And yet, saying you’re a musician often lands with the same excitement as saying you sell printer cartridges. I sometimes think it’s because people quietly assume that if they don’t already know your name, then there’s nothing more to know. Which is slightly absurd really. I mean, I could have been the bass player in one of the biggest bands in the world and most people still wouldn’t recognise me in the supermarket. Bass players mostly only get recognised by other bass players – and even then not always!
So we’ve developed this strange habit over the years. Almost immediately after saying we’re musicians, we follow it up with something like, “But that’s not how we paid for this house.” As though we need to reassure people. As though being musicians requires an apology. And the truth is, yes, we had careers outside of music, that’s how we built a stable life and paid mortgages and did all the normal grown-up things people do. But it’s interesting that there’s this underlying assumption that music somehow couldn’t possibly have contributed value unless it came attached to huge fame, wealth or celebrity.
It makes you wonder how society measures worth. A person can spend decades creating art, writing songs, making albums, pouring emotion and meaning into music, and still be viewed as someone with a “cute hobby” unless they become commercially enormous. Yet the same people dismissing musicians will often tell you a particular song changed their life, got them through heartbreak, reminded them of their youth, or carried them through grief. That sounds valuable to me. Incredibly valuable, actually.
Over the years I’ve quietly wondered whether even some very successful musicians struggle with this question? Once you strip away the money, fame, touring and public attention, do they themselves fully understand the value of what they created? Do they really wonder if it was a life well spent?
Music really is the soundtrack of our lives. Most people can hear one song and instantly be transported back twenty years – a school dance, a road trip, a first kiss, a funeral, a broken heart, a kitchen party… a summer afternoon that otherwise would have disappeared into history.
That’s human memory stitched together with sound. Music- so valuable, so part of us all, but so not worth talking about, especially if you actually meet a real live musician!!
