WEEK 39 - Musical identity and radio theatre

PETRA

This week contains two different tasks. The first was to present our favourite music. I have to admit it is almost impossible for me to choose just one piece of music to present. I love music of all genres from mainstream radio pop through oldies or rock and punk rock music to opera and other classics.

Finally I decided to choose the Linkin Park song Somewhere I Belong from the album Meteora.

Meteora was released in 2003. Those days there were no YouTube or any social media and Myspace was launched a few months later that year. We just started to learn to use the computers and internet. The only chance to get to new music was radio and TV charts. And that’s how I found Linkin Park when I was a teenager.

I remember one ICT lesson in my secondary school. We finished all the tasks (mostly some super easy stuff kids nowadays can handle at age three or so) and had time to do whatever we wanted on the computers. We had a blast while chatting with weird people in a chatting room called xchat or so. But my biggest interest was a TV chart called Meduza and its short samples of charted songs available on the Internet.

You could listen to only like thirty seconds of the songs. It was enough to decide whether you wanted to vote for the song or not. But I loved this one so much I listened to the sample again and again and again. Other kids were laughing at me and the music too. I didn’t care. I just loved the sound. Years later I got to know the song's lyrics about an inner fight and trying to find a place in this world and life. And it got me even more. As a teenager you see yourself as the center of your own world.

Linkin Park has been my life love since those days. I don't listen to it often but always when I do, it brings back memories and old known feelings. I am happy I could see them live and I think, finally I can appreciate all the honesty and confessions in their music. Because sometimes you need time to realise there is much more hidden behind.