What Healing Sounds Like
Photography by Caitlyn Ong
I’ll never forget staring out the window on my way to see my grandparents that July: headphones perched in both ears, frantically responding to the first whispers of fascination from a 16-year-old boy behind my phone screen. “The Louvre” by Lorde was playing, the sky was a new shade of blue, and he thought I was cool.
As the New Zealand singer mused about overthinking her lover’s “punctuation use,” I giggled. It felt like she was looking over my shoulder while I screenshotted his messages with exclamation points and asked friends for clarity.
About a month later, I wondered if she knew I’d be lying face-down on the carpet in my childhood bedroom, convulsing as she crooned about feeling like a liability.
“Said he made the big mistake of dancing in my storm.”
Melodrama, Lorde’s sophomore feat, followed me that summer. In the car on the way to a baseball game when we got in our last fight, I played “Sober.” In the bathroom of the Hyannisport hotel, I did my makeup to “Hard Feelings/Loveless” and sang in the mirror. At midnight, my best friend held my hand and sat in my parked car while “Writer in the Dark” droned on. I was a junior in high school and not nearly old enough to understand what genuine heartbreak was. Yet I knew that the world felt like it was crashing down around me, and the only voice I wanted to listen to in a stream of empty advice was Ella Yelich-O’Connor’s.
There is something to be said for the art of a good album. It is composed with purpose and intent, and it evokes a sense of belonging in the space it creates. What the words of Jack Antonoff and Lorde did for me at 16 is what countless artists provide for those going through a difficult period in their life.
Tina Ascolillo, a sophomore at UMass Lowell, agrees. “Music has always been how I remember different events in my life,” she says. In regards to Ariana Grande’s thank u, next, Ascolillo reveals that she often finds herself reminiscing on a rough spot in her last relationship that coincided with the album’s release.
“I remember going to the store with my friend the night I had initiated a breakup with my boyfriend and listening to the full album as we drove,” says Ascolillo. “Each song struck me so hard that I cried singing along, imagining my relationship in the same situations.”
Micaela Grimes, a sophomore at Brandeis University, also cites thank u, next as the album that defined her worst breakup.
“The first song that stood out to me was ‘NASA,’” says Grimes. “It’s a song about feeling suffocated by the person you’re with, especially because you spend too much time with them. It encouraged me to go with my gut and break off my relationship. I knew I needed space.”
Alicia Vitale, a junior at UMass Amherst, had a similar experience with HAIM’s debut album Days Are Gone. Vitale recalls leaning on the words of the Haim siblings at age 16, recovering from a particularly toxic situationship.
The significance of these coming-of-age albums is nothing inherently abstract; young artists that contribute bold, heartfelt compilations to our collective libraries carve out their place as the soundtrack to our youth.
“Obviously there is a bitterness from the fact that this was the album that we broke up to, but I also think that listening to it makes me hyper-aware of the fact that time heals. As time goes on, each time I listen to it, I do a little less crying, and a little more dancing,” says Grimes. “Someday this album won’t remind me of my breakup—it’ll remind me that I can overcome anything.”