The Music in my Life

Usually, I don’t like sad, “depressive” lyrics. Mostly because I believe in the heroic, not in the usual obsession with pain, suffering and weakness. But also because, in most mainstream music, the lyrics are little more than “poor little me, I suffer so much, I can’t do anything about it, I won’t even try to do something about it, the world is so unfair, blah blah blah”.

That just doesn’t appeal to me - sounds too much like nagging, complaining, and putting suffering and weakness in a pedestal. I like my lyrics to be inspiring, thoughtful, intelligent.

Then, why do I like Blaze’s Blood and Belief, from 2004, so much - as it is, certainly, a sad album?

Because, you see, my problem isn’t with the “sadness” of an album per se, but with what is usually associated with sad lyrics: the whining, the weakness, the “easy” lyrics, and, most of all, the fact that the music stays, in most cases, stupidly happy - and singing about how you suffer so much to a happy tune sounds, to say the least, false.

But Blaze’s third studio album, while sad, is, above all, introspective. Everything there comes from his personal experience, it’s not just “whining lyrics sell, so let’s make some”. It’s dark, thoughtful, incredibly well written, and honest, too - so honest that it’s almost frightening.

From his experiences with alcoholism, through his own mental problems, through the regret from loss of a loved one - not because she died, but because his mistakes ruined everything -, to his refusal of baseless religion, of petty attacks by music columnists, the album works, indeed, as Blaze Bayley’s “Soundtrack to My Life” - the name of the last song, by the way. Few albums are so brutally honest, so intense, and few albums will make you think as much as this one does.

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