Music legend Mike Chunn's life-saving songs

New Zealand band Split Enz in 1976.

Mike Chunn - a founding member of Split Enz and Play It Strange - a charitable trust which supports young New Zealanders in their songwriting ambitions - has a new book, a yarn about rock 'n' roll and finding a way through personal struggle. Here, he writes of five songs that will save your life.

Songs are a unique construction. There are two components.
(1) Words that talk to us in a language that we respond to, each in our own way. And then
(2) Music that drifts down to us as luminous trails from the breath of space. Music is magical.
The hard part is then weaving them together to make a complete invention of the imagination. A song. One thing we do know is that there are songs that come into our lives and exert huge emotional power. So let's look at a particular seam of that power – the power of positivity. The power to "save lives". Let's look at five songs that bring a fortitude and a confidence such that the steps we take after listening to them fill us with a purpose that is real and powerful. Charge on …

Mike Chunn, bass player and a founder of Split Enz. Photo / Josef Scott

You're Not Alone, by Grace Brebner and Cait Oliver-Roche
"Take my hand; don't let it go
You're talking in shadows in your sleep
Turn your face towards the sun
The shadows retreat"

Your teenage years at school can feel hemmed in; constricted. The day-by-day and the slow, slow seasons. Who surrounds you? Who orders your decisions and fashions your dreams. Are you alone? Lonely? This song is about the love between two classmates who were 16 when the song was written and recorded for the Play It Strange album. It's enough to lift you high above the tawdry, wayward minute-by-minute of teenage life such that you are in a spiritual zone of purity. It is magic.

Musician Jordan Luck. Photo / Doug Sherring/NZ Herald

Come And Go, by Jordan Luck (The Exponents)
"She caught the train to Kingsland Station
Dancing in the bedroom till they fall asleep
Waking up alone from a dread so deep"

The years of adventure in your 20s as formalised by romantic novels and rom-coms are unreal. The fractured plans and the confused intentions find you searching, searching and reaching out. Jordan Luck's Come And Go flies over you like an eagle and as you listen you realise that your seemingly dishevelled existence isn't that at all. It's an imperfect stage in a colourful life. Keep moving on.

Don McGlashan of the Muttonbirds. Photo / Martin Sykes

While You Sleep, by Don McGlashan (The Muttonbirds)
"You took the room; and pretty soon I knew
That we all would fly to you like little arrows"

The watershed moment when another person knocks on the door (in reality or figuratively) and consequences lead to a virulent infatuation, then a song that touches you and reflects that moment for years to come is a crucial component of your emotional library. Don McGlashan's song has a truly accurate portrayal of the simple points of evolution in the connection of love.

Bruce Springsteen's song, Walk Like A Man traverses the complexities of a father-son relationship.

Walk Like A Man, by Bruce Springsteen
"I remember how rough your hands felt
On my wedding day."

Springsteen carries his songwriting in parallel with the ageing of his fans. That finds us listeners weaving his songs into the fabric of our lives. So if The River found you in your 20s, driving your motorbike with a taut, straight back and your machismo strident, then I'm On Fire found you tilting into the dark arena of lust and love. Which leads us to his album Tunnel Of Love, and the extraordinary song Walk Like A Man. The father and son. The hugely complex patterns of that relationship find in this song the one supreme connection that tells a real truth. The wedding day.

Joni Mitchell in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1972. Photo / Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns

Both Sides Now, by Joni Mitchell
"Tears and fears and feeling proud,
To say ' I love you' right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I've looked at life that way"

And there is life. The roller coaster, the great divide, the clown and the perfect symmetry. And in all the merging and splintering, there is the need to understand. In Joni Mitchell's 4' 33" she lays it out before us and we understand. We can stand back and sense the reality of where, who and why. And with love in our life and luck at our fingertips, we are safe. Mitchell knows this.

A Sharp Left Turn: Notes on a life in music, from Split Enz to Play it Strange, by Mike Chunn (Allen & Unwin, $45). Available October 1.