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 …
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.