Can You Get Your Psychology and Learn How to Deal With Life From a Song?

People have been using songs to understand life long before anybody used words like “self-help,” “therapy,” or “mental health.”

A song probably can’t diagnose what’s wrong with you, and it certainly can’t solve every problem. But can a song change the way you think about yourself, another person, or the mess you’re going through?

Absolutely.

In three or four minutes, a great songwriter can sometimes explain a human emotion better than somebody could in an hour-long conversation.

Songs Are Little Lessons in Human Nature

Think about what songs are usually about.

Love. Death. Jealousy. Betrayal. Loneliness. Anger. Addiction. Regret. Hope. Fear. Growing old. Losing somebody. Getting knocked down and trying again.

That’s psychology.

Songwriters may not call it psychology because they’re usually not sitting around with textbooks studying human behavior. They’re watching people. They’re watching themselves. They’re making mistakes, getting their hearts broken, falling in love, getting angry, getting older, and trying to make sense of it all.

Then they put what they learned into a song.

Sometimes the lesson isn’t even intentional.

The songwriter simply tells the truth.

A Song Can Tell You That You’re Not Alone

One of the strangest powers of music is hearing somebody you’ve never met describe exactly what you’re feeling.

You can be sitting alone thinking nobody understands what you’re going through. Then some singer comes through the speakers and says almost exactly what you’ve been thinking.

Suddenly you realize:

Somebody else has been here.

That realization can matter.

The problem hasn’t disappeared, but you’re no longer the only human being carrying it.

That’s one reason heartbreak songs have survived for generations. People don’t necessarily listen to them because they enjoy being miserable. They listen because hearing somebody else put their pain into words can make their own pain easier to understand.

Country Music Has Been Doing This Forever

Country music is especially good at turning life into short psychological lessons.

Somebody leaves.

Somebody drinks too much.

Somebody screws up a marriage.

Somebody loses everything.

Somebody realizes money didn’t make them happy.

Somebody finally understands what their father was trying to tell them thirty years ago.

There’s usually a story, but underneath that story is something about human behavior.

Johnny Cash could sing about guilt and redemption.

Willie Nelson could sing about loneliness and freedom.

Hank Williams could turn heartbreak into something almost anybody could recognize.

Great songs aren’t lectures. They don’t stand there pointing a finger at you saying, “Here is how you should live.”

They tell you what happened.

You figure out the lesson.

Sometimes One Line Is Enough

That’s the beauty of songwriting.

A psychologist might need several pages to explain an idea. A songwriter sometimes gets there in one line.

A great lyric can stay inside your head for decades.

Then one day something happens and suddenly that old line means something completely different.

That’s because we don’t hear songs the same way throughout our lives.

A love song at twenty might sound romantic.

At forty, it might sound complicated.

At seventy, the same song might make you think about somebody who has been gone for thirty years.

The song didn’t change.

You did.

And now you’re hearing it through everything you’ve lived.

But Songs Aren’t Always Good Advice

There’s another side to this.

Songs can romanticize some pretty bad ideas.

Revenge.

Jealousy.

Drinking yourself into oblivion.

Obsessing over somebody who doesn’t want you.

Destroying yourself because a relationship ended.

A song can make terrible behavior sound beautiful.

That’s why music shouldn’t be treated like an instruction manual. A songwriter is telling a story or expressing an emotion. That doesn’t necessarily mean you should follow the character’s example.

Sometimes the lesson of a song is actually:

Don’t become this person.

Songwriters Are Students of People

You don’t need a psychology degree to notice human nature.

Sit in enough bars.

Have enough relationships.

Lose a few friends.

Make some money.

Lose some money.

Get older.

Make enough stupid decisions.

Eventually, if you’re paying attention, you’ll learn something about people.