There are certain songs that are more than just songs. They are not simply melodies, lyrics, or a collection of instruments arranged in a certain way. Sometimes a song becomes a time capsule. Sometimes it becomes a doorway back to a moment, a person, or a feeling that you thought you had buried deep inside yourself. Sometimes a song finds a part of you that you did not even realize was still hurting. For me, that song is “Ghost” by Justin Bieber. Before I talk about why this song means so much to me, I have to talk about something that changed the way I experience music forever: losing someone I loved. In 2019, my uncle passed away. At the time, I did not fully understand how much that loss would affect me. I had experienced sadness before. I had experienced disappointment, stress, and difficult moments in life. But this was different. This was the first major loss that truly shook me. This was the first time someone important to me was gone, and there was no fixing it, no going b...

 Keane, the English alternative rock band that rose to prominence in the early 2000s, has long held a unique place in the landscape of modern pop and rock music. Unlike many contemporaries who rely on aggressive instrumentation or heavily produced electronic elements, Keane is defined by its piano-driven melodies, hauntingly emotive vocals, and lyrics that probe the human condition. While their music can often appear bright and melodic on the surface, a closer examination reveals a consistent engagement with mental health, emotional struggle, and the intricate dynamics of human psychology. Across albums like Hopes and Fears , Under the Iron Sea , and Perfect Symmetry , Keane tackles anxiety, depression, loss, alienation, and the universal human desire for connection and understanding, creating a body of work that resonates deeply with listeners facing their own mental health challenges. From the very beginning of their career, Keane’s music has conveyed a vulnerability that stands...

 Keane’s “Everybody’s Changing” is often framed as a song about growing up, about alienation, about watching the world move on while you feel frozen in place. Those readings are valid, but they only scratch the surface. Beneath the song’s soft piano lines and plaintive vocals lies something darker, more fragile, and more emotionally perilous. “Everybody’s Changing” is also a song about death, not always in the literal sense, but in the slow, psychological, and existential sense. It is about the death of identity, the death of certainty, the death of relationships, and the death of the version of yourself that once felt whole. In that way, it becomes deeply entangled with mental health, especially depression, anxiety, dissociation, and the quiet, often invisible grief that comes with feeling outpaced by life itself. From its opening moments, the song establishes a sense of displacement that feels almost funereal. There is no explosive hook, no grand declaration. Instead, it eases i...

 There’s a song by Marianas Trench called Acadia , and even without analyzing all of its lyrics, there is one line that keeps echoing in my mind: “Acadia is gone.” That line, simple yet profound, carries a weight that feels deeply personal. It captures a sense of change and loss that goes beyond the song itself—the quiet ache of realizing that the people, places, and moments that once defined your life are gone in ways you cannot retrieve. For me, Acadia is gone, and every time I hear it, it feels like someone has named a truth I’ve long carried: life is impermanent, and the things that mattered most can disappear without warning. The first type of loss that comes to mind when I hear that line is the gradual drifting of friends and connections. This is the kind of loss the song hints at, the friends moving away, losing touch, growing apart. It’s a quiet erosion, not dramatic, but powerful. In our younger years, friendships often feel unbreakable, as though they will exist forever....