The music we listen to has a direct impact on our well-being. Your subconscious mind absorbs the emotions of the artist and tunes you to them like an instrument. It is up to you how you play the music of your life. I found the right tones in the compositions of Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar Þórhallsson. The band Of Monsters and Men from Iceland puts me truly in a positive thoughtful mood.
Your Emotional State Determines Your Happiness
Our feeling of happiness comes from the inside. It is impossible to permanently maintain it, for example, by buying things. Biochemistry is responsible for this. In the end, it is crucial which thoughts and emotions we allow into our emotional world. They indeed form the basis for our everyday feeling of happiness.
When you listen to music, you take over the emotional state of the artist. It has a direct influence on your world of thoughts and thus on your whole life.
It is up to you whether you let negative or positive emotions affect your mind. You can become full of anger, depressed, sad, euphoric, full of drive or thoughtful and retrospective.
Know How Music Affects You
The only way to know how music affects you is to listen to different music genres and artists and go inside yourself to see how your mood changes. Become an observer of your inner state. Get clear on whether the changes are good for you or rather harmful.
Everyone is different, and has other preferences. There are different phases in life, and sometimes we want to allow various emotions.
On the other side, we can get into a negative spiral without realizing it if we do not pay attention.
That is why it is always important to observe ourselves and know the effect of music on us.
Of Monsters and Men and the Right Sound
Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.
– Sean O’Connell, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
I find it difficult to find outstanding music these days. To my taste, most of today’s productions sound synthetic and could probably be generated by a moderately good artificial intelligence.
Of Monsters and Men is a band from Iceland whose sound and lyrics appeal to me exceptionally well.
They are authentic, pure and natural, like Icelandic nature itself. The lyrics are deep, and the sound is truly unique.
You can tell excellent artists by the fact that they sound even just as good unplugged as they do in the studio.
Each song is a masterpiece in itself, it tells its own story, and can be indeed a catchy tune.
Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar Þórhallsson write the lyrics themselves and are lead vocals. The other members of the extraordinary band are the guitarists Brynjar Leifsson and Kristján Páll Kristjánsson and the drummer Arnar Rósenkranz Hilmarsson.
As I write these lines in Hamburg, I listen to the tracks Empire, Little Talks, Alligator, Crystals and my favourite Dirty Paws 🎵.
Be Open and Look Inside Yourself
For me, as a computer scientist, music could be a program that the artist writes to execute in your emotional world. It is in fact crucial to know which variables the music changes and how it affects you.
Be open to new musical experiences but also be mindful of how they set your emotional state and, whether it’s going in the direction you want.
From the rain comes a river
Running wild that will create
An empire for you
Illuminate there is a river
Running wild that will create
― Of Monsters and Men, Empire
Finally if you want to do something beneficial for your favourite artist, buy an album and go to the concert if you can instead of streaming the music online.