Music can be a powerful tool that can show us that someone once went through what we're feeling, and remind us that we're not alone. When we can’t find the words ourselves, music gives them to us. It helps us feel seen and even understood. For Mental Health Awareness Month, we wanted to put the spotlight on the music that has saved YOU over the years. This is by the fans, for the fans. These aren't just tracks that you love, but the songs that held you together when everything seemed to be falling apart. This is your love letter to the music that saved you.
Alesana - The Emptiness
shared by Jo
"It was my brother's favorite band and favorite album, and after his passing I listened to it nonstop to help cope with suicidal thoughts. In the process, I became a lifelong fan as well...It has and will always remind me of the time I spent with my brother, and when I am missing him the most, I will still play that album."
Sanity is slowly slipping from my hands now, I’m standing closer to the edge than I should be allowed.
My Chemical Romance - “Disenchanted”
shared by Eli
If I’m really honest, My Chemical Romance as a whole has saved my life in so many more ways than I’ll ever be able to thank them for; they gave me something to latch onto while I was living through what I think was one of the roughest years of my life. I really think they held me together, but there is one song of theirs that has always hit me the hardest but at the same time consoled me like anything else which was “Disenchanted.” It’s not the most popular of the non single tracks in The Black Parade, but something about it being calmer, sadder, and the lyrics being the way they are, made 16yo me find comfort in that song whenever I felt down; I have a very clear memory of holding onto a laptop as it played my Black Parade CD, and playing “Disenchanted” while I cried about my life and really thought stuff couldn’t get worse, but it still made me hold on; and now, at near 20, having seen it live after they hadn’t performed it for the past 17 years, I look back and realize just how much it helped me at the time (and still does), how much I held onto the possibility of hearing it live someday, and how cathartic the moment itself was as I wailed and cried and sang my heart out it with a ton of other people who loved that band as much as I do.
Moment That Stands Out: “When We Were Young 2024, I think I cried during half of MCR’s set as it had been a dream of mine for quite a while to see them live (especially since they played the album with which I got introduced to them in full), but “Disenchanted” was just cathartic, even more than screaming to “Mama”, because I realized that I had felt that song of course, that I had really related to it, but in that moment I was just so happy to have held on, that I was there in that moment seeing one of my favorite songs ever be performed. I remember them finishing off the song, and during the silence between that and the start of “Famous Last Words”, like three different people asked if I was ok, with the last of them just hugging me as I cleaned off my tears and tried to explain just how important that had been. I was alive, and gonna be fine; it was ironic that the next song was “Famous Last Words”, because as I sang the chorus, I realized it was the first time I sang as if I meant those words.”
Eli also shares: “Never let anyone tell you that how music makes you feel isn’t valid, everyone feels it differently, and obviously it means more to some of us than others but that’s kinda its beauty, too.”
My Chemical Romance - "Headfirst for Halos"
shared by Vincent
The first song by My Chemical Romance I ever heard was "Headfirst For Halos," I used to sing "think happy thoughts" to myself whenever I was anxious, depressed, suicidal, you name it. It became a little mantra for me.
Growing up poor in England, I never got to see the band live before their break-up, but the absolute joy that came with being able to sing/scream along to "Famous Last Words" and "Our Lady of Sorrows" in 2022 was like coming back to life all over again.
Moment That Stands Out: "At that show, Milton Keynes night 2, I used the men's room in a dress and had a guy with a trans pin tell me my outfit was cool. I felt the urge to cut my hair short again. I didn't have the courage that night, but a few months later when Gerard came out in that cheerleader dress? Seeing them so happy, having come from a similar place of drugs and alcohol and mental illness? It made me realise I could get better, too, and could be my true self, too.
(Singing along to Mama when you've recently realised you and your own mother are in a religious cult is also kind of a vibe, I won't lie.)"
Vincent also shares: "Thank you for doing this - it sounds so corny to say "music saved my life" but it's true. It's an art form that has existed for as long as humans have (even before, dare I say...), and there's a reason we feel an innate connection to it."
One Direction - "Stand Up"
shared by Eleanor
Discovering One Direction literally gave me an out and a way to connect to the real world while being forced to grow up in a cult, and I fully credit it with waking me up to how seriously I wanted to get out when I was older... lyrics from their song, "Stand Up": “from the moment i met you, everything changed,” which coincidentally played the night my parents discovered all my secret fan accounts and tried to cut me off from it all.
Twenty One Pilots - "Car Radio"
shared by Tierney
Twenty One Pilots and their song Car Radio saved me. I was in high school and going through my first really bad depression. I had heard the song and occasionally listened to the band once in a while, but then I got into a fender bender and when the car got fixed the radio was shut down and didn’t work. And I had to drive in silence everyday to and from school. It put me in a worse mind than I had already been in. Then I listened to the song again, and it resonated with me more than I could have imagined. Since then, they have put out more songs that hit me in the core and somehow the songs come out whenever I’ve had a rough go at it, especially the newest album they released a year ago.
Tierney particularly resonated with the following lyrics:
Because faith is to be awake
And to be awake is for us to think
And for us to think is to be alive
And I will try with every rhyme
To come across like I am dying
To let you know you need to try to think
Lindsey Stirling
shared by Sydney
Lindsey Stirling I would say is someone who I'd prominently listen to when I was going through some patches in my life. The way she creates her sounds and showcases what is and can be possible showed me that you can't ever give up on what you want to do and believe in.