Sing Me a Song: Words That Wound and Mend

There’s a strange comfort in the kind of music that doesn’t just pass through your ears but lingers in your soul, digging up the things you thought you’d buried long ago. Ben Howard’s music did that for me. It became the soundtrack to my darkest hours, where the line between pain and healing blurred into something almost indistinguishable.

His songs were the echo of my own silent struggles, each lyric cutting deep but somehow stitching me back together at the same time. It was like he knew the words I couldn’t say, the feelings I couldn’t express, and he turned them into melodies that made it all make sense—or at least made it bearable.

When I found myself in Vienna for a rare live show, it wasn’t just a concert; it was a communion of sorts. An open-air arena full of people who knew, who felt, who understood the quiet power of his lyrics. We were all there, together but alone, sharing in the unspoken connection that his music had forged between us:

"Some people dance
At the altar
Some people worship
Underground

You and I
We've been through all that
Hallelujah
Look at you now"

And so, this is my small thank you. To the music makers, for words that wound and heal, often in the same breath. For showing me that music can be both the knife and the salve. And for reminding me that, even in the darkest times, there’s a kind of beauty in the struggle—a beauty that can bring us back to ourselves. And look at us now...