Lyrics: “Pass It Along” – Frank Turner, 2011
When I saw the trailer for the German movie “No Hit Wonder” I right away knew, that I’d like to go see it. I liked the idea for the plot, I like the people starring in the main roles.
Yesterday afternoon after work I went and I really enjoyed it. So much that I’ll probably go again with a friend later this month. The leading male plays a singer / songwriter, who had one hit many many years ago and by now had turned into the classic “Has Been”. He ends up involuntarily leading a choir of a motley crew of patients with depression. I don’t want to give away any spoiler, but I was quite moved by it for a variety of reasons. Moved much more than I had expected from a trailer which makes it feel like a comedy. It mostly is a comedy, but the glimpses into the patients lives sometimes go a bit / a lot deeper. The movie touches on mental health in general obviously, but also on losing loved ones, mobbing in the digital age, financial distress, burnout from work. The data about how peoples’ mental health is suffering these days is not news and readily available if you’re looking for it.
The reason that this choir comes about is a scientific study to find out if music / singing can make you feel happier. One spoiler after all: It does! No surprise for me here. Of course listening to music or singing songs doesn’t solve your problems and it doesn’t make your mental health issues go away, but it does help to make life feel a bit easier. Either if it’s the community you sing with. Or the words you sing that have meaning for you. I wrote tons of words about both aspects here in the past, so I could definitely relate to that part of the plot and I loved it.
It is sort of a “Feelgood” movie, but I did cry quite a bit at the end. Again: no spoilers.
Because singing along to songs that mean something to me makes me feel happy, was of course the reason why I was adamant to score tickets for some more Frank Turner gigs.
Solo, with a focus on the older stuff. Next April. It will be fun! As it always is. It’s also going to be fun tonight, when I see him and the Sleeping Souls open for Dropkick Murphys. Even though I don’t know the Dropkick Murphys back catalogue all that well, I think the main show will also be fun, because it’s people singing along to the songs they like and that’s always just a wonderful, life-affirming experience to take part in.
I had the idea to end this post with some thoughts on songwriting and how these days it feels so weird to me when I realize that a song I like and can relate to, wasn’t really written by the person singing it, but rather by someone else who writes songs for a variety of singers. That a singer’s album can be a pick’n’mix of songs from a variety of writers. That people write songs for anyone to sing. And don’t get me started on AI in that regard. Those thoughts are very unformed yet, so I will get back to that at some point.
Let’s just say that I’m glad that most of the artists I have found to love and fangirl over in various degrees in the last 15 years, write their own songs. That’s probably a reason why I love them.
