Sleep Therapy, Hard Things, And The Wrath Of Hell

As a singer, most, if not all, of my life revolves around music. So I could never choose just one song that has changed my life, because there have been so many pieces of music over many different genres and periods of my life that have affected me in one way or another. But there are a few that have stood out a little extra over the years.

I’m the type of person who actually means it when I say I’ll listen to almost any kind of music. I’m a classically trained Soprano, so classical music is forever a huge part of my life. Outside of that, I enjoy plenty of mainstream music like pop, but I’m particularly a huge fan of metal. But every genre I listen to serves a different purpose for me, and they each have something admirable and unique about them.

Der Hölle Rache (The Queen of the Night’s Vengeance Aria) from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) further strengthened my love of classical music and made me want to pursue a performance career even more. It’s kind of impossible for it to not stand out; it’s dramatic, virtuosic, a little intimidating, and especially dazzling in true Mozart fashion.

I first heard this aria when I was 17. I was a senior in high school and getting ready to apply to colleges. I was already sure that I wanted to study vocal performance and pursue a career as a classical singer. And then one day I saw the above video of Diana Damrau singing this aria in a performance of The Magic Flute from 2003. Her entire performance, everything from her flawless singing to her fierce portrayal of her character, was nothing short of perfection. It completely blew my mind, but more importantly it made me better realize how serious I was about wanting to be a singer. I wanted to be doing that. I wanted to be on stage, wearing gorgeous costumes, singing insanely high notes, and feeling like I’m queen of the world.

It fueled that fire I had in me from the time I was 5 years old even brighter than I thought possible. And while I may never end up actually singing this aria myself (I’m still years away from singing stuff this difficult), it will always serve as inspiration to me in everything I do, both within and outside of music.

Sleep Therapy by Ghost Atlas is one of the saddest, rawest, and most honest and heart-wrenching songs I have ever heard. It talks about feeling alone in the world and feeling like a burden to everyone, things that I have struggled with a lot over the years. The line that always hits me the hardest is:

“I’m sweating in my sleep, because I question if I’m worth it to the company I keep”

In this interview from 2013, Jesse Cash of Ghost Atlas explains how this project came to be and what he aims to express through it. He says:

“Those dark songs are what help people get through. Like when I’m going through a hard time, the last thing I want to hear is some upbeat pop song. I want to hear something sad, I want to hear somebody that understands.”

And he’s absolutely right.

Sometimes when you’re feeling down or you’re in a dark place, upbeat happy music just isn’t going to make you feel better. It’s like when you're feeling depressed and someone tells you to “just think positively”. It makes you feel wrong for feeling how you feel. Toxic positivity, much?

It might sound ironic or backwards to some people, but dark songs really do help you through the dark times. I mean, sometimes that upbeat music is good when you need to distract yourself from those negative feelings for a while. But you can’t push those feelings away forever. Eventually you’re going to have to allow yourself to feel those feelings, even though it hurts and it sucks, because you’ll never heal if you don’t.

Sleep Therapy is so comforting to me in the sense that it makes me feel understood and that I’m not alone in what I’m going through and how I’m feeling. Even though I’m not in that mental place anymore, I still have some of those dark moments sometimes, and Sleep Therapy always helps me process those feelings and gives me some much needed comfort and validation in those moments.

Hard Things by Juliette Reilly came at a time when I really needed it. At the start of this year, I hit a breaking point. I was stuck in a rut, wanting to focus on building my performance career but kept getting sucked into working one dead end job after another just for the sake of making money.

I kept trying to find “the one”, as in the job that would allow me the freedom to focus on pursuing music and still be able to make enough money to get by, and the one that wouldn’t completely suck me dry. I went into each one thinking “This one will be different”, but every one of those jobs ended with the same result: being physically and mentally drained, taken advantage of, and pretty much expected to devote every little bit of my life to that crappy little job.

I knew I wasn’t happy. This wasn’t at all what I wanted to be doing with my life. But I still kept looking for these kinds of jobs because I felt like that was what I was supposed to do. The thought of a lack of security terrified me. I was so afraid to go without some sort of steady job. I thought I’d never be able to succeed without some way to make a steady income. And even though I wanted so bad to break the cycle, I could only wonder how I’d ever be able to pull it off.

But I finally realized that I was so concerned with having a job that I was hardly focusing on music at all, and I would never be able to really devote myself to my performance career if I kept getting caught up in these same jobs. I accepted that “the one” didn’t exist, and that I needed to move on from that idea and finally go for what I really wanted.

Hard Things came at the peak of this major crossroads. Not only did it give me the boost of courage I needed to finally start breaking that vicious cycle, but it's given me a ton of both comfort and confidence. It’s helped me feel good about the choices I’ve made. Now it’s become like a daily mantra for me; I listen to it every day now to remind myself that I can do all of the hard things, and that it’s okay to be scared and to fall apart sometimes, but at the same time to not be afraid to fail. I’m a hot mess sometimes, but I’m still strong. And either way my feelings are still valid.

Honestly, the way these songs have truly affected me is beyond words. I may never be able to put into words just how much these songs have changed my life. But I can absolutely say, as cliché as it sounds: one taught me love (Der Hölle Rache), one taught me pain (Sleep Therapy), and one taught me patience (Hard Things). And each one, in its own way, has given me validation, comfort, courage, confidence, and so much more.

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