The Most Gorgeous Song Ever

There is a correct answer.

On a rainy Saturday afternoon, I took to the internet with a simple request: “tell me the most gorgeous song you’ve ever heard.” Soon came the replies and reposts. Thousands of songs filling up my notifications. It was a glorious sea of gentle nudges. Nudges to send you in the direction of songs you may have never heard before, nudges to listen back to ones you may have written off, nudges of affirmation.

So, I started listening to some of what was pushing through. There were plenty of songs that I wouldn’t have ever pegged gorgeous. I listened anyway. It became a bit of an exercise in patience. I demanded my ear tell me the explicit reasons why someone would give a song such a heavy crown. Honestly, it made the experience torturous. A few songs in and I had to reconcile that what might serve the process best would be to rid myself of the search for explanation and imagine a listening universe where every song is worthy of the title…and discover for myself what made it so.

For instance, I’ve heard SWV’s “Weak” hundreds of times. A crowd pleaser that broke genre bounds in the 90s and maneuvered mightily into the world of pop classics. I love that damn song so much but it never entered my mind as the most gorgeous of all. Yet, it kept coming up. So, I put on my headphones and listened for the transcending beauty. I found it in the bridge. I found it in the feeling it conjures of a special place and time. I found it in the urge to belt at the top of my lungs.

What we find strikingly beautiful or magnificent in a song is really this complex amalgamation of the unique experiences we’ve had with it, the things we desire in our lives right now to reconcile what’s going on around us and to us, and the dreams we have for our future selves. So, when I listened to “Weak” again, I found myself recalling simpler times from childhood that were free of responsibility and worry, a need bubbling under the surface to sing out loud to combat an otherwise pervasive quiet that’s settled over my day to day, and a dream of communal moments with loved ones around the collective songs we know and love.

So the answer is each of ours to determine. Perhaps a better request for our listening ears going forward is: tell me the most gorgeous song you’ve ever heard and what does it tell you about who you are today?

P.S. here’s my pick - Meshell Ndegeocello’s “Oysters” from her 2011 album, Weather.