Some songs say “you” like it is a whisper in your ear. Some don’t say anything at all no lyrics, no language, and yet you still feel seen. But then there are the songs that feel like they were never meant for you. Not because you don’t understand them but because you were never invited. We talk alot about who made the music. Who produced it. Who engineered it. Who wrote the lyrics and why. We obsess over process and authorship. But rarely do we ask who the music was made for. Who is supposed to be on the other side of that mic, imagined in silence as the beat builds. Is it an ex lover? The future self? God? A friend that died before the song could be written? The child the artist never had? Or is it just anyone? Everyone? No one in particular? If a song says “you” do we instinctively make it ours? Do we need to feel like we are being spoken to in order to feel seen? Because sometimes, you can tell that “you” is not you. You are eavesdropping. You are trespassing. And it is okay anyways.
When Nina sings I put a spell on you, you know she is not talking to the audience at the village gate. You are just lucky to be there when it happens. There is a wildness in her voice, a possession. The song isn’t being performed for the listener, it is being torn out of her. You are not the recipient. You are just the witness. Same with lonelier songs, the ones where it feels like the artist forgot the studio was recording. There is a moment in Self Control where his voice cracks through the reverb and you know this wasn’t written with you in mind. This was for the boy that didn’t stay. The song is a message in a bottle and you just found it on the shore. There is something sacred about listening to music that isn’t for you. Not in the like cultural appropriation sense or in a condemnable way, but in an emotional sense. The sense of watching something private happen without being asked to comment on it. We talk about music like a gift, “This song got me through so much”. And sometimes it does. But maybe not because the artist set out to save anyone. Maybe it works because they weren’t even trying to. There is a kind of honesty that can only emerge when you stop aiming to be understood. When you are not writing to the fans, or the people, or your audience. When the “you” in the song is so specific it becomes universal. Because there is a paradox there, the more precisely someone sings to a single person, the more it echoes in everyone. If someone tells a truth so deeply personal, so raw it make you look away, that is when you start to feel seen.
But sometimes the “you” in the music is the listener. Explicitly. Commercially. Tactically. There is a difference between a love song and a love product. Some music flatters the listener. It compliments their taste, affirms their sadness, reflects their desire. It is engineered to land. You know the feeling. You hear a new song and it sounds like it was made to be your anthem. Like the song writer looked at how you were living and said “yeah that.” And sometimes that is magic. But sometimes it feels hollow. Like being sold a version of your own feelings, repackaged with a hook.
You can tell when the music is trying to seduce you. You can also tell when the artist didn’t care whether you liked it. And that is when things get interesting. When an artist is in dialogues with someone you will never meet. A dead sibling. A fictional character. A version of themselves from ten years ago. Sometimes the most affecting songs are the ones you don’t fully understand. You feel them before you interpret them. Like overhearing a conversation in a language you unlearned. Who is this for? Not me, exactly.
Sometimes the “you” is a mirror. Sometimes a weapon. Sometimes a prayer. There are songs where the artist is yelling into the voice, and the void is yelling back. Songs where the “you” is absence. A person shaped hole. A ghost that wont return the call. Other times the “you” is the artist talking to themselves. The older self warning the younger. The healed self forgiving the broken one. Like a therapy session they accidentally put to melody.
Sometimes the most disorienting thing about a song is when you want it to be for you. And it isn’t. You insert yourself. You imagine that “you” if your name. You fill in the gaps. But the song doesn’t change. That is when you realize the music doesn’t need you. And you still love it.
There is a deep intimacy in listening to music not meant for you, not because of cultural boundaries, but because the emotional ones. Like finding someone else’s dream and trying it on just to see how it fits. And there is a different intimacy when the music does feel like it was meant for you. Like “you” lines up exactly with your name, your body, your grief. Those are the songs that feel like being chosen. Both are real. But maybe the more powerful question isn’t “who is the music for?” maybe it is “what kind of listener are you willing to be?” The kind that demands to be addressed? Or the kind that can listen, when when the “you” was never meant for them? The kind that needs their story told? Or the kind that can sit quietly with someone else’s?
Because not all music is for sharing. Some songs are built like a sealed letter. And when you press play, you break the wax.
