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As a teenage girl, maybe i feel the pressure music has on our everyday lives more than say the average middle-aged banker. The sort of music i like has isolated me from many fellow students, and yet also brought me tight knit relationships.
In my first year at senior school, I made four new friends based purely on us all liking the same band. Although our relationships have had their ups and down just like any other, that love of a certain band always manages to bring us back together. Whether its because one of us has found tickets or another's got the new album, we will always come back to each other and to that band.

In my second year of senior school, i experienced the less brilliant side of music. I was tossed aside by the friends in my tutor group because i did not like the same sort of music as them. Thankfully, i still had my other friends but it made two years of lessons as a tutor group very difficult indeed. Despite this, I still could not bring myself to throw away, or at least hide, my albums and buy the ones they liked. The music you like is part of your identity and not something you can, or should, chop and change to suit the needs of others. This does not mean you should limit your music taste to one genre...simply that you can never pretend you do not like something as before you know it you'll be tapping your toes and singing along.
On top of shaping who and why your friends are, the music you listen to indicates the mood you are in. It can lift your spirits or thoroughly depress you. It can be your current pastime or there in the background. I for one love to have a soundtrack to my life. My iPod is full of playlists, i have one for practically every minute of my life. There is one to send me to sleep, one to get ready to, one for the ironing, one for walking to school etc etc.
Music really is a many wonderful thing and I honestly believe our lives would be so very different without it there to guide us from day to day.

Learn more about this author, Hana Evans.
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