Little is said about the beneficial effects of popular music on our state of mind. Those of us who dedicate ourselves to criticism squeeze our neurons to thoroughly shred the records, songs and concerts of those professionals without whose activity our work would have no reason to exist, but we rarely repair (beyond our most ungovernable subjectivity: all we have one, and we barely allow it to show its head in black on white) in something as basic – simplifying – as that there are music that can brighten up your day, make you dance like there is no tomorrow, make your blood boil or also sink you like the most miserable of mortals. Humanity is increasingly hooked on all kinds of placebos to alleviate a life that sometimes does not let up, but a good song at the right time can be better than the most powerful of pills.
That is the idea behind this book, which emerged from a blog that has been running for a few years now and half signed by the journalists Isabel Jiménez Moya and Carolina Prada Seijas, both from 1975. The age data is not minor: there is a generational component in these 411 pages and several hundred songs of very diverse styles (Soft Cell, Hombres G, The Jam or Julio De La Rosa soon jump me out, in a casual sweep), whose emotional properties are described with a openly simple language, without the slightest pretense of erudition or desire to establish a chair, only with the noble desire to share (that’s what pop music is about, after all) sensations, desires and passions around melodies and choruses without the which our lives would be much grayer. It includes some juicy playlists, presided over by the same eclecticism that runs through the entire book.