Listen to my band play this song
Listen to the words and sing along
I’ll tell you
What the music really means
To believe, to be true
To chase dreams and bring them through
Well, that’s
What the music means to me
I’ve seen so many friends of mine
Work, work, working all the time
Spinning away their life
Just to stay alive
They used to be like me, with ideals
But they gave it all up for what they call Real
They say you can’t eat faith
That just won’t make you thrive
But life don’t mean a thing
If that life don’t got that swing
And that’s
What the music means to me
To believe, to be true
To chase dreams and bring them through
Well, that’s
What the music means to me
My girlfriends, my teachers, my folks
They tried so hard to coax
Telling me, telling me
You gotta change, change, change
Change the way you’re walking
Change the way you’re talking
Change your way of life
It makes us look strange
But I learned never to conform
To other people’s norms
And that’s
What the music means to me
To believe, to be true
To chase dreams and bring them through
Well, that’s
What the music means to me
When I was growing up I’d listen
To the heart-and-soul musicians
Speaking to me, singing
About reasons to believe
But then they all got older
Their warmth, it got colder
They said, Then we were younger
And we were so naïve.
Well, they felt that they failed
And me, I felt betrayal
It hurt so bad, like breaking up
I felt like I been hit
There ain’t no reason to be so negative
We should give it all that we can give
Maybe we alone can’t change the world
But we can all do our bit
‘Cause if the world is cruel
We gotta make our own rules
There’s no fixed way
That life is meant to be
To believe, to be true
To chase dreams and bring them through
Well, that’s
What the music means to me
©2024 The Hesh Inc.
I wrote this song in early 1988, during the last months of my service in the Israel Defense Forces when I was already looking forward to my discharge and thinking of what I would be doing once I became a civilian again. See, I had gone into the army three years earlier as an idealistic, naïve, and just slightly clueless teenager and now I was about to be released into the world as a tougher, more pragmatic, albeit still slightly clueless adult. Three years in the army, even with all their hair-raising situations, still constituted a bubble in which all my material needs were met; once I'd be out in the world, I'd have to take care of my own needs. And in this state of unsureness, I wanted to declare to myself and the world that no matter what I undertook, the music would always be a guide.
These lyrics actually have music to them ... several years earlier I had heard a Jordanian reggae song (yes, such a thing did exist) about showing the world what reggae really means (anyone who can find that song for me gets a free CD). I converted the chord progression from major to minor and there I had it. It has yet to be performed, though.