Don Your Way column: Why we're all united by musical memories

It is about the one and only thing pretty much everyone in the world has in common.
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Whatever you age, race, creed or colour, music is perhaps the only true global bond we all have.

It doesn’t matter whether you are nine months or 99 years old, we all listen to and enjoy music of some kind of form or another.

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Darren Burke says we're all united by musical memories.Darren Burke says we're all united by musical memories.
Darren Burke says we're all united by musical memories.
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Whether its pop, rock, jazz, classical, reggae, soul, big band, grime, heavy metal or something from a million and one other genres, everybody somewhere likes listening to something. There’s no-one out there who doesn’t like some kind of music.

Music also has that ability to transport you back to a particular time and place in your life.

Songs, bands, albums can all be traced back and linked to your bygone days.

A track played at a wedding, an album that you played to death in your teenage years, songs which maybe soundtracked a whole summer because you heard them everywhere you went.

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The other day I heard a song by British rock band Muse for the first time in years. Instantly, it had me reaching for the album it came from and recalling the time I’d seen them in concert.

It doesn’t always have to be the great songs that connect you back to a place and time either.

The truly awful Europop of Aqua’s Barbie Girl had the pleasure of assaulting my ears for the first time in years – and instantly, I could picture when and where I was when it was doing the rounds in the charts, such is the power of a song.

I love music and always have. From chart fodder of the early 80s to going out and buying pretty much anything and everything by the Pet Shop Boys before discovering the delights of indie, grunge, Britpop and falling in love

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with Welsh rockers the Manic Street Preachers to the point of now having seen them in excess of twenty times.

But your ears never close to new sounds.

Now, through my children, I’m introduced to new and interesting stuff.

The likes of John Newman, Bastille and Lewis Capaldi just a few I’ve picked up on thanks to my kids.

I’m been flogging the new album by Lana Del Ray, singing along to the new James Blunt song Cold in the car (no, really) and even heard a bit of industrial German metal band Rammstein for the first time since well, who knows when, earlier in the week.

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Music is one of those things that’s with us right from day one until the day we check out – and along the way it is never too late to hear new stuff, discover new genres or open our ears to new possibilities while at the same time, reuniting us with bands and moments we’d perhaps forgotten about.

Thank you for the music.