This Is What It Feels Like When Doves (And Fans) Cry

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The reaction to the death of rock/R&B/pop legend Prince has been far-reaching. The Minnesota Twins decked out their stadium in purple in honor of the Minneapolis native's passing. Even Google put up a "Google doodle" featuring the word Google in purple and purple raindrops falling over the word. So why are people mourning the death of someone that 99.999% of them never met? I'm not a psychologist, and I don't play one on TV (you who are old enough will get that joke). I have a theory, however. When a celebrity dies -- especially a music celebrity -- there is a feeling of loss in us because these individuals are someone that we willingly invited into our lives. I say the feeling of loss is most significant in music because music has such a profound impact on life. We get married and buried to music. We celebrate our victories with music (cue "We Are the Champions" by Queen). There's always that one song that means the world to someone. When we hear a song there's something about it that resonates with the individual. It might bring back a happy memory or a sad memory, or the lyrics might be exactly what a person is feeling. Songwriters have a rare mirror into the soul that no other creator of art possesses, and if that song only hits one person in the heart then the songwriter has done his/her/their job. I've told the story before about how my mom's favorite Elton John song was "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," and how, on occasions, that song will overwhelm me, even eight years after my mom's death. I've never met Sir Elton, nor have I ever seen him live; however, there's a "connection" of sorts because of that song and what it means to me and what it meant to my mother. So when someone as massively successful as Prince -- a man who crossed genres and racial boundaries to have fans in all walks of life -- dies, or a relative "nobody" like Steve Young (who was best-known for writing the Eagles' "Seven Bridges Road" and Waylon Jennings' "Lonesome, Orn'ry, and Mean", but the song of his that resonates with me most deeply is "Old Memories Mean Nothing to Me") passes away, there is a feeling of loss that goes beyond the person's family and friends. The art they created found its way into the lives of others, and in that action the creator of that song became a friend, a confidant, an accuser, or a philosopher (or maybe all four). David Grohl said once (in an oft-repeated quote that's on several memes on Facebook), "You sing a song to 10,000 people, and they sing it back to you for 10,000 different reasons." The reaction to a song is singularly unique, an intimacy of sorts between the person and that song. So, for whatever that one of "10,000 different reasons" you may mourn Prince, or any of the other major music deaths we've had this year (the one that hit me hardest was Glenn Frey), don't feel that you're "weird" for feeling sad over the death of someone you didn't know. That one song that hit you is personal, and so is your feeling of loss. PS -- here's that Steve Young song, "Old Memories Mean Nothing to Me," that I said was my personal favorite of his.