‘Music is the language of the heart.’ It is a statement that many music lovers can probably agree with. The love of music is universal – with some exceptions. At the same time, people are storytellers. We tell stories about our lives, about events, about ideas, about each other. And in the end, we turn into a story ourselves when we leave this world. And yet. Yet we regularly have trouble finding the right words for our stories. As a result, we are all islands and can`t bridge the distance to each other.

‘Music understands me better than other people do.’ It’s a statement that many of us may agree with – at least I do. At the same time, this is slightly ironic, because music is made and written by other people. People who think the same thoughts and feel the same emotions as you, and can translate that in such a way that we recognize ourselves in it, and with you sometimes millions of others. It remains special how something can be so personal and so universal at the same time. Music connects people. Maybe it can help us to reduce the distance between our islands.

‘I love to share music with other people.’ It’s a statement that many people can probably agree with, I think. But are we also interested in listening to other people’s music? After all, we aren’t always in the mood to listen to new music and often fall back on songs we already know. At the same time, there are so many unknown songs that could mean a lot to you. But what makes it interesting for you to actually listen to these songs?

You may remember the 30 Day Song Challenge from 2020, a popular challenge on social media. Its purpose was to share a song every day according to that day’s assignment. For example, you had to share a song with a colour in the title, or share a song that gives you a summer feeling. A nice challenge, but at the same time I found the superficiality of it annoying. It lacked depth. It was impersonal personal. A song with a colour in the title doesn`t attract my interest to listen to it, but if I know the reason why someone chose that song, then that suddenly makes the song interesting.

At the time I had already created some ideas to make a counterpart that added depth to the challenge, but it didn’t get off the ground until about three years later. A new music challenge, focused on getting to know yourself, focused on getting to know others, focused on thoughts about music, focused on connection. As humans, we regularly find it difficult to share what we think or how we feel, but it can sometimes be so much easier to share music that can communicate those thoughts and feelings in a way that we ourselves can’t. Music connects.

This Challenge has no obligations. You don’t have to share it, you don’t have to share the songs that fit the numbers, you don`t even have to find a song for every number. At the moment I doubt that I have a song that applies to every number. And that’s okay. The purpose of this Challenge is to be able to share your love of music with others, to learn about new music, to share and learn the reasons and stories behind music choices, to think about what music means to you and to others and – just maybe – to bring people a little bit close together.

Say it with music. Because music connects.

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Save this image and use it for your social media (stories), and leave in a comment which of your songs fit which numbers.

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