"Music saved my life."

While scrolling through YouTube the other day, I discovered a music video by a modern-day rapper named Logic called "1-800-273-8255 ft. Alessia Cara, Khalid." It caught my attention because I've never seen or heard a song with a phone number as its title, and it made me wonder what line the number leads to. I came to find out that the song is a suicide-awareness track named after the phone number of the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The music video centers around a Black gay teenager who faces homophobia from his peers at school and even his unaccepting father. He struggles to find his place of belonging in this judgmental and cruel world as he contemplates suicide multiple times. In one particular scene, he pulls out a handgun and first points it at a reflection of himself in the mirror, then points it at his head before breaking down and hurling every object he sees across the room in a stage of anger, disappointment, hopelessness, misery, and pain. This music video was incredibly powerful and even brought me to tears as it covered various worldwide issues through such an emotional story, such as racism, discrimination, sexism, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and so much more. By the time I came across this video, it already had close to 430 million views on YouTube and was approaching 1.2 billion streams on Spotify. Since it had such an immense impact on me in such a short amount of time, I was so intrigued to find out its effects on everyone else, especially those who could connect with the protagonist in the music video in dealing with mental illnesses and feeling like they have no purpose in this world. I did some research and discovered that the artists featured in the track performed this song at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2017. However, this wasn't just a regular performance. When I thought this song couldn't bring any more tears out of me, this performance actually did the complete opposite. In the middle of the performance, around 75 people came up on stage wearing white t-shirts with "1-800-273-8255" printed on the front and the phrase "You Are Not Alone" on the back. It took me a little while to realize that they weren't just props for the performance but were actual survivors of suicide who weren't afraid to get up on stage in front of tens of millions of viewers and spread awareness about suicide. When I realized this, tears rolled down my eyes uncontrollably because I couldn't comprehend how courageous they were to fight through the darkest stages of their lives yet still be strong enough to help those dealing with the same demons that almost killed them. I wanted to research a little more about the impacts of this song, and I discovered that after this performance, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline "received 9,915 (or 6.9 percent) more calls than during similar periods in previous years. [And] study also found a decrease of 245 deaths by suicide nationwide...when compared to the same time periods in the past" (Padgett). This statistic opened my eyes, and it taught me that music has the powerful ability to save lives. This song allowed tens of millions—or even hundreds of millions—of people contemplating their lives to realize that they are not the only ones who feel this way and have reasons to fight. This song will always be considered a life-changing and distinguishing moment during my music research process and, more importantly, how I will perceive music for the rest of my life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb24RrHIbFk