British music journalist Jude Rogers explores music as a portal to "new places and new feelings or places to put feelings" in her new book The Sound of Being Human.
Jude tells Susie Ferguson the 1985 single 'Freedom' by Wham! is a song that immediately makes her want to be at a disco.
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Jude has a vivid memory of hearing 'Freedom' for the first time, while tying her shoelaces in the school gym's changing rooms.
"It was the most brilliant thing I'd ever heard in my life."
'Freedom' was also the first song Jude responded to after her father died and helped her through that period.
Scientist Stephen Pinker's theory that music is simply "auditory cheesecake" doesn't ring true for her.
[Pinker's idea is that if we] want to hear a song we just go to it, stuff it our mouths and enjoy it - it's easy pleasure.
"But in the last 20 years, a lot of neuroscientists have argued the opposite. It's not just about satisfying an urgent need. It's about deeper things than that. Its about connecting with other people and connecting with deeper ideas, really."
For The Sound of Being Human, Jude asked close friends about their relationship with music, including one tasked with choosing songs for her husband's funeral and another who works with advanced dementia patients.
"I love the fact that I was connecting more with my friends as I was trying to understand their experiences with music through difficult stages."
When she became a mother, Jude's grief for her father returned, and a song by iconic British musician Kate Bush helped her through it.
In 2014, with a 4-month-old baby at home, Jude went to a Kate Bush concert and connected deeply with the song 'Among Angels'.
"I genuinely still think [that song] really helped me."
Jude is delighted by this year's Kate Bush revival, sparked by her 1985 song 'Running Up That Hill' featuring in the hit Netflix series Stranger Things.
"That song connected with a young girl who was looking to music to help her and heal her through trauma. It was weird watching that series and thinking 'this is basically that chapter in my book and a lot of the message in my book - how music has this incredible power to remind us of friends and family and feeling centred and feeling ourselves."
