Music as Emotional Release: How Everything But the Girl Helped Me Heal the In-Between
- Val Blair
- Oct 24
- 4 min read
There are certain songs that never quite leave you.
They don’t just play in the background of your life; they live in it.
For me, Missing by Everything But the Girl is one of those songs.
It’s the kind of track that opens a doorway.
The first notes pull you somewhere in between worlds, between heartbreak and freedom, between remembering and release.
I didn’t realize it back then, but I was learning what it meant to let sound carry me through transition.
The Pulse That Became a Portal
When Missing hit in the mid-90s, I was traveling a lot, especially to London.
Airfare was cheap, and I was restless in that delicious, youthful way that comes before you realize restlessness is sometimes just your soul asking for expansion. I’d board those planes half-awake and half-becoming.
Everything But the Girl became my soundtrack to that liminal space, headphones on, forehead against the window, clouds folding below.
Their music wasn’t background noise.
It was a feeling, a vibration that seemed to rearrange something inside me.
Later, when I started DJing at Colgate, Missing became my test song.
I’d stand in the middle of an empty room before a set, press play, and listen to how the bass moved through the walls, how the drums touched the corners of the space.
It was more than sound; it was a pulse that mapped the room’s energy, and mine too.
That’s what great music does.
It doesn’t just fill silence. It transforms it.
Music as Emotional Alchemy
Every album they made carried a different kind of ache: Driving, Wrong, the later remixes that blurred sorrow with euphoria.
Each song felt like a mirror, reflecting the parts of me I didn’t yet have words for.
When life got heavy, I’d turn off the lights, sit in the dark, and let those sounds move through me. Missing became a place to process grief, confusion, the in-between emotions that don’t quite name themselves.
That’s the thing about music.
It’s a quiet form of alchemy.
It takes the weight of what we can’t explain and turns it into motion, into frequency, into light.
And sometimes, that’s enough to begin again.
How Sound Moves Energy
Now, as an energy worker, I understand what I was sensing back then. Sound doesn’t just travel through air, it travels through us.
There’s a reason chanting, drumming, and even ambient basslines shift the atmosphere.
Sound is vibration, and vibration moves energy.
Researchers have shown how certain frequencies can literally move sand into geometric patterns.
If sound can shape matter, it can certainly shape mood, memory, and emotion.
When we let music wash over us, especially those frequencies that reach deep into the body, it’s a form of clearing.
It loosens grief, softens anxiety, and invites presence.
Everything But the Girl’s music did that for me long before I had language for it.
Theirs was the pulse that kept me tethered to the earth while teaching me how to reach beyond it.
Finding Stillness in the Beat
Today, when I listen to Missing, it’s not nostalgia that rises; it’s gratitude.
Gratitude for the parts of me that learned to breathe inside the rhythm.
Gratitude for how sound can anchor us when life feels scattered.
If you’re in one of those in-between seasons, not quite where you were, not yet where you’re going — try this:
Put on a song that once moved you.
Close your eyes.
Notice how it travels through your body, where it opens, where it softens.
Let it move something that words can’t.
That’s the quiet gift of music: it reminds us that even in chaos, there’s a steady beat inside us waiting to be heard
FAQ: The Healing Science of Sound
What does techno or ambient music do for emotional release? Rhythmic repetition helps regulate the nervous system, creating a sense of safety and grounding. The beat mimics the rhythm of the heartbeat, our first sense of security.
How can music help us process grief or transition? It gives emotion somewhere to go. Sound allows us to feel without forcing clarity, turning tension into motion and motion into release.
Why do songs feel like time capsules? Because memory is multisensory. When a song plays, the brain reactivates the emotional state we were in the last time we heard it, giving us a doorway to integrate past experiences with the present.
Final Reflection
Music is medicine for the spaces between.
It moves through what the mind can’t name.
And sometimes, when the world feels too sharp, all we need to remember who we are is a single song echoing through an empty room.
A Gentle Next Step
If you’re craving a moment to breathe, to release, to remember that you are more than the noise, explore my guided healing tools.
🕯️ You Are Not the Storm: A Journal for the Moments That Feel Like Too Much, a gentle companion for anxiety and overwhelm.
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