The music that resonates with other people is the music that says the thing that that person wishes they were saying.

And you can totally hear the difference between when somebody is phoning it in or using a programmed synthesizer versus when they are emoting with their soul with every note that they play.

Not that every note of music has to be written with emotion and played with soul, but if you are looking for emotion and soul, you’re going to find it more in older music that’s less polished, or in indie music that isn’t corporate.

For instance, like Owl City’s Fireflies is not a musical composition where every single note is played with soul, but it’s still lighthearted and fun and enjoyable and it communicates the vibe that the artist wanted to communicate.

Whereas, for instance, in the aeroplane over the sea by Neutral Milk Hotel is a very raw and jangly mash of hard left-right panning acoustic overlays, and theremin’ music, and all sorts of stuff just stacked on top of each other. It’s this wild explosion of energy, and then on top of that, you’ve got Jeff Mangum just crooning out over the top of it, probably at the top of his lungs the whole time, and you can tell that he was emoting with everything that he had in him on every strum of the guitar. So even though it’s a cornucopia of sound, it has a lot of soul.