Last month my mom sent me an Easter package. Inside was chocolate from Wilbur’s of Maine, a plastic baseball and a special issue from the New York Times Magazine, “25 Songs that Tell us Where Music is Going.”

The list is non-judgmental but analytical as hell. How did one of the world’s most revered pop stars (the Biebs) produce one of the most successful albums of the year? He met Diplo and Skrillex (forming Jack Ü), produced a banger and let the music speak louder than his dreaded hair or pot smoking antics.

Why is Mac Demarco slacker rock’s golden child? Because of his larger than life personality. He’s known for public nudity, chain smoking cigarettes, and his Enter Sandman cover at live shows. After giving out his home address on his most recent EP, people flocked to Demarco’s house in Queens to sip coffee and eat gluten-free banana bread.

As expected, the New York Times Magazine gets myopic – especially in regards to song.

So these days it’s the song, and the scale of the event surrounding it. One song, one digestible thing, with millions of people standing in a circle around it, pointing and shouting and writing about it, conducting one gigantic online undergraduate seminar about it, metabolizing it on roughly the same level that cable-news debate shows metabolize a political speech.” – Nitsuh Abebe

That sparked something. A thought that’s been germinating on The Aftermath since we started writing about music.

We’re hyper focused on song. We replay them again and again until the choruses and bridges are as familiar as a childhood memory. We worship them. Recommend them. We’re heartbroken when someone else doesn’t recognize their worth and feel the same surge of inspiration.

For a music enthusiast, song has the power to turn a day around, change a relationship, solidify philosophical credence – things will get better. For a series of melodic vibrations that tickle our eardrums, the affects of song are genuine and cerebral.

So, if you get a chance, scroll through 25 Songs that Tell us Where Music is Going and think about song – the tiny, little thing that is becoming more and more powerful.