Chill-out tunes
Music is part of all our lives. Whether we can take it or leave it or are total obsessives, it’s playing in every shop, the background to every TV show and, of course, increasingly carried everywhere we go on our phones. That shouldn’t be too surprising when you consider how many different functions music performs. We have playlists for working out, for concentrating, for getting to sleep, for waking up and, especially, for relaxing. But we are all different, so we each have different ideas about what counts as relaxing music. We asked six professionals to tell us about the songs that help them chill out.
Tami Neilson
Tami is a Canadian-born country singer and songwriter whose career began as a member of the Neilson Family Band, with her parents and brothers. Her performances and recordings have won international acclaim. Rolling Stone once called her “a fire-breathing belter”.
Lockdown was hard. As a musician, when you can’t do what you normally do, which is perform, there is a lot of soul-searching.
A song I turn to in times like this is one my dad wrote in the hospital days before he passed away called “Don’t Be Afraid”, which I recorded as the title track of my album of that name. It always brings me comfort and encouragement. It’s like him speaking to me and having his voice there. He was facing death, the greatest human fear, and still managed to be creative. It shows incredible strength and resilience to face it with hope and be fearless – that’s my ultimate go-to song.
There are other artists I can always refer back to when I go: “What am I doing this for?” They are my true north – Dolly Parton and Mavis Staples. Although they are different artists,
