Meaningful Earlier and Current Songs

This week's assigned film, Alive Inside, explored how music deeply shapes our memories and identities, and showed people re-discovering music that had been meaningful to them at a much earlier time in their life. Although the film focused on dementia patients, music has this power for all of us, shaping our sense of self, and creating powerful shared experiences with others.
For this assignment, first choose two songs or pieces of music (with or without lyrics): 1) One that you remember as being meaningful to you during your childhood or an earlier period of life, and 2) One that you imagine yourself, 30+ years from now, remembering as being meaningful from this current time in your life. They could be songs that you especially enjoyed or identified with, or that you associate with an important memory, place, or people.
Spend some time listening to each song, and taking notes on the details of the sounds you hear (after reading the questions below). Then, for each song, write a paragraph addressing the following 2 questions:
Why is the song especially meaningful for you?
How do you think those meanings, and the emotions you associate with the song, relate to the details of how the music sounds? After listening carefully to the song a few times, describe some of the details in the sounds that you notice: What aspects of the music's rhythms, melodies, harmonies, or timbres do you think most affect your emotional experience of the song and what it means to you?
Describing sound can be challenging, and is also subjective; the point of this exercise is not to produce the "correct" answer, but to practice listening closely for sonic details, and to write your response in a way that reflects this kind of close listening and careful thought. You are not required to use the technical terms discussed in the Levitin reading and Patel videos, but you might find them helpful to consider.
Be sure to revise your writing carefully, to ensure you are expressing your ideas clearly and correcting grammar and spelling errors. Writing quality is more important than word quantity, but your response should be roughly 400-600 words (i.e. 200-300 words per paragraph). Label the 2 paragraphs as "Earlier time song" and "Current time song," and provide a link to each song if available.
Note: The most common mistake that people make in submitting this assignment is that they talk about why each song is meaningful to them, but ignore the 2nd question above about sonic qualities. Be sure to read and address both questions above carefully, for each song.
Grading Criteria
To earn a grade of Complete, your response must meet the following criteria:
For each song/piece, you address both questions explained in the prompt above, not only describing why the song is meaningful to you, but also discussing the sounds in a way that reflects careful listening.
It does not contain significant grammar or spelling errors, and reflects time spent revising your writing. If it has extensive grammar problems and the meanings of some statements are not clear, the TA will ask you to revise it.
It follows the basic instruction explained above: 2 songs/pieces of music, labelled "current song" and "earlier song," with roughly 200-300 words for each (total 400-600 words).