FAVOURITE SONGS: 'Those You've Known', SPRING AWAKENING

It's an odd thing to say: one of my favourite musical songs is one which makes me cry. Even odder, in fact, that it's one I couldn't bear to listen to for almost a year.

Spring Awakening is a coming-of-age story, in which Wendla, Melchior and their friends experience awakenings of their own: sexual, moral and spiritual. I was 18 years old when I first heard the soundtrack, and it served as something of an awakening to me too. Up until that point, Cole Porter and Disney had been my only frames of reference for musicals. Duncan Sheik's rock score and Steven Sater's lyrics opened up a whole new world (away from that other "Whole New World").

Seven years later, it provided another kind of awakening.

In the final scenes of the show, Melchior finds himself alone in a graveyard. Looking over the gravestones, he sees a friend's name and a newly made one with another familiar name: Wendla. Three solitary notes play out: "Those You've Known".

Last year, my Grandpa passed away. It was the first death I had experienced at an age where I was able to process it. Or rather not process it, as the case may be. In the age of iPhones, a song is just a click away. As is an emotional breakdown on a Tube in rush hour apparently.

Every time I heard those three notes, a whirlwind of emotions hit me. Sometimes, I could make it as far as "Without them, the world grows dark around you..." and then have to stop. I would switch off the song, to switch off emotionally.

This was actually the worst thing I could have done. I focused on the title of the song, rather than actually listening to the words. In the months following his death, yes, the world did grow darker. But the song continues: "And nothing is the same until you know that they have found you". And as the song goes on, so does life.

Eight months later, I was on my way back home to see my family for Christmas. It would be a difficult time of year, the first one without Grandpa there. Amid the hustle and the hurry of the train, I tuned back into my music: "Now they'll walk on my arm through the distant night, and I won't let them stray from my heart". This time, I didn't switch off.

Faced with the death of his loved ones, Melchior is utterly bereft and alone. In "Those You've Known", Moritz and Wendla appear to him and reassure him that they are "not gone". On writing the song, Sater said, "I found the lyrics telling me: it was the love still felt for those we have known that enables us to continue in the face of losing them" (Spring Awakening, Theatre Communications Group, 2007).

Musical numbers were one of the things that Grandpa and I shared a love of. Every time I watch the Morecambe and Wise Singin' in the Rain skit, I think of him. Every time I remember that he and my Gran walked out of The Producers film because they thought it was real, I crack a smile. And every time I hear "Those You've Known", I know: he is not gone.

Watch Jonathan Groff, Lea Michele and John Gallagher, Jr. perform "Those You've Known" below

Photo credit: Joan Marcus

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