In elementary school, we all had to take a music class. Most of us really weren't into creating our own music. I certainly wasn't. One day, in a misguided attempt to inspire us, our music teacher told us that all songs told a story. At ten years old, I wondered how this could be true: there's emotion in a song, but no words. How could you get a story from a song? How could you be sure it was the story that the artist was trying to tell?
Now I've decided that my teacher had it backwards. Songs don't tell stories. Stories tell songs. A song is an emotional journey. A story is an emotional journey bound to a situation.
I feel better now that I have made my rebuttal. It only took me the better part of a decade.