Paula Gaila is an entrepreneurial expert in digital marketing and “music curation”. She is the director of Wow My Music and creates musical branding for hotels and spaces with soul.

“For me, music has always been my companion, the accomplice, the saviour, I would almost say my only certainty”. Being at home these days can be difficult and dull because we are facing a unique situation where we might not know very well how to react to it. Anxiety can break in very quickly into our lives now, and if we want to fight it, we have to keep our minds busy, to helps us make this confinement more bearable.

If there is something that I am sure that we all do in our homes, it is listening to music. It is scientifically proven that listening to songs makes us happier and that music influences our behaviour and helps us to calm down and lower stress levels.

I’m also sure that we are not only listening to popular and actual songs, but instead, we might be listening to songs that we have always liked. Songs that bring us moments from the past, that evoke memories and take us to places or people. That feeling comforts us, it is like being at home, safe, returning to a safe place that brings us to a time that we knew, habitually happy and that we miss so much now.

The day they declared the state of alarm, I decided to make a playlist to accompany people in this very moment. It is a selection of songs to listen to at home, I try to update it daily, and more than 700 people are already following it!

In the playlist, you will find songs of all kinds. There is one song by Elton John, (please note that I’m not a big fan of this man) that reminds me of a happy moment I had on the coast of Malaga, in the apartment where I would spend the summer. I was about 8 years old when my father would open the curtains and wake us up with the radio, that morning, “Sacrifice” was playing in the background. When I opened my eyes, I felt a feeling of absolute happiness.

That summer memory will always be within me. These days I return to it quite often, wishing for the summer to come and make us go out to the streets again to share life, the life that seems to have stopped so suddenly.