Describe a Song That Means a Lot to You
A Band 8 model answer for the IELTS Part 2 song cue card, with the vocabulary for describing music without technical terms and the Part 3 questions on music and culture.
Cue Card
Describe a song that means a lot to you.
You should say:
- what the song is
- when you first heard it
- what it is about
And explain why it means so much to you.
You do not need musical vocabulary for this card, and reaching for it usually hurts. Candidates who start talking about chord progressions and time signatures tend to run out of language halfway through and stall.
What the examiner wants is the same thing every Part 2 wants: a specific occasion, described clearly, with an honest reason attached. The answer below barely describes the music at all.
Model Answer
Band 8The song I'd pick is called Nightswimming, by R.E.M. It's quite old, from the early nineties, and I only know it because of my uncle.
He used to drive me to football practice on Saturday mornings and he had one CD in the car that stayed there for what felt like years. I would have been eleven or twelve. I didn't like the song at the time, honestly. It's slow, there's basically just a piano and a bit of strings, and at that age I wanted something with a beat. I remember complaining about it more than once.
The song itself is about looking back at a summer with friends who have drifted apart, and about how you can't tell while it's happening that it will turn out to be significant. I obviously understood none of that when I was eleven. I just knew the piano bit.
What happened is that I heard it again in a supermarket about four years ago and had to stand still for a moment, which was slightly embarrassing in the cereal aisle. My uncle had died the year before. And the strange part is that the song now means something completely different to me than it did to him, because for me it's about those car journeys, not about whatever he was thinking of. So it means a lot to me for reasons the song was never about, which I find quite interesting. Songs seem to work like that. They collect whatever you were doing when you heard them.
Why This Answer Works
- It avoids technical vocabulary entirely. "Basically just a piano and a bit of strings" is more effective than any attempt at musical terminology would have been.
- It admits to disliking the song first. That reversal gives the answer a shape, and it removes any suspicion that this is a prepared favourite.
- The supermarket detail is specific and slightly awkward, which makes it credible. Standing still in the cereal aisle is not something a script produces.
- The final idea is genuinely reflective. Separating what the song is about from what it means to the speaker is a subtle distinction, and articulating it clearly is Band 8 work.
Key Phrases to Steal
“for what felt like years”
Subjective time expression. Very common in speech, rare in memorised answers.
“I would have been eleven or twelve”
Modal perfect for uncertain past age. Sounds like genuine recall.
“had to stand still for a moment”
Understated description of an emotional reaction. Restraint reads as sincerity.
“the strange part is that”
Signals a contrast is coming and buys a second of planning time.
“they collect whatever you were doing”
Plain verb used figuratively to close on an idea rather than a summary.
Part 3 Follow-Up Questions
Why is music important in most cultures?
It seems to be one of the few things every culture independently invented, which suggests it's doing something fairly fundamental. The obvious answer is that it coordinates groups. Singing together synchronises people physically and it's very hard to feel separate from someone while you're doing it, which is presumably why armies, churches, and football crowds all use it. There's also the memory function, since before writing was widespread, putting information into song was how it survived across generations.
Do you think the music young people listen to affects their behaviour?
Less than the moral panics suggest, I'd say. Every generation has had a genre accused of corrupting the young, jazz, rock, rap, and the predicted collapse never arrives. What music does seem to do is give people a way of signalling which group they belong to, so it follows identity rather than creating it. A teenager who is already angry finds angry music, not the other way round.
Has streaming changed the way people value music?
It has changed what people pay attention to more than what they value. When an album cost real money you listened to the whole thing, including the tracks you disliked at first, and some of those became favourites. Now skipping is free, so songs have to earn their place in the first fifteen seconds. That's produced music engineered to hook fast, which is a real cost. On the other hand, an obscure musician can now reach someone on the other side of the world, and that was almost impossible before.
Now Try It Out Loud
Reading a model answer is one thing — saying it under pressure is another. Practise this exact cue card with our AI examiner and get instant band-score feedback.