Beat The Noise, What the Apple Noise Cancellation Story Gets Right

Forbes

23-03-2025

Someday, directed by Spike Jonze and featuring Pedro Pascal
How do you tell a story about a noise cancellation feature? You don't start with specs or features. You start with the person using it. With the feeling. With the need to quiet the world just enough to feel again. You start with the moment someone hits — not just on a device, but on a shift in their emotional state.
Because noise cancellation tells its own kind of story, it's the story of someone choosing to make space to take back control from the chaos outside. It does not erase the world; it clears enough room to hear something more profound. That opening leads to something powerful: reconnection through sound — with your breath, your thoughts, your memories, your emotions — sometimes even with other people.
In a world where attention is fragmented and well-being is frayed, features like noise cancellation — carry more emotional weight than ever. They shape experience and how we cope, connect, and return to ourselves.
We live in a world that constantly feels loud, noisy, distracting, and disruptive. Uncertainty, stress, and pressure are constant. Many of us feel worn down. For some, even finding a quiet moment has become harder than it should be.
That is why Apple's recent video, Someday, directed by Spike Jonze and featuring Pedro Pascal, stayed with me. On the surface, it promotes AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation. But it's a story about being overwhelmed — and how music can help us reconnect.
The video opens in a gray, snow-covered city. Pedro walks alone, hunched slightly, his face carrying what seems to be the weight of a personal, emotional struggle. There's no dialogue, but you can feel something has happened—something private, unresolved. The city around him feels distant, cold, and muted — mirroring what he carries inside. Then he puts in his AirPods, turns on noise cancellation, and the scene begins to shift. Music rises. Color returns. He starts to move — first gently, then fully. Not to perform but to release something that's been held in.
And he is not alone for long. Others appear as he moves through the streets —sometimes in silence, sometimes with brief spoken words. There's very little dialogue; the presence of others becomes part of the shift. Some moments feel dark and distant, others bright and alive. Whether noise cancellation is on or off, the connection grows through shared rhythm, music, and movement. The video suggests that healing does not always happen in isolation. Sometimes, it begins in motion, sound, or simply noticing one another.
This is the power of music and dance. When the world becomes too much, they help us return to ourselves and sometimes to each other.
Like the Apple video, certain songs and performances have long helped me find my footing when the world feels unsteady.
One song I always return to is Here Comes the Sun, written by George Harrison of The Beatles. He wrote it during a difficult time — when perhaps he felt burned out, emotionally drained, and weighed down by the pressures of fame and business. Sitting in a friend's garden, he found a bit of peace. The 'long, cold, lonely winter' he sings about is not just about the season — it reflects that period in his life. And it speaks to the dark and challenging times we all go through. The song reminds me that even after long stretches of struggle, light does return.
I have heard it played in many different ways — by George Benson, Yusuf/Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Richie Havens, Yo-Yo Ma, and Nina Simone. Each version carries something unique, yet the heart of the song stays the same. It does not matter how it is played. The message reaches people: things can get better. And that is enough.
I get that same feeling from Revelations, the signature work of Alvin Ailey.
Alvin Ailey was a choreographer who changed dance in America. 1958 he started the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to bring Black stories and spiritual traditions into modern dance. His work used gospel, blues, and spirituals — music full of emotion and memory. Revelations is built on those songs. It tells a story of pain, faith, and joy. And like Harrison's song, it reminds me that hardship isn't the end.
I feel that shift when I see Revelations — live or on screen. It begins in sorrow and ends in celebration — not a celebration that forgets what came before, but one that moves through it. It shows strength. It shows healing.
Someday and Revelations are very different, yet they share something. They use sound and movement to express things we often do not say out loud. They help us feel what we've been holding back.
And sometimes, that is all it takes to shift your day.
That message felt even more real to me the day the Someday video came out. It was the first day of spring. That morning, I reached out to my friend Jay Moon Fields, a writer and teacher whose work I deeply respect. I had just read her piece, Why I've Stopped Doing Yoga, and I wanted to tell her how much it meant.
Jay responded simply: 'Thank you for reading, Bill. I hope you're well on this first official day of spring!'
And it was. Cold. Gray. Nothing is blooming yet. But still—spring. The season had turned, even if the weather had not caught up. That thought stuck with me. Because Someday feels like that, too. The shift comes before we see it. Before we're ready. The music begins before the joy is visible. The body starts to move before the warmth returns. And that movement is what makes space for change.
So when I hear Here Comes the Sun — whether it is George Harrison or someone else — I hear more than a song. I hear a reminder: things change. The clouds move — the season shifts. Even if today feels cold, better days are coming.
And maybe that is the point.
Whether it is an AirPod in your ear, a piece of choreography, or a familiar song, sound can help us move forward, process, and believe there is light, even if we cannot see it yet.
We don't always talk about this in business or tech, yet we should. These tools—music, stillness, rhythm—are how many of us make it through.
Sometimes, what we need most is not a fix but a feeling. And sound, at its best, can guide us back to that place, back to focus, back to feeling, back to connection.
In these moments — when we create space to hear what matters — sound becomes more than audio. It becomes connection, clarity, and a quiet kind of strength.
When the world is too loud — when everything feels too much — sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is pause to play to shift.
Maybe it is spiritual. Maybe it is the soul. Maybe it is George Harrison saying: 'It's been a long, cold, lonely winter.' And maybe that is exactly what we need to hear because the following line still matters most: 'Here comes the sun.'
And that is how you tell the story of a noise cancellation feature: not through specs or silence alone, but through its ability to create space for better outcomes — for grounding, for joy, for resilience, and for the chance to move forward with a little more peace.