...falling back on music like it's some sort of crutch, brought out in times of distress to prop up some challenged, fabricated notion?

No way.

It's all there, born with you like legs or woven into you over time like a latticework of scars. Good, bad or indifferent, it's the soundtrack against which everything else plays. We are part of its ebb and flow, not the other way around. If anything, music falls back on you.