Death to Playlists
I’ve fallen in and out of love with music several times in my life.
The 1990s were amazing. I like to say that it didn’t matter what music you listened to in the early 90s, it was all good. Both hip hop and rock blossomed into a rennaisance at almost the same time. It was an incredible time for music.
The era produced so many great bands. Nirvana, obviously, but there was also Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails, and (my personal favorite) Garbage. All of which produced albums that have held up and I still listen to today.
But “alternative” music soon gave way to cheap immitators of increasingly terrible quality (Creed, Fastball, Matchbox 20, Fuel). In the late 90s, I couldn’t find anything to listen to…so I didn’t.
Then in 2001, The Strokes released “Is This It?” and everything changed. I was a bit late to the party; I was focused on school and career at the time and missed the beginning of the indie revolution. In 2003, I graduated and landed a stable job, and immediately made up for lost time. Practically a quarter of my income went to buying albums and concert tickets, but could you blame me? This was the era of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Faint, Death Cab, The White Stripes, and The Postal Service.
As time went on, the indie revolution lost momentum. There was a minor blip in the early 2010s with indietronica/dance music (LCD Soundsystem, Metric, Phoenix, etc.). But it was short lived. I again found myself without anything to listen to.
Around the same time, listening habits changed. Around 2004-05, people started to listen to their music collection on “shuffle” with their iPods (how quaint!). Then smart phones and Spotify became increasingly popular. Spotify made it so we didn’t even need to manually discover music or create playlists anymore. Just let the robots pick your music for you!
I too fell into these habits. Over time, the music I heard became stale, repetitive, and algorithmic. Ten years into the streaming music era, I still listened to the same bands I heard in 2008. “Is this what getting old is like?” I asked myself. “Just listening to the same music over and over for the rest of your life?”
But recently I rediscovered the beauty of listening to full albums. I have “fond” memories of 2003, hauling around a bulky 150 disc CD wallet, and loading up my car’s six disc changer with the next albums I wanted to listen to. But I stopped listening to full albums when I bought my first MP3 player (in the mid 2000s), and it’s about the same time I lost enjoyment for music. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Listening to full albums has made me re-fall in love with music again, and I’m now an evangelist. Seriously, if you feel like music has become stale or left you behind, I encourage you to give your old CDs a spin.
Finding new music isn’t that hard. I found the video below incredibly helpful. For me, the website Album of the Year and returning to last.fm helped me discover lots of great artists. My username on both sites is “misterspaceman” (also linked in the footer); feel free to add me.