For a society that is full of people self-diagnosing as autistic, nobody is obsessing over and fixating on music like they should be.
I jest. Sort of.
Last month, I thought about the tragedy of realising you’re in a memory as it is being made, and it made me think about those ineffable feelings that engulf us whenever we hear or smell something familiar.
I think music has fallen into the box of ‘things we’ve tried desperately to optimise’ – skimming through albums, popularising seven second snippets of the catchy parts and going viral with them. We hear way too much music without actually listening to it – there’s a subway take that expressed how I feel about this so well.
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I suppose I can’t really compare Jeff Buckley’s Grace with whatever catchy pop slop people are churning out these days, so perhaps there isn’t really anything to listen to anymore. Still, I think you’re doing the artist a disservice by not listening to album as it was intended to be listened to. Are people still listening to albums in chronological order and marvelling at how the music style, themes, and lyrics change? Do they even know Placebo did the most stunning cover of Running up that hill? Did they even listen to Gotye, or do they only know about their anxiety?
I find more people are choosing to be impressed over the most basic hooks instead of discussing the best riff of all time or being blown away by lyrical genius.
But for me, music has been a huge part of my life since I was a child.
I don’t listen to nearly as much music now as I used to because I gifted myself a lifetime of tinnitus when I made the conscious decision to listen to Children of Bodom at full volume and attend as many gigs as I could in my formative years. Despite that, I’m still so strongly affected by the ability of music to transcend any form of communication and overwhelm me with nostalgia. I have a really bad memory, but I can transport myself anywhere at any time in my life through specific songs.
You can’t live the moment a second time, but listening to a playlist you had on repeat when you last felt pure, unadulterated joy, had your heart broken, or met the love of your life is close enough.
I’ll never be 10 years old in the Carling Apollo (now Hammersmith/Eventim) again, waiting for my favourite band ever at the time to come out on stage. But when I listen to Shut Up, I am once again standing three rows from Fergie and wishing she knew I got these Superstars because of her. All I cared about at that age was sitting by the TV and waiting for my favourite music videos to come on (this was just before YouTube was a thing…).
When I listen to anything by HIM or Avenged Sevenfold, I’m overcome with a strange feeling that I lived a period I can’t really remember, before any of the bullshit warped my general view of life and the world. I feel like I’m looking back into my teenage years through a bubble that I just want to pop, let it end there. My only concern was doing my English homework, having 5 hour long “study” phone calls with my friends, or reading fan fiction about Izzy Stradlin (don’t ask) and discussing it with my pen-pal. Emma, if you’re out there, it’s been almost twenty years and I still remember you.
Remember who you are, alt girl xxxx
No Te Veo reminds me of the time I first properly discovered reggaeton. Suddenly, I’m walking through the alleyway at 4pm and traumatised because the local nonce has decided to get his willy out for the school kids. And Borra el miedo reminds me of the 30-something year old estate agent leaving his desk to follow me home every day after school. As a self-absorbed teenager, the fact that he was married with kids bothered me – but not as much as the nerve of him being old and bald did. I look back on that situation, now probably the same age he was, and I’m filled with both disgust and resignation. Time moves forward, years will pass, and men will still be trying to cheat on their families with children.
When I listen to F*@K You Lucy, I’m twenty three and licking my wounds at 3am, doing nothing but writing about how everything started going to shit and my brain started eating itself. I drank Rockstars to stay up and I had South Park on the TV to pull me out if I ever got too deep. I needed a root canal shortly after that.
I have no intention of listening to Way 2 Sexy again (it’s just not a good song, is it), and it’s just as well because suddenly I’m crying my eyes out on the Prince of Wales bridge, on my way to start my life again. But the way music works, I’m probably crying my eyes out in real life because, even when you end up turning back around, the body doesn’t forget. The music courses through you to wriggle out an involuntary reaction that your brain doesn’t want to relate to. Or whatever Bessel van Der kolk said.
When I’m listening to Golden, I’m no longer sitting on a sofa in the West Country, depressed an hour before work because it’s Monday yet again. Instead, it’s a sunny Saturday afternoon and I’m at home in the garden I grew up playing in in West London. I’m sipping on an ice cold hazelnut coffee and watching the cat basking in the… shade. He distracts me from the fact that, though it looks similar, nothing is the same. For someone as bougie as him, he really likes getting his arse covered in soil.
It’s been over a year since I was in Finsbury Park, drinking warm wine, belting out Dakota and trying desperately to hold onto the moment because I knew it would always be one of the best days of my life. I’ve been listening to this song endlessly since 2005 and I’ve seen it live a few times – but Dakota will always make me think of the sun setting in July 2025.
If anybody cares, here are five albums I consider absolutely perfect:
- Hybrid Theory – Linkin Park
- Grace – Jeff Buckley
- American Idiot – Green Day
- Rumours – Fleetwood Mac
- Meteora – Linkin Park
- Bonus because they’re mixtapes: House of Balloons/Thursday – The Weeknd. Chuck in Montreal and they’re perfect.
Now Playing: Jesus of Suburbia – Green Day
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