Filed under: Potpourri | Tags: bad cars, good music, new music, old music players
I have recently and serendipitously been reintroduced to the art of listening to an album in its entirety.
The decade-old CD player in my boyfriend’s car refuses to distinguish between tracks — if it even plays the cd at all. Therefore, if you want to listen to to music, you must commit to hearing an album from beginning to end. If your car is as musically destitute as my boyfriend’s, you only have one cd to chose from, and our music du jour is Coldplay’s most recent album, Viva la Vida.
I used to listen to entire CDs all the time. I can still remember my first CD player, bought with saved up babysitting money, that lasted me from high school all the way to college. I would buy CDs from a music store and listen them to death – most noteably, Jewel, “Pieces of You”, Dave Matthews Band “Before These Crowded Streets” and Weezer, The Blue Album. I can’t say if I really appreciated the continuity of listening to a whole album, but there are times when I re-listen to those CDs, and I can sing a long to songs I didn’t even recognize.
Gradually, I began to pick and choose which tracks I liked and which I didn’t. This became infinitely easier with the transition to downloaded music. And when I judged a song to be unworthy of my time, I would delete it from my computer altogether, never to bother me again. It felt liberating to dictate which music I liked and discard what I didn’t. And while my library sharply decreased, I justified it by telling myself that I was cutting out the dead weight and only keeping the gems.
Which brings us to today, my iPod only half filled with three or four tracks from any given artist, besides, ironically, those whom I had learned to love through the trusty old CD player.
And I really really like the new Coldplay CD. I’m a big fan of both the title track and Violet Hill from listening to them on the radio, but I had no idea how much depth and fluidity there was in the album. And listening to it all in one sitting is a refreshing experience. There are songs that I find myself humming and singing a long to that I would have never given a chance normally.
Now, I’m not suggesting we should all return to 8 tracks and have no control over what we listen to. And there is certainly a TON of bad music out there. But I think listening to albums in bits and pieces like the old me would does a injustice to the artists who created it.
So when I saw Kanye’s new CD had just been released, I started with Track #1 …
– Bear
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