Some Songs Considered

“You Can Never Quarantine the Past” - A Personal Listening History

First, I owe all of you an apology for generally disappearing since June.  Just when I thought I’d have more time to write, I subconsciously decided that I needed to stop for a little while.  After a year and a half of writing just about every day, I needed to take some space.  I needed time to myself, I needed to listen to music again without an agenda, and most importantly I needed to miss writing.  A few weeks ago the itch returned and aimed at this week for the return.  This time, it came with a new idea.

So for the next indeterminate period (basically once this idea has run its course), I am going to start combing through music made during my lifetime.  This week, I will start with songs released* in 1983 all the way through songs released in 2010.  I haven’t settled on how many songs per year - originally it was one per year, but the list got harder as I got older, but it will move chronologically.  

Of course, the framing idea almost mandates a personal bend to these posts.  This is the most attractive part of this idea - along with helping me pick out songs (which was often the most difficult part), personal context will come out immediately.  This isn’t to say this will devolve into journal entries - I’m still interested in the songs primarily, but in many cases it’s next to impossible to completely take my experience out of my opinion.  Instead, I envision this as a “personal listening history” - one that tries to connect the dots between these songs and the different versions of me who listened to them.  If you’ve read many of the first five hundred-something posts here, you know what to expect.  

The most intriguing part of this whole thing will be the arc it takes.  I don’t have any memories of my first couple years of life, and the first memory of a contemporary music event I can think of comes in the early 1990s.  So I imagine the 1980s will jump around a fair amount, then gradually shifting into my “formative” years in the 1990s, and then shooting off in another direction after 2000.  Part of the fun afterward will be retracing my steps!  

Finally, in the spirit of variety, I’m going to generally stick to one song per artist per era.  There are a few bands that will get repeats if I end up writing about more than one or two songs per year, but otherwise I want to touch on as many different directions as possible.

So this is where I’m going for the foreseeable future.  If I end up sticking to one or two songs per year, I’ll be done in a couple months.  Or, if I end up devoting a week to each year, I’ll end about six months from now (appropriately, into a new year of my life).  In the short term, it’s another excuse to write again, and that makes me happy.  

I’ll tag all of these posts with “personal listening history” (unless I decide on a better tag) and I would love hearing your take, especially when a song dovetails with your own personal history.  You know where to find me.

If I’ve learned nothing else since starting this blog, it’s the way that my personal experience shaped my thoughts, taste, and preferences as a listener.  Thanks for indulging me as I hone in on that more specifically.  

*In general, I’m using album releases as the identifier (and generally the US release).  The exceptions come when I had a particularly strong reaction to the single, when an essential compilation included a song (but generally not a “best of” album - those get backdated), or when I have a particularly compelling live recording.  Generally, I hope to be in the right neighborhood at least!