No song is an island
and the ghosts that dwell in our favourite music
I vividly the remember the thrilled gleam in my dads eyes when I discovered his vinyl collection packed away in the garage. These boxes of 12” and 7” records were so much more than pieces of plastic; each one was a story of their own. Funded by carefully saved pocket money, they soundtracked romances, friendships, and teenage escapades, whilst my discovery of them pulled back the curtain on a side to my parents’ lives that I had never seen before.
Riffling through this treasure trove of memories one afternoon, it awakened a myriad of stories, most of which I hadn’t heard before. How my parents met; their first date being a gig by The Jam in Coventry; and how their music tastes were from, at the time, two different worlds. My mum preferring to don black bin bags whilst rocking out at The Clash shows, whilst my mod-loving dad practically lived in his Harrington jacket, and adored his blue Lambretta.
Those few hours I spent lining up 7’ after 7’ on the dusty record player in the living room left a lasting impression. I’ll forever connect The Buzzcocks Ever Fallen In Love, or Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart to that afternoon; the first time I’d heard either song, acquainted with them by the taste of my once-teenage parents. Hearing this sonic magic for the first time, whilst being regaled stories by my previously-considered disastrously uncool parents, tied an unbreakable connection between the music and my experience of the world.
What I’m trying to convey through this nostalgic spiel, is that music is nothing without the listener that embraces it; oft forgotten in a digital world of data, playlists and micro-engagements. With our consumption now so streamlined, it’s all to easy to view The Internet as all an-encompassing beast, yet the heart, the play-count or the Instagram story share, only reveals a snippet of the personal connection forged between listener and song. Behind every recording, a story; and behind every individual listen, a trench of memories, sprawling forever, like an adamantine spiders web.
Similarly, a few days ago whilst attempting to rearrange the chaos of my Spotify playlists, I stumbled upon a ‘collaborative’ playlist which I shared with a now-ex. These two hundred and forty two songs trace the tumultuous journey of our doomed relationship - the songs that soundtracked falling love, the songs that helped us move on.
Drunkenly waltzing round an AirBnB kitchen to Majical Cloudz; the one we promised would be our first dance. Tears streaming during the Sufjan Stevens soundtracked closing credits to Call Me By Your Name. Landing at a Shoreditch pub lock-in, where East London’s coolest were wrapped round your finger with a rendition of Coldplay’s The Scientist. There’s even Fuck You by Lily Allen, added to the top of the playlist after a particularly arduous falling out.
Memories frozen into these compositions, like a fly in amber; much like those told to me by my parents, except in this case snipped at their stem, never to flower. Despite our lives now comprehensively and meticulously untangled, those songs still tide through my existence, forever attached to a love once revered.
The communal, yet uniquely lived experience is one I try to place emphasis on when talking with artists about releasing music; the story that informs the song is a fraction of the world that will blossom around it. For all the pitfalls, of digitisation of consumption, it’s allowed for the most diverse and remarkable canvas upon which to spill these stories, as every piece of released music breathes a life of its own through each individual it reaches.
It’s part of the reason I see such untapped potential in collaborative listening experiences. I long for the day that Spotify adopts the social-first approach of other platforms like Goodreads, or Letterboxd; allowing users to share their own unique experience in the same place that they, and all their friends listen to it. I’ll always fondly remember the MSN ‘listening to’ feature, and the MySpace profile song changed everything for millennials looking to impress their peers.
No song exists within a vacuum or indeed as an island; there’s no tearing it from the seams of the moment in which we experienced it. Instead, music frequently forms the backdrop to the occasions in life that stick with us; with the recorded song offering up a path to return to these memories when deemed suitable.
I often speak to how every song is a story, however a more accurate description would be that they’re ghosts. Spectres of our past, once living, now banished to an inaccessible part of ourselves, yet ready to be unleashed and recaptured at the press of the play button. For all the stories woven into the songs by the artists themselves, it’s only the songs in our own stories that are capable of delivering the sort of heart-crushing punch that leaves a lasting mark.