I love this song, and it's worth noting that it's one of the only songs on my 80s playlist that gets a resounding "Let's play it again!" from both of my brutally honest, hard-to-please kids.
Thank you for writing about the experience of hearing a song in passing, and having no information except a giant question mark in your mind about it until you manage to hear it again. I was so excited when the era of always-knowing arrived, and I had no idea how much I would miss that sense of mystery.
I think the interesting thing is that the age of the algorithm is rather re-introducing an idea of 'mainstream' and 'counter-culture', since the sheer quantity of stuff means its harder to find the obscure. Also, without the internet, I would never have rediscovered the jazz funk single that my sisters won as a prize at a children's party and that we then used as the theme music to the 'radio show' we used to make on the family's portable tape machine: https://youtu.be/TPYNIc_M1ng?si=cjdP5uxiGLrdmsQt
Ooh. That song is so warm and crunchy and just good. Thank you for sharing it.
I think that’s a great point about it being “harder to find the obscure.” That true, and I’ve also noticed that some of us Gen X / Xennials take for granted our search skills. Just the ability to run a good search and use terms that will help us narrow down an impossibly vast sea of results. Many younger people I know think I’m some kind of a magician at “finding things” but it’s just that I was trained at an early age about how to use Boolean operators etc. To some, search functions do feel like magic and seem like something they couldn’t possibly wield themselves. I would love to see people getting a better understanding of how using slightly different terms can wildly affect the outcome of a search.
I had never heard this song before. Great piece! Excellent summary of where we are now. It’s such a long time since I’ve listened to the radio. I feel like the world of music has become so fragmented and vast that even radio stations have become “algorithmic” such that finding something you want to listen to will probably feed you more of the same rather than broadening your horizons. I don’t mean that I won’t hear new things, just that they might already slot neatly into my comfort zone rather than challenging my expectations. A good listening experience should do a bit of both.
Oh precisely - I think that's a really good point, especially about not just new things but challenging things. On the other hand, a bunch of friends have a WhatsApp group listening to the albums featured in Pitchfork's Sunday Review (stuff from the past they haven't review yet) and I've started just skipping it since it has been relentlessly *challenging* (Justin Timberlake, eg). Perhaps my brain is just being worn smooth by the algorithm, after all.
I think there is definitely space to say”That’s not for me!” And leave it alone, but too much of the same can really become boring. Strangely, for me that only applies to new things which sound familiar rather than songs which are already familiar. I could listen to those for hours.
I love this song, and it's worth noting that it's one of the only songs on my 80s playlist that gets a resounding "Let's play it again!" from both of my brutally honest, hard-to-please kids.
Thank you for writing about the experience of hearing a song in passing, and having no information except a giant question mark in your mind about it until you manage to hear it again. I was so excited when the era of always-knowing arrived, and I had no idea how much I would miss that sense of mystery.
I think the interesting thing is that the age of the algorithm is rather re-introducing an idea of 'mainstream' and 'counter-culture', since the sheer quantity of stuff means its harder to find the obscure. Also, without the internet, I would never have rediscovered the jazz funk single that my sisters won as a prize at a children's party and that we then used as the theme music to the 'radio show' we used to make on the family's portable tape machine: https://youtu.be/TPYNIc_M1ng?si=cjdP5uxiGLrdmsQt
Ooh. That song is so warm and crunchy and just good. Thank you for sharing it.
I think that’s a great point about it being “harder to find the obscure.” That true, and I’ve also noticed that some of us Gen X / Xennials take for granted our search skills. Just the ability to run a good search and use terms that will help us narrow down an impossibly vast sea of results. Many younger people I know think I’m some kind of a magician at “finding things” but it’s just that I was trained at an early age about how to use Boolean operators etc. To some, search functions do feel like magic and seem like something they couldn’t possibly wield themselves. I would love to see people getting a better understanding of how using slightly different terms can wildly affect the outcome of a search.
I had never heard this song before. Great piece! Excellent summary of where we are now. It’s such a long time since I’ve listened to the radio. I feel like the world of music has become so fragmented and vast that even radio stations have become “algorithmic” such that finding something you want to listen to will probably feed you more of the same rather than broadening your horizons. I don’t mean that I won’t hear new things, just that they might already slot neatly into my comfort zone rather than challenging my expectations. A good listening experience should do a bit of both.
Oh precisely - I think that's a really good point, especially about not just new things but challenging things. On the other hand, a bunch of friends have a WhatsApp group listening to the albums featured in Pitchfork's Sunday Review (stuff from the past they haven't review yet) and I've started just skipping it since it has been relentlessly *challenging* (Justin Timberlake, eg). Perhaps my brain is just being worn smooth by the algorithm, after all.
I think there is definitely space to say”That’s not for me!” And leave it alone, but too much of the same can really become boring. Strangely, for me that only applies to new things which sound familiar rather than songs which are already familiar. I could listen to those for hours.