Now and then and now
When I first got into music, it came in the form of stone tablets with notches carved into them, and you had to travel by flying dinosaur to get to the nearest Tower Records. I exaggerate, slightly. But as someone who still remembers cassettes and overpriced CDs, I sometimes wonder about the ways people get—and get to love—music these days, particularly people who were born when the internet was already a thing.
I distracted our office’s 16-year-old intern, Bianca—a sharp writer/editor-in-the-making whom I suspect we will all find ourselves working for in the future, when she builds her galactic media empire—and asked her some questions about how she appreciates music.
Who are your favorite musical artists? Favorite songs, albums, genres? “My favorite artists are Adele, Coldplay, Kings of Leon, Avicii, Kaskade, Tiesto, and Bon Iver,” said Bianca. “Favorite songs are Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye, and Holocene by Bon Iver. Favorite albums: ‘Rated R’ by Rihanna and ‘Come Around Sundown’ by Kings of Leon. Favorite genres: house, jazz, and alternative indie.”
It’s a pretty diverse lineup, genre-wise, and also very much steeped in the music scene of the moment (except perhaps for the bit about jazz), which makes me intensely aware that none of my current favorite artists or albums are actually, you know, current. (I don’t count new albums by old artists, like ‘Sweet Heart Sweet Light’ by Spiritualized.) Perhaps we do not love any artists the way we love the artists we discovered in our teens and twenties. Or it could have something to do with relative sizes of back catalogs, though theoretically it only takes one album—or one song—to win a lifelong fan.
How do you discover new music to listen to now? “Mostly from my DJ friend who has a playlist on his Tumblr. But I sometimes discover music from this website, hypem.com, which has some pretty good alternative music as well. Most of the time, my friends introduce me to new songs on YouTube or Tumblr that I’ve never heard of before, and usually after a couple of months they become mainstream and everyone starts talking about them.”
Why don’t I have DJ friends who make playlists? I am clearly moving in the wrong circles. (Also, I need to check my Tumblr feed more often.) I still visit the Hype Machine fairly regularly, though I noticed that the sheer volume of music blogs has dwindled somewhat since the mid-2000s, probably due to the copyright-related crackdown initiated by some blog services. My favorites—Fingertips Music, Fluxblog, Earmilk, Pretty Much Amazing, RCRD LBL, among others—are thankfully still operational.
Do you remember the first album you bought/ downloaded/ listened to in its entirety? How and why did you come across it? “My first album that I ever bought was ‘Let Go’ by Avril Lavigne, her debut album in fact. I was six. I actually came across the album purely by mistake; my dad took me to this CD store in Greenbelt and I just picked a random CD to buy. It was a good mistake though, because at the time I was really into the whole “rocker girl” scene and after listening to Avril’s album I fell in love with the genre even more. But that was back then. Not so much of a rocker now.”
When “Let Go” came out, I was already working at a music magazine; I remember ripping some songs from the office review copy (don’t judge me). The first album I ever bought was ‘All the Rage’ by General Public. Do not look it up. I am old.
You may know them for Tenderness and Never You Done That And nothing else. What format or method do you prefer for enjoying music? “Digital, on my iTunes. Since I carry my laptop with me everywhere and work on it almost every single day, I listen to music on my iTunes while working simultaneously. I don’t really use CDs anymore because why use a Walkman when you have an iPod/laptop? Unless I have to burn music for someone on a CD, and even then usually my friends just give me their hardrive for me to transfer the mp3 files from my iTunes to their computer.”
I still like the idea—or perhaps more accurately, the packaging—of CDs (and the feeling of having a physical collection), but I do recall that the last time a band gave me an album to review, I was annoyed that I could not just plug my earbuds into the jewel case and listen to it on the cab ride home. Having to wait ‘til I got to an optical drive (which my laptop, by the way, doesn’t have) seemed needlessly… primitive. How quickly we adapt to convenience!
What was the last gig/ live musical performance you saw? “Confession: I’ve never been to a live performance. Ever. But I am seeing Lady Gaga on May 29th in Singapore, and judging from her previous performances, I’m sure that she won’t disappoint!”
I’m sure she won’t. Meanwhile, my officemates are looking forward to Morrissey here in May, and I am looking forward to The Stone Roses in Hong Kong (and Singapore) this July—both acts, by the way, that were active well before Bianca was even born.
Music is easy, now—I grew up reading music magazines and feeling frustrated that I could never get or hear half the things they reviewed; now I have a hard drive full of albums I might never get around to listening to. But a three-minute song still takes three minutes to appreciate. The artists and avenues are different; the love, I would wager, stays the same.
