This post marks the start of a weekly series I'm launching in an attempt to encourage myself to write more regularly. Each Monday (or whenever else I have the time to publish it) I'll be discussing my relationship with one of my favourite albums, of which I have many, spanning various genres and time periods. I may also occasionally cover single songs in Micro posts.
Everyone who knows me should be aware of my sheer love of music, a love which is only equalled in my life by poetry and football. Music is a fairly common passion, I suppose, perhaps the most universal in such a diverse and divided world. We use it to meet other people personally, whether at a party or at concerts or in clubs, then use it to get to know them better. We also use it as a more distant form of connection, in the times we sit alone on public transport or in our rooms and really listen to a song, drawing from shared human experience, taking relief from it, relying on it as a method of better understanding ourselves. It's safe to assume that the occasions when we come across anyone to whom music is not a major part of their life are incredibly rare.
However, there is also something distinctly individual about the way we interact with music. Each of us has our own tastes in what we listen to and our own reasons for having them, whether due to having our parents playing albums to us on vinyl or CD when we were children, overhearing songs on the radio or being invited over by a friend excited about what they had to show us. Our circumstances affect everything - our tastes are the ever-growing result of our personal history. Favourite bands or songs may overlap, but even with our best friends they are never quite the same. Music is all around us and yet only truly exists within us, murmuring throughout our lives as if its rhythms move through us like blood.
These albums are memorable to me for my own reasons, which I'll try my best to explore. For me to simply review them would not do them justice, as no doubt at points some of you will disagree; each of these autobiographical pieces is therefore intended as a mere point of entry, a hole pierced into the heart of what music means to us. For that reason, I'd be extremely happy for any one who reads this series to comment, start a debate or discuss your own feelings towards each album. I hope this project helps you learn more about me, other readers and maybe yourself as a consequence!
The first entry will be posted soon.
