How music shapes your memories
Although it's not as good as it used to be
Every chapter of my life has a soundtrack associated with it. And with each passing year, those associations become more deeply embedded as I associate the association as well as the original event. September is one of the richest months for such soundtracks, as it draws on every new school and university year, with all the excitement, nerves and new experiences that went with those, many years ago as they were.
This means that at that time of year I have a sudden inexplicable urge to listen to The Levellers and Carter USM (first and third years of Uni), The Shamen (second year) and everything that was in the UK top 40 in 1987 (my first attempt at painting my room. It took a lot longer than I’d hoped or expected.) A certain set of pop hits from 1988 transports me back to a rainy walk with my radio Walkman, when I’d had a bit of a strop about something.
A few weeks later it’ll be Nevermind (1992 - it had come out the year before but I was a little late to that party) and then, as the nights start to draw in, Blind Pilot (which I used to listen to a few Novembers ago when I was travelling a lot with work).
Although I was a huge music fan from as early as eight years old, much of what I listened to was taped off the radio (that is, recording the radio onto a cassette), with the few albums I had generally being Christmas or birthday presents. Back then, in the 80s and early 90s, I would play an album over and over for months, maybe rotating five or six albums over the course of a year.
Buying a new album was an event, and something I’d only usually do when I was sure I was going to love it (because of the singles on the radio, or because friends were already playing it incessantly).
I was obsessed with music back then. Perhaps because the selection was more limited (or at least finite), it was possible to develop an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of current and recent music. I knew every chart position that every song had reached, what all the samples were on that new Bomb the Bass track, the original line-ups of Duran Duran and Adam and the Ants… everything.
Today, there’s a lot of bile about Spotify, not least here on Substack. I’m not well enough informed on the rights or wrongs of how they pay artists and serve new music via ‘the algorithm’ to express a clear opinion on that, but as a user I do love the service they provide. For less than twenty quid a month, I and the other members of my family can each listen to all the music ever, as much as we want, on separate accounts, plus podcasts and audiobooks.
If you had told me in 1987 that was going to be a thing, while I was choosing which 12” single to buy or taping the charts, you might as well have promised me a spaceship. But at the same time, there’s something about being able to have everything that has killed the magic – the uncertainty of whether the local record shop had the single or album you wanted did make it all the sweeter to find it in stock.
I don’t listen to much new music these days. It’s not that I don’t try, but a lot of what I hear on the radio is awful (you may, of course, disagree, but you’d be wrong). New music often doesn’t land with me when I try it. I also don’t like that band names are all capitals or all lower case (or worse yet, a MiX of tHe twO) and I’m almost at the point where I won’t listen to them on principle.
I read an excellent article on Substack a month or so about how you listen to less new music the older you get, but sadly I can’t link it here because Substack doesn’t let you save or bookmark anything. Do post it in the comments if you know what I’m talking about…
When I do stick with new music, it’s usually new but from an established act - a reunion (Tears for Fears, Travis, Shed Seven), or by some great acts that actually never stopped making records, (like Erasure, or Jim Bob from Carter USM).
I generally find enough really good new tracks to make a couple of decent playlists per year but it feels like mining an ever-increasing pile of rubble for a diminishing number of gems. And why do they all swear so much…?
Whenever I find myself complaining about today’s music, I’m transported back to around 1986 and a rare argument with my Dad. It was 7.30 on Thursday, which meant the highlight of the week – Top of The Pops was on BBC1.
It’s hard to explain to younger listeners how big a deal TOTP was – basically, your one-stop shop for current music and the pinnacle of an act’s year to be allowed to perform (or mime, usually) on there. It was usually your only chance to see the biggest acts perform, and your first look at the charts for that week.
I was in raptures at the week’s line-up as usual, while my Dad (probably then ten years younger than I am now) was making amusing quips about the latest hotness. ‘Is this in the hit parade?’ he would say? ‘It sounds like he’s got toothache.’ ‘What’s she singing? You can’t even hear the words.’ Etc.
Because nothing was ‘on demand’, the TOTP slot was your best (and possibly only) chance that week of hearing your favourite song – unfortunately the quips continued. I had a complete sense of humour failure and probably said something incredibly scathing and pithy and flounced off upstairs to watch on the 12-inch black & white set instead (yes, two TVs - we were a pretty big deal back then).
So I try not to be that guy. I try and give my kids the space to listen to their stuff, which does often overlap fairly heavily, and helpfully, with my tastes. They’re now at an age where they will introduce me to as much music as I do them, and that’s lovely. And I’d be slightly disappointed if their tastes were just based on mine, however easy that makes co-habiting for the time being.
They need to find their own cornerstones, they need to discover those albums and artists that will forever remind them of what they were doing, thinking and feeling when they were at school. So I have to resist the temptation to tell them what their perfect soundtrack should be (even though I’d make an amazing job of it because I know all the music).
I don’t think I willingly listened to anything my parents would have enjoyed when I was a teenager, although I did end up in my thirties buying many of the albums that had played in the house during my childhood – Joni Mitchell, Moody Blues, Love, John Lennon. I guess the seeds are planted in your subconscious, only to bloom many years later as you hark back to simpler times.
What I have found in recent years is that new experiences become far more memorable if they have a soundtrack associated with them. Because songs trigger memories of where you were when you were listening to them, just as smells and tastes can, a memory can quickly become less sharp without that unique playlist.
A great song isn’t just a song, it’s a snapshot of a moment in time, it’s a thumbnail image in your brain that you can click on to recall everything that you heard, saw, smelt and felt when it was last playing. And when that memory is a shared one, it’s even better.
And that alone is probably enough reason to persevere with new music – it makes every event and every year more memorable and I want to keep creating those life soundtracks. This year I’ve discovered Twenty-One Pilots (I mean discovered in the most local sense possible – they’ve had like a trillion streams). Someone called beabadoobee seems to be quite good (I’m forgiving them the lower-case name just this once). And Yard Act have a shouty coolness that takes me back to shoutier, cooler times.
And literally as I’m writing this, I’ve just discovered that Blind Pilot had a new album out earlier this year, which gives the perfect opportunity to soundtrack this November, making it all the more memorable for future years.
