Music can have a profound impact on your environment. It can be the soundtrack to your life. Today, we have great control over the type of music we listen to. There’s radio, CDs, iTunes, and many different streaming services. The internet makes it easier to explore all music, including underground and indie that would otherwise be rare to find, decades ago.

Personally I have a deep admiration for CDs. As a young girl, I was still listening to cassette tapes, and CDs were a big deal. They were double the price, double the size, and you could actually skip songs instead of impatiently playing with the fast-forward/rewind buttons.

I have good childhood memories going to our  town’s local store “CDs & Tapes” (obviously they went out of business a few years later.) It was a roulette, paying $20 (that’s A LOT of money for a 90s school-child) for a CD when I only knew one song from the radio. It was riskier back then, before you could preview all the songs online.

I can appreciate radio/streaming, but I will always prefer CDs/tapes/etc… When an artist puts out a new record, the tracks should be in a purposeful order that tells a story — instead of randomness. Many pop artists do not put as much thought in the order of their tracklist because they are trying to sell singles. They are focused on radio top hits. I prefer hearing a story rather than bop after bop.

I really enjoy creating playlists and burning mixed CDs. In a way, it’s like I am creating my own story by borrowing the pieces of others’s stories. I have made many mixed CDs for friends and family and it makes me happy to see them appreciate it. I once gave my friend a mixed CD and she told me how she could see how much thought was put into it. Never hesitate to ask me to make you a CD — just give me a genereal  idea of what artists/genres you prefer!

In the past few years, I started listening to records. I bought a record player in college. I only have a few records right now, because of the high price, but someday I hope to have a decent collection I can display with pride. I’m obsessed with the whole aesthetic of records. Something so nostalgic and dreamy about it, as well as a feeling of true respect for music. It is an entirely different quality of sound.

Music is a wonderful thing. It can be a way of controlling your life, in a way. The lyrics seep into your thoughts and the melodies seep into your movements. Sometimes it’s not until you look back, when you see how much an album, artist, or genre has shaped you.