DAY 23: MUSIC

Has the instant accessibility of music taken away some of the joy of listening to our favourite songs?

One day, many years ago, I was chilling in the kitchen at home, just minding my own business, making coffee or warming food… or something of the sort.

All was calm, relaxed and typically homely. A child screamed with joy somewhere next door, a dog barked, the radio was on in another room and a light breeze blew through one of the sliding doors. Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.

One second, the radio DJ was talking a bunch of unintelligible rubbish, and the next, I heard the first few seconds of JoJo’s Leave (Get Out), a hit at the time and yes, whatever, a song I loved.

To say I almost killed myself as I raced down the passage, took a sharp left into my parent's room and almost crashed into our old-school, humungous Hitachi hi-fi to press ‘record’ would be putting it mildly. I really could have hurt myself.

But at that moment, there was nothing more important than recording this song that had been stuck in my head for a couple of days.

There was an indescribable magic in hearing your favourite song on the radio at a time when you didn’t expect it, and better still, managing to record 85% of that song for endless rewinds and scratchy repeat plays. The spontaneity of it all is sorely missing today, where tracking down your favourite songs has become crazy in its convenience.

But because we can easily find whatever it is we need in a few seconds, there’s no delay and no sense of anticipation that the moment will come where you’ll hear the tune you’ve been subconsciously singing along to.

It’s no wonder that album sales have dropped so drastically. Technology has transformed us into beings of instant gratification – we want to hear that ONE song RIGHT NOW and we can. And next week (or tomorrow), there will be another one. But that gradual, growing appreciation for an artist or individual track that came from unexpected, comparatively few listens on the radio has waned.

Even today, my enjoyment of a favourite song on the radio is much higher than if I had actively searched for the song and played it. But those moments are rare, considering the iTunes libraries and USB ports we’re constantly surrounded by.

I feel pretty darn lucky to have grown up without all these conveniences and to have consumed my music in desperate, unexpected, bite-sized chunks that almost resulted in injury, because really, a little bit of Savlon and a tiny Elastoplast were small prices to pay for that feeling of musical euphoria.