I’m a big music geek. Surprise, surprise. I love listening to the albums I’ve collected, whether they are vinyl, CDs, cassettes, or digital-only. Usually, in addition to just listening to whatever thing I’m into at the moment, I also go through my collection to ensure I listen to it regularly. This also gives me a chance to re-evaluate what I have. Sometimes I purge stuff, realizing I just don’t love it enough to own it anymore. But more often than that, I am reminded of just how amazing each album is.
Anyway, last April my friend Nicole challenged me to listen to all of the albums I own, in alphabetical order by album title. At first, I refused. But then I decided to go ahead and do it because it would offer yet another way to enjoy my collection. And listening to albums by title is very different–it juxtaposes all kinds of music, and the transitions are great. I have a pretty eclectic collection, so it can flow from classic jazz to alternative rock to chamber pop to hard rock to spoken word, etc.
For myself, I made a few rules to keep it enjoyable: no compilations, no live albums, no classical or orchestral score music. Basically, I kept it studio albums in the pop/rock/jazz vein. This way, I reckoned, it really is about “the album” as an artistic statement.
I’m about halfway through my collection at this time. I think I may actually make it all the way through. If you have albums–again, whatever medium they’re on–I really recommend doing this project. Too often, people don’t listen to albums anymore. Everything is on shuffle all the time, and that can lessen the impact of an artist’s statement, and you may not have the deeper relationship with a piece that you would have if you listened to the whole thing.
And no matter how often you listened to it in your youth, Dark Side of the Moon is going to be a great listen.