Even though I have thousands of songs, on CDs, records, cassettes and on my iPod I do actually have favourites. And although I'm constantly seeking out new music (either brand new bands or artists, or older stuff that is 'new' to me) I tend to find that my absolute top favourite songs have remained pretty consistent for many years. Does this mean that new stuff I'm hearing isn't as good? Well no, not at all, but there was a study recently which, annoyingly, I simply cannot find now, which put forth the theory that the songs we really like in our teens are the ones that tend to leave the biggest mark. In my case this is certainly true. I wish I could find that study - I've looked in vain for the University of Spurious Factoids... anyway...
Although I love recent acquisitions such as "Way Out Of Here" by Porcupine Tree or Johnny Cash's "If You Could Read My Mind" (just two of many songs that have affected me deeply in the past year or so) my all time favourites are songs which I first heard between starting senior school and leaving University.
So why is this, and why haven't (arguably better) songs that I've heard in the past 20 years or so had quite such an affect on me?
Mum used to play a lot of music when I was young - I remember lots of Beatles, who I still really like. But society dictates that it's not cool to like your parents' music, and although I was never that bothered about being cool it's when you hit your teens that you start to individualise your likes and dislikes. Even subconsciously you move away from the things that your parents are into, even if you weren't especially rebellious, like me.
There was something old fashioned about the previous generation's music, a distinction that doesn't seem to apply as much today - with iTunes and the ability to download any music from any era, downloading Elvis followed by Lady Gaga really doesn't seem that odd. My iPod slots Robin Guthrie next to Roxy Music next to Roy Orbison - music that is separated by half a century, but which can be played one track after another without sounding strange. I suppose it just proves that good music is genuinely timeless.
The stuff I started buying in 1980, David Bowie, Ultravox, Visage in the very first instances was the first music that I had actively chosen myself. This, I think, is what makes this music so special, and so memorable. It was mine, it related to me and I related to the music.
Of course around the same time I had pocket money that could be spent on records. This also allowed me the freedom to buy whatever I wanted. This is when Iggy Pop entered my collection, records that my parents wouldn't like (and still don't to be honest...). I didn't buy Raw Power deliberately to annoy anyone, I really liked it, but I was aware that the sheer noise of the record was my secret, not to be shared with anyone else. This freedom was terribly exciting and I suppose that the music from those years is indelibly bound up with those emotions. Possibly why it sticks in the memory so well.
Another reason is that, unlike now, when I have thousands of songs at my fingertips, then every new album was obsessively poured over, every sleeve note was read and re-read, every note was listened to again and again. I even remembered all the track times of David Bowie's songs for heaven's sake. No idea why, I just remembered them all - for the record "Ziggy Stardust" is 3.23 long, as if anyone else really cares...
With just a few albums in my possession each song was proportionately more important, and was played hundreds of times. Everything I heard was new, every album, every song, every note opened new worlds, new possibilities. There's also the feeling that the music I was discovering then was somehow just right - to me this was how music was supposed to sound, explaining why music that came a generation before me and all that came after I was grown up sometimes sound a bit 'wrong'. This was my music. It wasn't the popular music that I liked either, it was just stuff that I liked, and much of it was downright weird and left field. Plus I had no musical training, so I had no way of explaining why I liked what I liked, it was just a gut reaction. Even now I can't explain that, oh here's a I-IV-I-V chord progression and there's a key change one whole tone higher for the last chorus, or various other bits of music theory and song construction, but intuitively I understand what's going on, and I know what sounds good to me. Subconsciously my brain has absorbed the bits that I like, and I excitedly recognise further combinations of really cool key changes etc, without knowing exactly what it is that I'm hearing.
The lack of portability (I didn't have a Walkman until the end of the 1980s) meant that pretty much all my listening took place in my bedroom between the two large speakers diametrically placed in opposite corners - one on top of the wardrobe, one at the foot of the bed. So many songs remind me so much of sitting at my desk or laying on my bed. It was my own private world and I loved it. And while it is marvellous having an iPod so I can take all my music anywhere at all, I wonder if this lack of a permanent 'home' for all these songs contributes to some of them lacking that emotional sense of belonging. Maybe music, just like people, needs a proper home and a nebulous bit of digital memory somehow isn't quite right.
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