My Musical Renaissance Part 2

Turnstile live in concert

As you can tell by the title, this week is the continuation of last week's topic about my musical journey. If you didn't read last week's post basically, I created a timeline of my music listening experience from childhood, up to early college (1997-2016). This week we'll continue along that path, and hopefully there won't be a part three to follow.

2017-2019

This time period had its ups and downs. I'll be honest, a good sum of this era was me finding artists I'd never heard and playing them too much. I was still listening to people in my regular rotation, but I was finally listening to people like Tyler the Creator, Solange, and Thundercat. It was a great time, but it was very much an era of repetition. Like when I check my apple 2017 year-end round up top 100 songs, and it's just the entire CTRL album (SZA), Freudian (Daniel Caeser), 4:44 (JAY-Z), and Flower Boy (Tyler). Those year-end wrap ups can really be devastating when you see you listened to an album almost a thousand times in a year. A thousand times?? I did the same thing in 2019 with Igor (Tyler), When I Get Home (Solange), and Apollo 23 (Steve Lacy). I listened to each of those albums over 700 times. I mean that's just ridiculous. Now of course I was listening to other artists at the time, I actually broaden the music I listened to a good amount in 2019, but upwards of 2,100 listens between three albums is insane! Those are hermit numbers. Those year-end wrap ups had me sick in this period. I of course was listening to new music every year, that was the good part of all this. None of my most listened to albums of 2017 transferred into the following year, same for 2018 and 2019. So, I can't be too mad at myself. I was always introducing myself to new music every year, and I don't know if I'm grasping at straws, but I'm going to take that win. This era was fun and filled with plenty of memories. I spent a lot of time with good company listening to this music. Whether it be my month and a half long stay in Atlanta in 2017 while I was TRYING to work on an app; or the trips to Italy and Colorado I took consecutively in the summer of 2019. I mean I first listened to Igor on a mountain in Colorado the day the album came out. I was listening with people who were acquaintances then but are great friends today. This music was the soundtrack to a lot of these memories, and as corny as that sounds its true. But don't get me confused with the people who only return back to music for the time period or memories. I like the music for what it is and recognize its impact in my life, but I won't play it with the intention of "turning back the clock" headass. I'm extraordinarily sentimental, but only viewing music as a specific time period in your life sounds like a coping mechanism. Anyway, after that era I knew I needed to take a leap in the diversity of my music. Finding a few dope albums and running them into the ground year after year isn't growth.

2020

Woof, I don't even know how to start this. I guess I can't talk about 2020 without talking about... Covid 19. As we all know, 2020 was a crazy year of lockdowns, vaccines, and social isolation. For me that time was spent at home in Houston or at my college home in Lubbock. This year had a ripple effect on countless industries. Most notably for this discussion, the music industry. Due to Covid many musicians pushed back or scrapped their forthcoming albums. I remember a few notable albums that came out that year were Pray for Paris (WestsideGunn), Man Alive! (King Krule), The New Abnormal (The Strokes), and Heaven To a Tortured Mind (Yves Tumor). There were numerous others that dropped, but they were a healthy distance from each other. That lapse really forced me to listen to music from the past. I listened to jazz, punk, (a lot of) French music, 80's synth pop, 2000s R&B, and funk. It really changed the way I view and listen to music to this day. Some of the most notable albums I found that year were Every Generation (Ronnie Laws), Tasty (Kelis), Non-Stop (B.T. Express), La Boheme (Charles Aznavour) and Life (The Cardigans). Not only did it open up a whole new world of music for me, but it also kept me busy and made quarantine fun. I even bought a drum machine and started making beats in my kitchen. It sucks that a pandemic had to happen for me to take that leap, but I'm happy I got something out of that turbulent period. I can confidently say I've gotten better at spacing album listens since 2020.

Turnstile Glow on album cover

2021-presnet day

Before I continue, I do have to give credit to my friend Seven who has put me onto bands like The Smiths, The Cure, and Tears for Fears. They know a lot of music and show me albums and artists to this day. Alright, now that they've gotten their props let's move forward. In 2021 I just kept diving deeper into different musicians. I still had my favorite albums like Glow On by Turnstile and Call Me If You Get Lost by Tyler the Creator. But I listened to those albums 90-120 times instead of 700+ like in 2019. By this point I'd felt like I'd come a long way from compilation albums and top 40 radio hits. I was firmly in a place where I was constantly curious about new music. Moreover, I knew how to pace out music instead of maxing it out until it loses its magic. Honestly, it's not even that I knew how to pace, the amount of quality music I knew just didn't allow me to get too chummy with one album. 2022 was more of the same. I finally introduced bands like Radiohead, Portishead, Television, Panchiko and The Smashing Pumpkins into my rotation. This year has been the introduction of bands like Blur, The Charlatans, Talk Talk, Cibo Matto, Crowded House, and much more. I truly feel like I'm just getting started. The more music I listen to, the more I realize how much I don't know. There are so many genres like Metal, Blues, and Breakbeat that I've barely dipped my toe into. Not to mention the sub genres within most of the music I'm already listening to. There's so much music it feels infinite, and I love that because that means there's no ceiling. I can literally keep going and never come close to hearing everything. That's the beauty of the process, I'll never run out of vibes. That's it for this week's blog. I hope after a part two of my music journey you can now understand why I hate Will.I.am. This man just dropped a song that sounds like it came out in 2008. How do you do that? How do you tap into that trash time period flawlessly? It's because it isn't 2023 to him... he's still there. And if that era ever comes back and y'all want to hand him the keys to the cultural zeitgeist again, I don't know where I'll be, but it won't be in the mix. I keep wanting to end this blog but now I'm tight thinking about the idea of Will James Adams Jr taking over again. I'll be in the mountains while everyone else is engaging in the plague of shutter shades, leather MC Hammer pants, and plastic neon necklaces.