Last year, I think I was depressed about music. I burned my annual top-music-of-the-year disc to listen to based on my top singles of 2007; and as I was listening to it, I couldn’t help but think that even the best songs just weren’t that great. I think that’s the source of my problem. I haven’t been buying as much music over the last few years, and since my random playlist puts a greater emphasis on new songs, I’ve been hearing the not-so-good recent music over and over and over (or the alternative — songs that I’ve listened to 100s of times).

Because of this, I think I started reaching out to other genres of music. I started listening to Classical music again (or it could be a TSO effect) and I started listening to some Chinese music. Although do you realize that Chinese music is not very interesting, it hasn’t evolved since 1995; everything still sounds like Boyz II Men or pre-hip-hop Mariah Carey.

I didn’t realize how crappy the music I had been listening to until the last week or so. I bought a bunch of new CDs and have also been going through the top music of 2007 lists from various sources (such as Pitchfork), and suddenly it dawned on me — there was music out there much better than what I had been listening to. The good music has always been on the horizon and I never spent time to look more deeply. I mean I listened to CSS’ Cansei de Ser Sexy and Radiohead’s In Rainbows, and thought they were good; but at the same time I was also listening to a lot of music that I just didn’t enjoy (why did I buy/have I been listening to Jack Johnson’s On and On anyways, it’s horrible).

So it’s time to sample more music, buy more CDs and put my old, scratched-up, iPod to good use.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: ipod, music