I recently had a notification from Spotify of the songs I listened to most in 2022, even though 2022 isn’t quite over yet. Despite my best efforts to resist the idea that when it comes to music I’m an old man, there is a part of me that is trapped in the past so it got me thinking about how I used to listen to music. Forgive me for the “when I were a lad” aspect of this piece, although you will see that I am happy to be in 2022 while still enjoying memories of, say, 1972. 

It was all vinyl at first of course. I’d hop on a bus and go into town to buy whatever I could afford after having heard what I liked on the radio,  usually from Woolworths, WH Smiths or Boots, before Max Records opened up at the bottom of South Street in Eastbourne. 

Oh, the time we could spend in there, inspecting the album covers, caressing them in the way that I now caress a pint or a biscuit. The green and yellow bags that we used to carry our purchases home became iconic to those who used it. 

I bought as many albums as I could as a teen, all now sadly lost after divorces and several house moves. But three in particular stand out, not so much for the music – although they are still great records in my opinion – but because of the memories I have of the day that I bought them.

Firstly, I bought “Mott” by Mott the Hoople on a very hot summer’s day in 1973. It boasted an advance in technology that left us in awe in the form of a clear plastic image of a Roman Emperor’s head in a cut out on the front of the cover. I go off the bus and walked home, which took about twenty minutes, rushed up to my bedroom and started to play it immediately. But disaster had struck. The heat of the day, magnified through the bus windows, had warped the disc and Ian Hunter’s voice wobbled while it warbled. I had to take it back to change it, but I couldn’t do that until the following Saturday. A whole week it sat in my room, teasing me with its attractive cover but unshakeable unplayability. 

Later on in that same year, I had been given some birthday money which was a licence to go into town and choose an album. It was a complete contrast to the day I bought “Mott” as it was cold, dark and very very wet. I distinctly remember the streetlights shining through the rain drops on the upstairs bus window. But I came back home with “Loud and Proud” by Nazareth tucked safely under my arm, and once again played it as soon as I got in. I particularly remember it because it was my 17th birthday and despite the awful journeys there and back, I loved the album and I still do. 

Finally, I was in Max Records one Saturday afternoon a few years later and there was a song playing on their sound system which grabbed me by the ears and refused to let go. I’d never heard it before. Realising that I had a little money in my pocket (happy days – I must’ve still been living at home) and for the first time ever, I bought that double album on the strength of hearing that one song which the assistant told me was “Sherry Darling” from Bruce Springsteen’s album, “The River.” It’s never sounded as good as it did on the shop’s sound system though. 

I only ever did that once more, when CDs came in, when I bought “What’s the Story Morning Glory” by Oasis because I’d been in a shop when “Don’t Look Back in Anger” had been playing. 

CDs of course have probably had their day for now. I’m sure however that they will one day make the sort of come back that vinyl has experienced in the last decade or so. Maybe by 2050 we will all be listening to Ariana Grande on wax cylinders, which would surprise me because a) I’ll be 94 years old and b) I don’t even listen to Ariana Grande now. Except on the taxi. 

And so to 2022, where any song I want to listen to is instantly available to me at any time of day or night. Spotify keep a list of all the things I listen to, because they like to know everything about me, like some kind of Artificial Intelligence driven cyber stalker. 

But what Spotify doesn’t know is that my listening list is somewhat skewed by the fact that I have a playlist on my taxi of songs that the children have requested. So when it tells me that “Hot and Cold” by Katy Perry is my favourite song of the year, they couldn’t be wider of the mark. Just because it’s practically on repeat – I’ve heard it 53 times this year, more than enough for any sane person, with March 25th being a particularly dark day – it doesn’t mean that I’m the world’s biggest KP fan. The song is there at the request of a group of 4-11 year olds who are my company for 40 minutes every school day. 

Dig deeper and you will see that my musical tastes are much more respectable – and a lot older – than Katy Perry and Dup Lipa. 

But while the Pet Shop Boys are my number one listened to artist of the year, the decades are fully covered by the fact that my top 5 also includes David Bowie from the 1970s and Wet Leg from the last two years. I do try to sneak one or two of the more child-friendly songs on to the taxi playlist, with little success. They like “Starman” and “Baggy Trousers,” but usually they can see past my attempts to introduce them to proper music. 

Oh Dear. “Proper” music? I’m sounding like an old man after all.