For Christmas in – God, was it 2007? - Santa brought me Pink’s I’m not dead. But I also received an iPod, so the songs were promptly imported to iTunes and the disc never saw the light of day again.
I don’t buy CDs anymore.
More than that, I don’t buy whole albums anymore.
Bzzzzzzt – phone a friend.
I was in Tusk (a little gift shop in North Hobart) yesterday. I didn’t buy anything but I did ask the lady what the music playing was (there are no iPhones to be had for love or money in this town, therefore, I have no Shazam – you’ll be pleased to know the old fashioned method of song identification worked fine).
This is how I discovered Angus and Julia Stone.
I’m a shocker for cherry picking only the songs I know – the stuff on the radio or from channel V in the gym – and then further whittling my selections to those that I actually like. Out of the gazillions of songs she has released, I have four Lady Gaga tracks in my iTunes, for example.
But this was different. I previewed A&J in the iTunes store and loved everything they came up with. But then a funny thing happened.
While I will happily part with $1.69 or even $2.19 for a song, I balked at shelling out $17.99 all at once for music of any sort – even music I had just fallen desperately and passionately in love with. (This is especially weird when, once upon a time, I’d happily pay thirty bucks or whatever it was for a new release CD).
However, it occurred to me that this was album-phobia, episode two.
A couple of weeks ago, I caught myself singing Unforgettable (that slightly macabre version that Natalie Cole dubbed over her dead father’s recording) in the shower/while washing dishes/while walking the dog. Songs that get stuck in your head like this are the musical equivalent of telemarketers. Sometimes, the only way to get rid of them is to hear them out. Either that or sing something even more annoying – Video killed the radio star usually works.
In any case, I went to buy the stupid Natalie Cole song rather than digging through the pile of CDs gathering dust in the lounge room trying to find it. But it turned out that you can’t just buy the song. You have to buy the whole album. For $16.99.
I only had two words to say about that – the first one was rude and started with ‘f’ and the second one was ‘off’. Force feeding toddlers mashed swede does not engender in them a deep and abiding love for the vegetable. Does Nat think this musical gavage will endear her to potential listeners?
Luckily, I became so irate about this blatant revenue raiser that I forgot about singing the song (though, having written this rant about it, I can feel it trying to sneak back into my vocal chords via my impressionable psyche).
I’m figuring this nasty run in with the world of albums predisposed me to album purchase aversion because no matter how much I liked the music, I couldn’t bring myself to buy Down the Way.
Luckily Torrent came to the rescue and I am now happily grooving along to Big Jet Plane.
But seriously, does anyone buy CDs anymore?
Image: Francesco Marino
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