Music Monday

One Random Album, One Short Journey

A little while ago (ok, too many years ago) there was the concept of the “Friday Random Ten” - take your iPod or other music listening device, hit shuffle, and list out the first 10 songs that came up. If you felt like it, a little context or silly anecdote could follow.

I always enjoyed seeing them - I feel like a person’s music taste can give unique insight to their being. I was debating the thought of doing it again for a few weeks, but decided that it would be more in the interest of storytelling to look at complete albums instead of random amalgomations of songs. So in my mind, I cooked up a mediocre idea, and then the ip thief current 8th wonder of the world scourge of an LLM helped me title it. So, I present to you the outline for Music Monday: One Random Album, One Short Journey.

The Rules

Choose a random album

Open your music collection and pick an album at random - any album, and artist, any genre, any release year, any run time. It doesn’t even necessarily matter how you arrive at the randomness of the decision, but truly random it must be - no premeditation. Medium is irrelevant - listen however you wish. However, digital probably lends itself to a random choice a little more easily / practically. My method of choice is to load up my entire music library, hit shuffle, and then close my eyes and hit “skip” a bunch of times. Whichever song I land on is the album I’ll listen to.

Listen to the album

As it says - listen to the album. Not a selection of songs, not the singles, not the highlights. And most definitely not on shuffle. Start at track one, and finish when the needle hits the end of side 2. If at all possible listen actively - that is, focusing on the music in the foreground, not hitting “play” and then letting it stew in the background while you’re on hold for the next 45 minutes trying to get to a human being at some corporate office.

Digest what you just experienced

Set a timer for 5 minutes and replay the experience of this album in your head. The ups. The downs. Where the energy pulsed and took you. Things that stood out that you may not have noticed previously.

Write your story of the album

Not a novel (I mean, unless you have a novel’s worth of memories wrapped up in this particular music). I’m a checklisty kind of person, so I plan to use the following template:

• When did you first hear this album?
• What were you doing when it played the first time?
• What emotions or memories are attached to it?
• What would you write on the card if you gifted this album to a friend?

Share

Simple, really. Spread the joy and encourage others to do so as well.