I read an article on Aftermath talking about the intentionallity of listening to music. The author purchased a stand-alone MP3 player and forced themselves to not have access to everything all the time. It flashed me back to middle school or high school where I had a CD player and could realistically only listen to a single album at a time. There are some albums I consumed this way and still think of as a whole, rather than the sum of its singles, Stankonia by Outkast or The Eminem Show by Eminem to name a few.
I really love music and I wanted to get back to that feeling of listening with a purpose rather than jumping around my 5-star rated tracks. This is a great way to listen to music as each track is a banger, but I felt I wanted to listen to the other things I have. And not just being fed an algorithm of tracks picked “for me.”
So yes, I did buy the MP3 player. I’ve officially been influenced. I figured I would take a week with a single disc/album. Since I’m going to focus on one album at a time, I’d reflect on what I listened to. I want to do a writing every week, but somethings get in the way, kids, life, etc. It could be every two weeks, or three. Or one per month. As long as I do it, I’ll be happy.
I set up my music library to feed me a random album when I check a specific playlist. I’ll load it to my MP3 player and press play. With no further ado, here we go!