Discovery

I recently listened to the entirety of Billie Eilish's When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?

I'd heard a few of her songs before, in passing, but had never sat down with the album properly. I finally did, and I was completely blown away. The music, the lyrics, that voice. The whole thing. It's rare that an album earns your full attention from start to finish, and this one does.

Which got me thinking about how rarely that happens anymore.

I have playlists for everything: mood, tempo, time of day. I am, by my own admission, an enthusiastic curator. But somewhere along the way, somewhere between the rise of Spotify and the death of the album as a format, I stopped listening to records the way I used to. Start to finish, as intended, as a complete thing.

I try not to be the person who romanticises the past. But if there's one thing I genuinely miss, it's browsing in a music store. The ritual of it, flipping through stacks of CDs and vinyl, not entirely sure what you were looking for, and then finding something that made your heart do a small, involuntary thing. The pleasure of discovery, unhurried and “unalgorithmed”.

Yes, most of the time you'd get home and find that only two songs were actually good. But that was part of it too.

There's something the algorithm can't replicate - the serendipity of a physical browse, the way a cover caught your eye, the way a stranger's recommendation sent you somewhere unexpected. Playlists are efficient. Music stores were an adventure.

Anyway, Billie Eilish is currently on repeat, and I have no notes.