Record Collecting for Girls: Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd, One Album at a Time

by Courtney E. Smith

The full story, in more than 140 characters, is that there was a specific boy I rejected while the song "Better Man" was playing. He was the manager of our local McDonald's when I was in high school. One evening he hit on my friend Kaye and me while we were enjoying some french fries at his fine establishment. Kaye made it very clear she was not interested, and then, just to mess with him, told him that he was my type. The cruelty of youth, right? This led to us catching a ride with him back to her car in a nearby grocery-store parking lot. During the drive, that goddamn Pearl Jam song came on the radio. It was synchronicity. The universe was trying to tell him not to ask either of us out, but he wasn't listening to the soundtrack of his failure as it blasted in our ears. He ignored the Pearl Jam song on the radio, a song that was far too apt for the moment, and he asked for my number. Our brief relationship ended when I declined to go on a date with him and he asked if it was because I was gay. Seriously, the stupidity of youth. After that beguiling interaction, I never talked to him again, but for the rest of my life when I hear Pearl Jam's "Better Man," I will think of him. It is his song, whether he wants it or not.

  Your songs don't always come out of romantic disaster, or romance at all. My freshman year in college I lived next door to a girl named Jill who introduced us all to the magic of Simon & Garfunkel's classic "Cecilia." She never explained where her love of this random song originated. She just put it on one day when a group of girls were hanging out in her dorm room, and it was such a "WTF?" moment that the song stuck. She played it so often and danced so cutely that it became Jill's song. When she later joined a sorority, it joined the canon of songs associated with all those girls because they insisted on playing it at all their parties for Jill (mostly because the way she danced around in circles to it when she was drunk was so effing adorable you could just die). She knew it was her song too. It got to the point that everyone would shout out for her when it came on, and wherever she was—at the campus pub, a house party, or a dorm room—her friends would make her get up and do her sweet little spinning-around dance to it. Years later I don't as much as keep up with Jill on Facebook, but every time that song comes up on shuffle, I think of her and chuckle.

  You should also give serious consideration to your go-to karaoke jams. These inevitably become Your Song in the minds of those who witness your glorifying—or horrendous—performance (really though, the worse you are at karaoke, the better it is for everyone else, so don't hold back). My friend Leah does the most amazing, gutting rendition of Phil Collins's "Against All Odds." A lot of people karaoke this song because the emotionality of it makes for a good performance, and the song itself is easy to sing. Leah, however, generally ends the song rolling on the floor in agony, inserting a few choice profanities to elevate the song's emotional impact. It is impossible not to laugh, because it's Phil Collins. But the trick is done, and whenever I hear "Against All Odds," Leah immediately pops into my mind.

  I have an affinity for difficult men, but for one shining moment of good emotional decision making, I decided to try dating against type and went out with a nice guy we will refer to as Noel. I've never dated anyone with fewer possessions. When we met he had recently moved to New York from Seattle and was working for a nonprofit. He owned zero actual records, just a stack of unlabeled burned CDs. I started making him mixes and playing him music by bands I thought he would like, because I felt it was my duty. Every guy I had dated before him had done the same for me. Among the things I gave him was my own personally chosen selection of Elvis Costello's greatest hits. Noel took an instant and enthusiastic liking to Elvis Costello. When I broke up with Noel a few months later, I was overwhelmed by the thought that if I couldn't make it work with a nice guy like him, I must be destined to die alone. At the end of our relationship, Noel got Elvis Costello, and I got a guilt complex for breaking up with such a genuinely good guy. It's a little bit illogical, but it hurt to see Elvis newly added to his favorite-artists list on Facebook. Elvis is mine. Knowing Noel might be out there somewhere consoling himself with my favorite breakup songs made me feel violated. Thousands of people probably use Elvis Costello songs for that sort of comfort, but it was unsettling to think someone might be listening to the really pissed-off or really sad Elvis songs and thinking about me. Once a song or artist becomes wrapped up in the experiences you had with someone else, it is not just yours anymore.

  Introducing Noel to my favorite Elvis Costello songs was probably the most intimate interaction we had, but he had no idea, because music didn't mean as much to him as it did to me. I spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to share your music with someone when you're in a relationship, and it dawned on me: This is why guys are always bitching about their girlfriends' not knowing anything about music. It really hurts to give someone music that means a lot to you and have them react with lukewarm acceptance. It hurts more to realize you don't like someone anymore, but they've taken a shine to your favorite records. When guys make us mix tapes and play us songs, they aren't just showing off. They're trying to tell us some truth about themselves through the sounds and words of an intermediary. This realization has made me appreciate all the mix tapes I've ever received all the more. It's worth noting that the meaning and feeling put into those mixes can lead to some prime possibilities for an Our Song, though I should warn you that attempting to sow the seed for an Our Song via mix tape can go awry. Sometimes it doesn't take. The worst is when you pick something he doesn't like. The second-worst is when you pick something that was already an Our Song for him with someone else, because he may feel compelled to tell you all about it.

  There is one other time in life where the need for a My Song arises: your funeral. Is it morbid to plan what songs will be played at your own funeral? Absolutely. Do I think it would be worse to die and have my parents (or more terrifying, my sweet grandmother who loves church hymns) pick out songs for my funeral? Double absolutely. I love the scene in High Fidelity when Rob talks about his top-five funeral songs and says he had always dreamed some mysterious, beautiful woman would come to his funeral and tearfully demand that Gladys Knight's "You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me" be played. It's a great illustration of the point of divergence between a Your Song and a My Song—he wants a beautiful woman to associate him with that Gladys song, but for himself he chooses Bob Marley's "One Love," Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers to Cross," and Aretha Franklin's "Angel"—all much more somber in tone, and a reflection on his (fictional) life. The funeral is pretty much your last chance to express any commentary on your life, unless you believe in the afterlife and are planning to stick around to haunt people. (I hope for revenge.) If this is your final say, you should probably plan ahead and get the message right.

  When I was in the ninth grade a kid in my class died in a car accident. At his funeral the Eric Clapton song "Tears in Heaven" was played by his parents, which makes perfect sense, because Clapton wrote it about the death of his own young son. It was a tearjerker that perfectly expressed his parents' grief but said nothing at all about him. I've never forgotten it and always thought it was exactly what I don't want to happen at my funeral. I really cannot bear the thought of a church full of people crying about my untimely demise while a song I don't even like plays in the background. If everyone is going to cry, it might as well be because of a song that meant something to me, right?

  I've given it some serious thought, and at my funeral I would prefer that the following songs be played:

  SPIRITUALIZED, "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space"

  This song speaks for itself. The idea that all we want in life, as we float around on this rock in outer space, is love is a fairly complete summation of the human experience. In fact, this song should probably be mandatory at everyone's funeral. It is my own little way of saying I love you one last time after the ultimate breakup.

  PJ HARVEY, "Good Fortune"

  I lived in New York during the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. I don't like to talk about it, mainly because I don
't know what to say. It was unfathomable. And absurd. What happened then, how my friends and I acted and lived and carried on with our day-to-day lives, is beyond anything I could express in words. Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, the PJ Harvey album, which came out in 2000, got a lot of play for the rest of that year and into 2002 on my Walkman. It went with me pretty much everywhere, because it embodied the feeling of angst that came with being in New York City at the time, and it simply and accurately suited the way it felt to live there, both before and after the attacks. PJ Harvey wrote the songs while living in New York and having a love affair, and the way she talked about it tapped into this universal feeling that described not just my life but the lives of everyone I knew. All my friends had a copy of this album and loved it. They will know exactly why I picked this song and will immediately reflect on that very particular point in our lives and our shared experiences.

  ÉDITH PIAF, "Non, je ne regrette rien"

  I think all us hope that at the end our lives, when we take stock of all we've done or left undone, we'll have no regrets. For most people, that's unlikely. I can think of dozens of things I've done or decisions I've made that, given the chance, I might do differently. For example, I often suspect that if, as a child, I had stuck with ballet and tap lessons instead of changing to piano lessons, I could have been a world-class dancer. It is highly unlikely, as I'm well known to be the sort of woman who trips simply walking down the street in a pair of ballet slipper flats, but in my imagination it's the road not taken down which I could be graceful and much, much thinner. But, as it is, those piano lessons made me more of a music nerd and I ended up here, so non, je ne regrette rien all the scabs on my knees or the bottles of wine that put them there.

  ROD STEWART, "Young Turks"*

  I may change my mind about this one. I find myself weirdly obsessed with this song, and I can't help thinking it would break up the tension of a funeral with its bizarrely upbeat, new-wave–esque sound. And, of course, Rod Stewart is an unexpected choice. I have to think there are very few people who think any Rod Stewart songs are appropriate for their funeral. I happen to be one of them, but I can't think of a way where "Maggie May," which I have always unironically loved, is at all appropriate. Instead, my funeral party of young Turks will find themselves admonished to be free tonight.

  In some situations you can control and program what becomes Your Song or an Our Song. As with the funeral song, you have to take control of that situation for the sake of posterity. But sometimes songs can take on a life of their own. As often as I feel tempted to try and slip songs into the background to see if people pick up on them, it doesn't feel nearly as satisfying as when the universe anoints someone with a song. At the same time, there's also something satisfying about making an Our Song happen. I mean, what's the point of knowing so much about music and loving so many songs if you can't drop them like little emotional bombs in peoples' lives?

  OUR SONG, YOUR SONG, MY SONG PLAYLIST

  MERCURY REV, "Car Wash Hair"

  THE MOODY BLUES, "Knights in White Satin"

  U2, "All I Want Is You"

  PEARL JAM, "Better Man"

  SIMON & GARFUNKEL, "Cecilia"

  PHIL COLLINS, "Against All Odds"

  ELVIS COSTELLO, "Lipstick Vogue"

  ELVIS COSTELLO, "Everyday I Write the Book"

  ERIC CLAPTON, "Tears in Heaven"

  SPIRITUALIZED, "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space"

  PJ HARVEY, "Good Fortune"

  ÉDITH PIAF, "Non, je ne regrette rien"

  ROD STEWART, "Young Turks"

  THE DEATH OF THE RECORD COLLECTOR

  THERE'S AN IMPORTANT distinction to be made between people who collect records and record collectors. The former are well adjusted and include people like you and me with our haphazard directories of MP3s downloaded on impulse, stacks of CDs we bought in college that we now kind of regret but hold on to for the memories, and crates of vinyl that we picked up along with those really cute bangle bracelets at a flea market—all in addition to the bits of our record collection that we bought with purpose. The latter, on the other hand, carefully weigh each record purchase, hunting for the perfect albums to round out their deliberately crafted collection, which they will play only rarely, so as not to risk damaging them. The former will expect you to look through their records the first time you go back to their place. The latter won't even let you touch the sleeves of their records with your bare hands. I'm kidding ... sort of.

  Very few of us are true record collectors. Those people are one step away from hoarders in their slavish devotion to finding and buying music. Their format of choice is vinyl, especially of the obscure 78-rpm variety that was from the original label's limited pressing, was made valuable by mistakes in the pressing, or includes rare deleted tracks. Their adherence to the rules of collecting is off-putting—like the irrational need to collect every Chess Records original single and organize them in order of release number, not because they love and plan to listen to the records, but simply to possess them. Most of us just build a collection of what we like. The real record collector looks with disdain on the randomness of our "collections."

  But the way we listen to music is evolving, and the rules are changing for everyone. Rarities are released as promotional MP3s, so an import-only B side that you previously would've hunted down for weeks is now given away for free for a limited time. As record labels begin clearing their back catalog and making everything available for purchase on the Internet, the idea of music as rare or unavailable has become a thing of the past. You can still dig through the stacks at your local record store, but know that someone else is one-click-buying it online. Record collecting by today's standards might entail buying every release from little pockets of artists you're fanatical about and only downloading random tracks from everyone else. It could mean you keep that embarrassing New Kids on the Block cassette tape from 1989. It certainly means that there is a diversity to your music that only makes sense to you. All the reasons you have for including music in your collection, especially the very embarrassingly bad records, are incredibly personal. That is the modus operandi of a music lover. If I asked a record collector to show me his albums, he would take me to a cabinet with his prized records impeccably stored. Assuming you aren't a record-collecting purist, what would you show me? Shelves of CDs? Your iTunes? A milk crate of vinyl? All of these? It isn't just the formats of available music that have changed—everything about the way we listen to and consume music has changed as well.

  Over the last few years there has been a movement among my friends and colleagues to digitize their CD collections and get rid of the physical CDs. Many of them live in cramped apartments in cities where space is at a premium. And some of them are so attached to their iPods and laptops that these have become the device of choice for playing music. I don't have a problem with embracing the Star Trek–like future where everything you want, from music to books to magazines, is on a shiny hard drive instead of collecting dust on your shelves. In fact, I'm actually quite partial to it.

  However, a fairly equal share of people I know feel very adamantly that you don't truly own an album unless you possess a physical copy. Digital is too transitory and doesn't count, in their opinion. Some of these people have valid (and nerdy) reasons for their point of view, like concerns about the audio quality of MP3s or fear of a simultaneous hard drive and external backup drive crash that would result in the catastrophic loss of their entire music library. I used to assume this was the sort of worst-case-scenario hypothetical that could never happen to me (or anyone for that matter). It made it hard to take the idea of actually losing all my digital music seriously. And then, mere minutes after I finished my first draft of this book and celebrated with a glass of wine, catastrophe struck. I knocked the wine onto my computer, destroying the hard drive.

  Lucky I had saved the book draft onto my external hard drive just before the liquid disaster occurred, and while I was doing that, I though
t to myself, "It's been about six months since I backed up my music. I should do that tomorrow." I didn't lose everything, not even the majority of what I owned, but I lost everything I'd bought or downloaded from blogs over the last six months. This was only a small portion of my music, but I felt totally lost. Songs I wanted, songs I'd been listening to lately because I'd just gotten them were gone. I was able to rip some songs from my iPod back onto my hard drive, but for months I kept discovering at the most inopportune times that random tracks and albums had gone missing. It was a solid six more months before I felt like my digital record collection was back to normal. The loss of my entire collection would be an event so extremely devastating that I don't know how I would recover.

  That concern aside, the reason some of you continue to buy physical albums is because having the actual album in your hands that makes you feel secure, because you are traditionalists. The record collector asks, "If someone comes over to your house and can't browse through the shelves of albums you've bought in your lifetime, how could he possibly appreciate the time and money you've put into collecting music?" And for some, there is joy to be found in organizing and reorganizing your records according to your own systems. But that thinking is antiquated. The first thing I do when I want to get to know someone is scan their iPod. It gives me an instant, if not necessarily complete, idea of the music that's important enough to them that they must have it with them at all times. This is the music that really matters to them, not the music they've arbitrarily collected, and it's the music that's more important to me in learning about them.

  Even as our shelves of records languish in favor of our hard drives, the things we love still function as shorthand for describing ourselves, particularly in various online social media profiles. Anyone can look at my last.fm profile to find out what I'm listening to. Or my Goodreads profile to find what books have lived on my bookshelf at some time, even after I've disposed of the physical book. They can friend me on Netflix to get an idea of what movies and TV shows I like. They can friend me on Facebook or subscribe to my Twitter feed to see the thoughts and ramblings I want to broadcast, which are often pop-culture related and convey my likes and dislikes.