The Art of Listening to Music
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Music has become such an integral part of our lives. When walking around a city or college campus, you will see more than half the people you walk past with headphones on. I am an avid Spotify listener and absolutely love listening to music at any and every moment. Whether I’m working out, doing homework, or hanging out with friends, I’m the first to connect to the nearest speaker or plug in my headphones to play one of my many niche playlists. Even as I am writing this, I am listening to “Stoned at the Nail Salon” by Lorde from the playlist I specifically created to listen to when I am writing. I consider making a playlist to be a therapeutic hobby. You can choose your favorite songs from various albums and put them together in one singular place, and it gives you the freedom to be creative and express yourself. What about the albums that all these songs come from, though? Are people listening to them, and are they listening to them the right way?
When I was in high school, I got a record player and became absolutely obsessed with listening to music on it. There is something so intentional about placing a record on the turntable and listening to the entire album. Listening to these albums in this way made me realize that this is something I should do more. Music, and more specifically, albums, should be played intentionally to truly appreciate the art. The best way to do this is to listen to the whole album in order, not on shuffle.
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Although I do have a record player, I don’t find myself using it every day, especially with the convenience of Spotify. It is much easier to simply open an app than to put on a record and flip said record to continue listening. However, we can still try to keep the spirit of the record player alive by listening to albums unshuffled. We cannot bring a record player with us everywhere we go, but we can still implement this idea of intentional listening in our everyday lives.
Now, why listen to the album unshuffled? My reasoning behind this is quite simple, and it is because you are listening to the album the way the artist intended. I don’t think artists chose a random order or shuffled around the songs they wrote and then gave it to us. Albums are a work of carefully curated art; the song order is just as important as the music itself. The songs tell a story, and some songs even lead into each other. One of my favorite albums, CTRL, by SZA, does just that. Throughout the album, SZA sprinkles bits and pieces of advice her grandmother gives her as a voicemail. When transitioning from the song “Doves in the Wind” to “Drew Berrymore,” you can hear the entirety of the voicemail, as that is the intended order of the album. If the album were to be shuffled, those messages would be lost.
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SZA is not the only artist to do this. From Billie Eilish to Kendrick Lamar, these artists are creating albums that are telling a story, and we must listen to music while keeping this in mind. It’s so easy to take music for granted, as something that is simply playing in the background of our lives, but it is so much more. So the next time you think about listening to your favorite playlist or your favorite song, try listening to an album instead, in its entirety, without shuffling. Music is an art, and we need to start listening to it as such.
Strike Out,
Writer: Isabelle Grassel
Notre Dame
