Momentary Notes: On First Listens
"Context matters."
Introducing a new ‘Of The Moment‘ segment where I will be sharing short opinion pieces, unpacking specific subjects- mostly related to music. Feel free to reach out to me if there is a topic you’d like me to write about next. Don’t forget to subscribe in order to receive new posts in your email and support my work! If you wish to, you can subscribe to this segment separately. Thank you for being here.
There is something to be said about the first listen struggle. If you’re somebody who cares about music a lot, has had long-term beloved artists and places expectations on releases, this has likely frustrated you before to some degree. Picture this; you’ve been anticipating a drop from your favorite musician for years, you’re curious to meet the result of all the time spent in cultivation of their craft, become familiar with the next phase of their growth and what new ideas they are planning to bring to the table- you’re excited to take this fresh body of work into your hands, take a close look at all its components, attach it to your own being, experience it like it deserves. The time has finally come! And somehow, you find yourself unsatisfied. Not necessarily with the content- if you’ve even managed to absorb its entirety by the time you get a sneaky feeling of slight disappointment- but, oddly, something else.
Was the mood a little off? Did something interrupt the session? What about the setting- the place, time, surrounding sounds or lack thereof? The equipment used to listen with? It makes sense that many believe those are all things music reviewers should include in their critiques of a project, in order to set a realistic stage for their words. Various factors outside of the music itself can ultimately make or break a piece, depending on the listener’s state when engaging with it. Just imagine putting on Nas’s N.Y State of Mind while laying on the grass of a serene mountain top, or hitting the gym to Björk's Jóga. I mean, I won’t judge you if that’s what you’re into, but I will assume you are part of the minority here.
It is widely accepted and convenient to categorize songs in ways such as “club bangers”, “coffee shop tunes” or “road trip essentials”, or to distinguish between daytime and nighttime sounds, since those distinctions are applicable to the average person’s life. There is only so much catering to music we can do in our daily lives, from our limiting locations and time-consuming jobs and obligations. We don’t live in an age where music is put on a pedestal. Popular music is easily digestible, un-distracting, happy to blend into the background of the “really important things”, comprised of one-off, steadily decreasing in duration singles that take it upon themselves to cater to our busy reality. Conversations debating whether the art of the album is dying are already taking place among music circles and, indeed, it’s getting more and more difficult to find the will to succumb to an album’s ideas and let yourself be ushered from one world to another when that means completely disconnecting from supposed priorities. Escapism can be briefly arrived at, but never in its purest form, which can only be approached by fully submerging oneself in a sound, space and time suggested by another. A whole other universe, you could say.
Context always matters, however that shouldn’t become a problem without the occasional abstract sense of pressure to experience that perfect first listen. Frankly, I’m not sure where this desire comes from myself though I assume, beyond holding affection and reverence for a particular artist or the music-listening experience in general, aspects of it would have to do with our social media presence and the demand to have an opinion formed yesterday, or generally be able to keep up with a fast-paced online environment where music discussions take place. In 2023, dedicating valuable time to new music is hard as it is, which renders picking the artists you are going to give a shot among the daily sea of new material, let alone carving out the ideal circumstances for it, even harder. Yet, there has and will always be a side to music-listening that is undeniably social, which nowadays seems to come into conflict with what I personally, jokingly call the “passionate listener’s pride”: the idea that a half-assed listen- one where you don’t feel yourself fully immersed in the project’s universe- would be disrespecting said work, or failing to provide you with that elated feeling of taking in new music for the first time. Hanif Abdurraqib puts it best when he says “this song is allowing me the access to this feeling and I need to get there”. The biggest lurking danger, here, mostly has to do with the pre-existing connection to the artist and the fear of that thread snapping when communication becomes unclear. Luckily in those cases, the possibility of a revisit has a strong chance of making things “right”, yet that is a concept which applies there only.
I must admit here that, in attempt to avoid the bad scenario, I have more than once found myself postponing engaging with releases I had a pre-existing attachment to, in favor of ones where a sense of detachment would allow for an easier, less all-consuming listening experience. And isn’t that a greater “disrespect” to those weighted releases, after all?
How to let go of the expectation that comes with an “important” first listen has been something I’ve been ruminating on, particularly so with the amount of releases I find myself interested in becoming so overwhelming in the last couple of years, paralleling my expanding music taste. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I still don’t quite know how to efficiently work around the social aspect, especially as someone who now writes about music for a small audience, yet a type of audience nonetheless. Yet on a personal level, while bringing to mind my absolute favorite pieces of music that I’ve dearly held in my heart for years, and asking myself whether most of them reached that status on first play, the answer is, of course, no. They made their way to the top of the list through scattered, mismatched, awkward and lacking listens and re-listens, occupied my brain in different ways as I grew, entered and abandoned different headspaces. They suffered through getting shoved aside and picked back up, through half-listens, traffic noise, sticking out like a sore thumb against contradicting atmospheres. Ultimately, if the “unsuccessful” listens didn’t provide me with the connection to a piece I was looking for, they still provided me with something: the knowledge of the circumstances I wish I could have engaged with it under. And perhaps that is a job for the reviewer: to be the one to suggest that time and place, in hopes of ensuring that other communications will proceed smoothly- that other connections will not be hindered.
No matter how much a genre, style or song’s branding may suggest the concept of escapism and how immersed we find ourselves in its world, there is no denying that music is still human expression which revolves around the human condition, innately tied to the human existence like every other art form. Context matters and that’s why there is always a time and a place in the duration of our lives, for a sound to carve its way into and fall in tune. If “universe” means both music and circumastance, I am trying to make peace with letting myself be surprised at its capability to create transcendent moments unbeknownst to me. The chase is still a thrill. And in the process, I will trust that what is destined to stay, will stay.
Referenced:
“The Wonders of Songwriting, Pt. One (feat. Ravyn Lenae)” from Hanif Abdurraqib’s podcast “Object Of Sound”
Relevant:
Consider this a prologue for the third installment of “Of The Music - 2022” which is on the way with a big second-half round-up, so I hope you still care about 2022 reviews in February. Stay tuned!
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love love love this post!!!!! i feel like a new release from an artist is always going to feel so much different than their past releases, and that's why it takes me so long to warm up to them and alter my expectation into the reality; everything that they've already released doesn't hold the same excitement and anticipation, so im fine with listening to it whenever, but then like u said the first listen of something new has so much pressure attached to it lol.