Comedian Pete Holmes does a bit about how the internet has eliminated the human experience of simply not knowing the answer to a question.
He details that in days gone by if a question popped into your head, like “where was Tom Petty born?” That question simply bounces around in your head unanswered until you come across a person who might know the answer.
In one version of the joke he notes that you could scour cassette inserts to see if the information was there. Re-calling album liners started me thinking about how different the experience of consuming music used to be.
Very much like Googling to find that Tom Petty was born in Gainesville, Florida, all the music of the world is in your hands, every minute of every day. You can instantly switch from listening to thrash metal to didgeridoo music on your phone. You can find live performances. You can listen to Miley Cyrus cover Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide and sound exactly like Stevie Nicks (look it up).
But when I grew up in the 80s, it all started on the radio and it was random. You would hear a song that you liked and then sit around hoping to hear it again. If it played again you were excited and you turned the radio up, if your parents would let you. I would argue that my generation really got to absorb that sensation twice, because we were the perfect age when MTV came out and you had to wait for the most popular videos to play randomly.
There is nothing today to replicate the experience when your song or video randomly played. It was like hitting a $10 winner on a scratcher.
And you were going to need a few winning lottery tickets if you really liked the song or artist and decided to buy the album. It wasn’t like today when thousand-song playlists are freely found. A vinyl album or cassette tape was going to cost around $10, which inflates closer to $40 in today’s dollars. If you were begging your parents for that kind of bread, you better be certain the record was a banger.
It’s also crazy to me that today, even with the diminished role of radio play, that the singles are released months before a compilation (albums don’t really exist anymore). By the time an artist’s compilation or works is released multiple singles have been played to death on streaming services or the radio.
When I was growing up, an album would be released and radio DJs would start playing singles from it. I’m sure they knew from record companies which songs would be the debut hits from the album, but some songs gained popularity organically as DJs played other songs from the release.
The release of a studio album from a major artist in the 80s would come with a lot of buildup. You would know a big one was coming months ahead and a specific release date would be scheduled. When I was in high school I can remember driving to record stores in Columbus on the days albums were released. In fact, I spent a fair amount of time just browsing in record stores, looking for deals in the discount bin or a live album I didn’t know existed.
Once you bought a new album or cassette you listened to it through a few times. It always felt good to appreciate a song and then see it blow up on the radio months later, verifying my impeccable taste in tunes.
And you also read the album liner in depth. Back in those days there was a lot less information about artists and sometimes the liners contained interesting information or photos. It was also the only place you could hope to find the accurate lyrics to songs.
There was just a lot of anticipation connected to music in those days. It was something you had to search for and put effort into finding. You couldn’t share a song in the click of a button. You had to find somebody with a dual-deck boom box, buy a Memorex, and then copy the music by playing an entire cassette through. Or you could try to record songs off the radio and have a collection of 20 songs, which were missing the first 10 seconds.
I think artists are somewhat aware that the magic is dead in regard to music releases. I believe this is why artists like Beyonce, Drake and Taylor Swift record compilations in secret and then release them at midnight on a random day with no fan-fare.
I can imagine that getting a text from a friend alerting you that your favorite artist had released a secret album over night would be exciting. That same buzz you would get from hearing your favorite song on the radio, or catching a video for the first time on MTV, or scratching off a $10 winner.
-Chad Williamson is the managing editor at the Journal-Tribune.