Liner Notes

Every so often I’ll see a tweet that says something like “Super excited about my new couch! If teenage-me could see me now she'd be so disappointed! LOL.” Or something like, “Reaching for my probiotics as the sixteen year old punk rocker in me dies.” These posts are always some equivalent of “I can’t believe I’m an adult now and for some reason that would be upsetting to my younger self!” 

I get it. Aging is weird. Suddenly being the adult in the room can be jarring. But expecting to think and act exactly the way you did as a teenager forever is much weirder. Priorities change, emotional responses mature, and bodies eventually require more maintenance. Letting yourself adjust to new circumstances is not the same as betraying your former self, but I guess people on the internet feel differently. ::shrug::

When I think about the ways my teen self would or wouldn’t approve of my adult self, I draw a blank. Mostly because I don’t think she’d have a strong opinion on it, but also because I think she’d be pretty pleased overall. She might roll her eyes over me being excited about things like new sheets, and she’d definitely be surprised by how invested I’ve become in Britney Spears’ well-being, but overall, I think I’m doing her proud. That is, except for one thing: I stopped listening to music.

I’ll explain.

It’s not that I stopped completely. But, somewhere around my late 20s, I stopped putting in the effort. I no longer drove, which for me meant I no longer listened to the radio. I preferred reading on the subway to putting in headphones, and the idea of listening to music while walking was unappealing, knowing full well I’d become so consumed with “finding the perfect track” that I would end up standing still for hours. 

iPods came and went without me ever owning one, but my old CDs didn’t get any use during that period either. For one, I wasn’t home that much anyway, and two, little by little CD players stopped existing. Even my laptop didn’t come with a CD drive anymore. I’d listen to iTunes on my desktop or whatever Pandora station I created for background noise at work. But, eventually, discovering new music and immersing myself in full albums became a thing I used to do. I didn’t even realize I missed it - or rather, just how much I missed it - until the pandemic hit.

Music used to mean everything to me. It was how I made sense of the world around me, and how I processed my many contradictory feelings. My sense of self became shaped by what music spoke to me. Some deep and introspective (thank you, alt rock), and some just weird and quietly funny (thank you, whatever genre They Might Be Giants was). I found something to enjoy, and consume, in every style and decade of the 20th century. (And yes, I even fell victim to the swing revival craze of the late ‘90s that felt inevitable given my questionable, albeit brief, ska phase.)

Music, for me, was also a tactile experience. Running out to buy a new CD wasn’t just exciting because of the songs I’d get to listen to over and over again. It was a trip to physically take. The way I feel in bookstores is how I used to feel in record stores - surrounded by possibilities and invitations. Opening the tight CD packaging in itself was rewarding. Finding the right corner to pick, and pick, and pick loose with a fingernail. Finally peeling off the clear, crunchy plastic wrap in a long, satisfying spiral. Music was packaged as a gift. 

My first listen of a new album was a ritual of sorts. Holding the jewel case in my hands and examining the album cover; flipping it over to read the track list, running my finger over the titles. The album needed to be listened to in order. The “shuffle” feature on my disc-changer would only be used for albums I’d already listened to 100 times. While listening, I’d take the CD booklet out of the case and read the liner notes, memorizing them in some cases. Who did the band thank, who else worked on the album, what messages or drawings did the artists leave for me, and will there be - fingers crossed - a hidden track? Lyrics hit differently when you can read along with them, and I’ve been a words person even before I was a book person. 

That experience stopped being the norm when digital took over, and for a while that was fine with me. I can be a bit analog, but I’m not really a nostalgic person. I didn’t mind replacing my cassettes with CDs, and I didn’t feel particularly sad about CDs becoming mp3s. But, something did end up getting lost. I just wasn't sure what.

In the midst of this digital shift, I also became older, aging out of the targeted demographic for new music and letting the old become memories. I learned how to be content with whatever came my way, usually a few years after it became popular or hearing about it through a Spotify playlist (aka “the radio”) that I created for a band from twenty years ago. I became the type of person I used to judge. Which, again, I felt pretty OK about. I didn't know I had lost anything; I just thought that time in my life was over now. Perhaps not so coincidentally, this period of my late 20s and early 30s became a time when my depression and anxiety was at their worst, and I couldn't understand why. I made a few life changes that helped, but the main thing that had always gotten me through hard times before was still missing.

At the start of the pandemic, like most people (and as I’ve written about here), I was not in a good place. And not unlike my teen years, Fiona Apple came along and brought me back to myself. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is the first album I remember listening to from start to finish, in order, in a long time. It’s a brilliant album by itself, but for me it reawakened why music mattered so much to me, and why the occasional new band here and there just wasn’t cutting it despite being seemingly content. 

I started listening to full albums again, starting with ones that once meant a lot to me, and let the current, near-forty version of myself find new things to appreciate in them. A refresh of Jagged Little Pill or Weezer’s Blue Album, followed by staples of my 20s like The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs and Rilo Kiley’s More Adventurous, was more than waxing nostalgic for whatever age I used to be. It was more like hitting reset, reminding me what I’d been missing, reminding me to sit still for at least forty-five minutes.

New gems by old favorites are in my heaviest rotation right now, but teen-me will be pleased to hear that I’m discovering new bands again too. The strength of the full album remains my measurement for which artists become new favorites (currently: Japanese Breakfast, First Aid Kit, and HAIM, among others, for those curious), but I’m rather enjoying the random playlist-ready singles I stumble upon too. What matters more is the mental break I'm letting myself take again, the lyrics I follow along like a story, and the act of, just simply, listening.

FUN STUFF

What I'm Reading: The Idiot by Elif Batuman

What I'm Watching: Evil (an excellent show I suspect not enough people are watching!)

What I'm Listening To: Home, before and after by Regina Spektor

What I'm Eating: Chicken Makhani, as often as possible, from my local Indian place

Sarah Writes Too is a monthly newsletter of short, personal essay-style anecdotes written by me (Sarah LaPolla). If you want to send me questions or comments about any of my posts, you can reply to this email or find me on Twitter at @sarahlapolla. This is a free newsletter. The best way to show support is to subscribe to have future editions sent directly to your inbox (never more than one a month!), or share on social media.