Listening to music

I need to start listening to music again.

It probably sounds strange that someone who makes music for a living doesn’t listen to much, but I don’t. 

A few reasons why:

First, If I’m listening to music I can’t hear new songs in my head, so I try to fill my life with silence for better internal listening. I recommend this to my songwriting students as well: stop listening to music, to podcasts, to the fucking news. Wash dishes and go for walks and drive in silence and pay attention to the melodies and words that bubble up — they might be good.

Second, my ears hurt. After decades of being in bands, playing and attending shows, and long days in the studio, I have significant damage in both ears and painful hypersensitivity in my right ear (if you see me walking around w an earplug in that’s why). I feel like every minute I spend listening to music I’m burning a little more of my hearing, so I try to ration it out on new things I’m recording. 

Third, I love music too much, and it has too great of effect on me. I haven’t had a stereo in my car for 15 years because I know if the wrong (or right) song comes on, I might drive off the road. There’s a lot of stupid ways to die in the music biz, but the stupidest of all would be by rocking out too hard and driving into a telephone pole. Want to see me take two hours to wash the dishes? Put some good music on. Want to have a conversation with me while music is playing? Good luck.

Fourth, I am too easily swayed by music. Today I might be very clear about the direction of my writing and how I want the next record to sound. But put on some Ben Howard or Lord Huron or Adia Victoria or that Hozier bastard and all my clarity might melt into a desperate need to sound more like people who are clearly better than I am.

I was gratified to read that many a songwriter in Nashville has a standing order that no music can be played in their home, for fear of influencing or derailing something the writer’s working on. I feel exactly the same way. Please keep your music to yourself and leave me alone with what’s playing in my head.

I have been known to flee grocery stores because a certain song comes on. Bad music is an absolute misery, but good music can be worse. It stops the world, crashes my inner world and pumps me full of magic that doesn’t belong to me. Particular songs rip me back in time and are literally unbearable.

Music is a drug, a curse, a guardian angel, a holy ghost that shakes me and cracks me open. I envy people who can enjoy it so casually, for whom the reverb on a snare drum or a twisting string part isn’t so fucking life or death.

I know I’m a drama queen. And god knows I have tried to quit this shit. 

But I can’t. So I’m going to try listening again. I miss it. I love it. I need to be cracked open, over and over. I need the old albums that are sewn deeply into my DNA, and the new albums that make me jealous and flushed with exhilaration.

In the midst of working on this new record, I’m going to try listening to one album per day — just not while driving. 

These are some I might start with:

#afghanwhigs Gentlemen (the greatest album cover of all time), #minorthreat, #catpower Free, #radiohead  Amnesiac, #kanyewest 808s and Heartbreak, #katebush Hounds of Love, #thepsychedelicfurs Talk Talk Talk, #prince Sign of the Times,#throwingmuses Hunkpapa, #echoandthebunnymen Ocean Rain, #tricky Maxinquaye, #tomwaits Rain Dogs, #pjharvey To Bring You My Love, #bobdylan Oh Mercy, #lanadelrey Born to Die, #rem Document, #chriswhitley Living with the Law, JAYDIOHEAD, #thenational Trouble Will Find Me, #u2 War.