Music has always been a big part of my life. I don’t play an instrument like my husband or kiddo, but I’ve always been a big fan. This love was planted early by my mom. She taught aerobics in the 80s as her second job, and I can remember sitting with her and her stack of 45s (records), trying to find just the right songs for her routines.
As I developed my own taste, I shifted into listening to my favorite radio stations, painstakingly waiting for my favorite songs to come on so I could hit Record, and making mixtapes for my Walkman. (Yes, kids, this is how we had to do it, lol.) Eventually, technology advanced and I moved to filling up fat CD binders that I could organize and lovingly flip through. I still have two of those binders even though I have no CD player. I can’t seem to part with them.
Of course, now we have streaming and almost every song we could want at our fingertips, but I find that having the ability to make endless personalized playlists means I’m not exposed as much to music I don’t already know. And I don’t necessarily mean “new” songs but “new to me” songs. I end up making playlists of my favorite songs and listening on repeat (and my master playlist is 80 hours long, so I don’t even have to repeat every often.)
But the fun of discovery and hearing a new song on the radio is lost. This is a bummer in general but also, it’s been shown that listening to music, particularly new-to-us music, is really good for our brains. In addition, I find music really inspiring for my writing. There are some songs that the first time I hear them, I think “I could write a story from that.” Music hits me in a different place than other types of inspiration.
So, I’ve started to make an effort to find new-to-me music. How? Here are some fun ways I’ve found:
Watching music competition shows like The Voice and American Idol
I’ve always loved these types of shows, so that’s nothing new. However, I’ve realized that these shows have been a solid source of new music discoveries for me too. The first time I heard one of my (now) very favorite songs, Sara Bareilles’ “She Used to Be Mine”, was on one of these shows.
Books About Music
There’s a book for everything, right? A few years ago I bought 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die and 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die for the kidlet (who loves music and plays guitar and drums.) Even though he’s 16 now, we still read an entry from one of these together each night. Digging into why a song or album is important makes you want to go and listen to them. And from that article I linked to above, I discovered someone actually created a Random Album Generator based on the book, so you can play with that even if you don’t have the book!
Best of Lists
This is similar to the books but easier to get your hands on. Right now I’m working my way through Rolling Stones’ 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. I’m working backward and am at number 489 (listening to that as I type this in fact!). But this has been such a fun exercise so far. I listen to each album from start to finish, not on shuffle, listening to it as it was intended since songs were put in a certain order for a reason. (I’ve blogged before about The Joy of Listening to an Album All the Way Through.)
And because I’m sticking to the order of the list, I get quite a variety, going from Shakira to Boys II Men to The Ronettes. My brain is definitely getting some exercise! (Although, let’s be honest, I knew every song on that Boys II Men album by heart, lol. Not all of these are new-to-me.)
There are of course other ways to find new music. Going to concerts and getting there in time for the opening bands, asking friends for recs, listening to a radio station, letting the Spotify algorithms guide you, etc. But the ones above have been the most convenient and enjoyable for me.
It doesn’t really matter how you get there, but if you want to change things up from the same old same old of your tried-and-true playlists, maybe give some of these options a shot.
I’d love to hear if you ever search out new music or how you find new things to listen to. Give me your own tips. Or share the best new-to-you song you’ve discovered lately!