Bidding my daughter good night recently, I played her an album of Icelandic alternative rock (Sigur Ros) that I haven't listened to for years. The songs were orchestral, a little abrasive to listen to, but they built on one another through their arrangement.
It got me thinking (in the digressive manner I increasingly relish with age) about order. I was born in the era of records, which begat 8 tracks and eventually cassettes (the staple of my high school years), ultimately yielding to CDs, MP3s, and now streaming.
The only time during my youth when I listened to a song without hearing it in the order that the artist had intended was on the rare single record I was awarded by the DJ at a junior high dance or Bar Mitzvah (in fact, I had some moves that drew attention).
Sequence in music was critical in the era of the mix tape, which was how you made yourself vulnerable to other kids, identified members of your musical tribe, and got girls who were ostensibly out of your league to reciprocate an unequal crush.
I have residual guilt over my mix tape snobbery. One of my sisters is four years younger, but she has always been far more musically sophisticated than me. When she ended a mix tape she made for a friend with Bob Marley's Redemption Song, I made an offhand condescending comment along the lines of, "That's been done before."
She had generously made me a copy of said tape. My life has been spent atoning, in one form or another, for being the sort of adolescent prick who would make a comment like that to a young person being vulnerable.
How does a product of mix tapes connect with a son or daughter of Spotify? It's hard to make the case that an algorithm or AI can't predict their desires better than an artist.
Does that mean the artist as a careful curator of mood or emotion is extinct? Is art extractive - you excise the precise song you want to fit your mood, without giving yourself over to what the artist had wanted you to experience?
There was an intimacy formed with the artist by virtue of thinking through the sequence of songs on an album. I felt a little more like Prince was sharing his secrets with me on Purple Rain because I knew precisely what led into that song (Baby, I'm a Star, critical and commercial success followed by spiritual contemplation).
Sequence matters. Listening to an album in order cultivates patience, enables you over time to perceive connections between what at first glance seemed disparate tracks, and lets you share the vision of the creator of the music.
There's a part of me that wants to believe that, like DNA, taking songs out of sequence may portend unintended consequences for the listener. Or maybe I'm just a curmudgeon who's finally fitting the image of the guy with the crow's feet in the mirror.