The How and the Why
Or, "What the hell is this all about?"
The best music writing isn’t necessarily about the best music.
I’ve been plugging away at various corners of the internet since 2008 and it’s time I did something different. For over a decade now, my favourite collection of music writing has been Jude Rogers’ “50 Songs, 10 years” blog — a collection of personal essays posted in the last fifty days of 2009, outlining the story of her decade. Not the decade. Her decade. It mixed the funny with the heartbreaking with the insightful and had the feeling of being spoken to like an old friend.
I’m not as good a writer as her but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Or at least, a version of it.
Music, and particularly pop music, has reached a stage of ubiquity that it basically soundtracks our everyday lives. And the best music writing knows this. Who cares to read about the mechanics of a chord progression or the technical skill of a guitar solo when you could be reading about how a piece of music made someone feel? Was it the perfect complement to the experience? Was it hilariously incongruous? Was it incidental but forged an unbreakable association in your head?
As a music writer with a worrying obsession with statistics and trivia, I couldn’t just pick songs without some kind of pointless hook to link them all together. So, this is the story of me as told through the medium of UK Number 1 singles. Not all of them, obviously, just the ones that link to some kind of event, theme or time in my life. I’m not holding myself to a regular publishing schedule, a standard word count or anything particularly lofty, but I can promise this Substack will always be free.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. I don’t write about myself often so I’m already feeling a little anxious about it, and anyone taking time from their day to spend here is appreciated. But if you had read this far, go and have a look at some of the other posts on this page; I hope you enjoy them.
But before you do, listen to this:
And then go and read this.
Echoing the stoke about the blog post - that was fantastic. I'm excited to follow along, brilliant substack!
I’m not sure if you’ll know what I’m talking but your point on how it’s much more interesting to read about the feelings music evokes in a person reminds me of a point that an online music critic named anthony fantano has made. I remember he talked about how he rarely discusses music theory in his reviews because he finds that most people consume music on an emotional level. It’s great to see that many others share that sentiment.