Why does music no longer strikes a chord with me?
According to my Spotify wrapped – a record of my listening habits through the site for last year, I listened to something insane like 90,000 minutes of music in 2020. To put that in perspective, it works out at around 62.5 days, or about one fifth of a year – or more than two whole months’ worth.
Obviously this was completely padded by the pandemic and being trapped at home for the majority of the year, so I was able to have music playing out loud in my room while working.
But it wasn’t like I just had background sounds playing, elevator music to drown out the sounds of Fratton Road, my gluttonous music consumption in 2020 was driven by a real love for music.
I would fall for a song for 24 hours and play it on loop until I couldn’t bear to listen to it anymore. Or find a new album and play it back to front over and over.
There was so much new music that I discovered and helped me through the months of lockdown and quasi-lockdown.
From Spanish Love Songs’ Brave Faces Everyone, which felt as if it captured the experience of being trapped in a pandemic despite being released before the world fell apart, to both of the albums released by BTS in 2020.
It felt like I was gorging myself on a real feast of music throughout the year.
But fast forward to March 2021 and I have barely listened to any music since the double album I wrote about earlier this year, which I can no longer listen to now.
It is not for lack of trying, I have tried my old favourites and classics but I can’t make it more than a few seconds before giving up.
I have tried to find new songs to consume greedily, but nothing strikes a chord – pardon the pun.
Once upon a time all I would listen to is pop-punk, but now the genre leaves me cold I have been blindly searching through playlists. The worst part is I have no idea what type of music I actually want to listen to – pop, nope. Rock? Nah. Country? No way Jose.
It is like I am trapped in the musical doldrums and it leaves me wondering if I have lost my passion for music completely. Or if it is just a phase.