Imagine No Possessions by Johnny Davis

john lennon’s new album is an impressive achievement, and not just because he’s been dead for 40 years. Eleven hours long with 87 previously unreleased tracks, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is an eight-disc version of the exBeatle’s 1970 debut solo record spread over six CDs and two Blu-ray discs. It includes demos, rehearsals, outtakes, jams, studio conversations, “isolated track elements” and separate versions of the album in 5.1 surround sound and Dolby Atmos.

It’s especially impressive given the original album lasted 39 minutes and was noted for its bare-bones sound, as befitted songs such as “God”, “Isolation” and “My Mummy’s Dead”, their writer having just returned from four months of trauma-based psychotherapy. (Ringo Starr would later attribute the album’s muted reception to a paucity of “toe-tappers”.)

Its reputation has improved significantly in the intervening five decades and it is now enshrined in the official rock-snob canon. So here it is again in a £99 box set 50th anniversary form, complete with a 132-page book, a “‘War Is Over! (If You Want It)’ Love and Peace from John & Yoko” poster and two postcards.

On the one hand, this is just the box set doing the box set’s job. Its role is to confer gravitas, either on an artist’s career, or a particular artist’s work. A two-inch thick slab of “product” designed to make the rest of your music collection look small, both literally and figuratively, whose unwieldiness (it’s a box) makes it an unwelcome addition to any shelf — record, CD or book. Then there’s actually listening to the thing. Do you (a) keep everything in the box, which means pulling everything out of the box when you want to play one album, (b) remove the albums from the box and file them with the rest of your collection, finding somewhere else to store the box, booklet, postcards et cetera, or (c) rip the audio files to your laptop and stick the whole thing in the attic?

Which brings us to the obvious point. It’s 2021 — it’s also out on Spotify. To what do we owe the box set’s continued existence in the age of streaming?

In the 1980s and 1990s, the box set was the music fan’s ultimate luxury purchase. A way of displaying your fine taste and allegiance to a distinguished career. In some cases, as with Bruce Springsteen’s Live 1975–’85 and Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin, the box set itself became a best-seller. In other instances, as with Bob Dylan’s Biograph, it served to both recontextualise and resurrect an artist’s career, condensing their daunting back catalogue into one aspirational and marketable package. An entrypoint for newbies who were aware of Dylan’s reputation both — as one music magazine had it — as “the world’s oldest dinosaur” (he was 44 on its release in 1985) and an iconic artist worth investigating.

It’s almost impossible to imagine now but at the time of The Beatles’ Anthology project — three volumes of career-spanning double albums, a hardback book and a six-part television series later expanded into an eight-VHS box set — released in 1995, their music was your parents’ music: naff. Paul McCartney’s most recent release “Biker Like An Icon” hadn’t even made it into the UK Top 75. The MaccaConaissance of Glastonbury headline slots, Phoebe Bridgers remixes and number one albums that outsell Taylor Swift and Eminem was a way off.

The music business, never shy about finding new ways to sell old music to the same fans, launched a new era of box sets in 2011. The year Spotify secured $100m of funding to launch in America, it alighted on the concept of the “super-deluxe box set”. So the “Immersion” version of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon came with two books, an art print, a replica concert ticket, five collector’s cards, a scarf, nine drinks coasters, a set of marbles and a bag to keep them in. U2 launched two 20th-anniversary box sets of Achtung Baby: “super-deluxe” and “uber-deluxe”. The latter came in a magnetic puzzle tiled box containing six CDs, four DVDs, five seven-inch clear vinyl singles, 16 art prints, an 84-page hardback book, a magazine, four badges, a set of stickers and a pair of Bono’s iconic “The Fly” sunglasses.

Ah, you say, this is just the last hurrah for record companies chasing the middle-aged rock fan with disposable income, the dying breed

whose lives somehow seem incomplete without physically owning John Lennon’s “Mother (Take 61)” which “removes the opening bell and has the drums mixed in mono”.

But it’s not just them. Beyoncé’s recent Lemonade album received the box set treatment just over a year after it was released. How to Make Lemonade came on lemon-yellow vinyl, with a 600-page hardback book featuring family photographs, poems by Warsan Shire and a foreword by the academic and minister Dr Michael Eric

Dyson. An altogether loftier endeavour than anything involving a set of marbles and a bag to keep them in, and yours for around £300. You’d have done well to snap one up: Amazon’s sole copy for sale today is priced at £3,499.95.

Then there’s my personal favourite, Björk’s Biophilia box set from 2011. Inside the limited-edition, lacquered and hinged oak case were 10 chrome-plated tuning forks, silkscreened on the front in 10 different colours and stamped on the back. Each fork was adjusted to the root note of a track on the album: E (or 329.HZ) for the song “Moon”; G-flat major (or 370.HZ) for “Mutual Core”, and so on. Insane. Also: Amazing!

Prestige item, way to make a quick buck, big budget art project… for all these reasons, the box set endures. An anachronism in the age of streaming and you have to say, a pleasing one.

Perhaps the box set’s appeal is best summed up by my friend Paul. Paul would call himself an enthusiast; his wife calls him a hoarder. Those massive Taschen books on Marvel Comics,

Motown collections, Godzilla: The Shōwa-Era Films, 1954–1975. You get the vibe. Paul recently ordered three box sets from cinema nerd favourites The Criterion Collection in America. When they arrived, he realised he couldn’t play them over here. So, he ordered a US Blu-ray player. Then he ordered the adaptor plug for that. He still hasn’t watched any of them, of course. But even if he had, the cost-to-film ratio would not be good.

When I asked him what on earth he thought he was up to, he said that he likes doing his bit to support these boutique companies, that he loves all the “making of” extras you get with box sets, and that could I please refer to him as a cinéaste. Then he shrugged and for my money nailed the box set’s enduring success. “I just like stuff,” he said.

So, take that, Netflix. Like John Lennon possibly sings on an outtake somewhere: imagine no possessions. It’s not easy, and we’ve tried.

○