Tuesday Tunes

Why I quit English

K-Pop? More like K-BOPS.

Courtney Nguyen

08 Oct 2023 — 2 min read

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who hear lyrics and people who hear music. You can hem and haw all you want and try to be all things to all people, but when the apocalypse comes and the horsemen are coming for you, you will full-throatedly profess your allegiance to one side only.

I am - no surprise - a lyrics person. I am a person who walks the streets angrily muttering about how kids these days don’t know how to appreciate music anymore because they never spent 20 bucks of their hard-earned cash at Sam Goody for ONE CD or cassette tape, only to come home, rip open the packaging, and - 30 minutes later - settle into the liner notes.

Liner notes. OH LINER NOTES. How I miss you so. There was no bigger thrill than popping in a new album, PLAYING IT ALL THE WAY THROUGH TRACK BY TRACK, and reading along with the liner notes, learning who wrote which songs, reading for hidding meanings in the acknowledgements and thank yous, staring at the album art, it was bliss.

20 bucks, well worth it. No wonder everyone just wants to stream music for free these days. What do you actually GET?

PSA: Pay the artists who make the art you love, folks. Buy their merch, buy physical copies of their albums, go to shows. Don’t just listen to their stuff non-stop on YouTube and Spotify. PAY THEM MONEY.

Ahem. Anyway.

All that is to say, because of my unwavering love of words, I’m currently in a don’t-listen-to-music-with-words-i-can-understand-and-therefore-get-distracted-by phase. I’m sure this will pass eventually, but honestly, it’s been going for about four years now.

Here’s a sampling of what’s been keeping my ears occupied: