My Music Journal 2025: November 21, 2025

 

Friday, November 21, 2025

Time: 7:52 AM
Song: AM Radio
Artist: Everclear
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on the way home from work.

Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/03gsb1WnVQUuLqChBvzmoo?si=e5406cd0b7234761

I remember really liking the song “Walls” by Tom Petty when it came out sometime when I was in high school, but the only time I could hear it was if it was played on the radio.

That was the rub. While it received some radio play, it never became one of those songs that was in the hourly rotation. You had to be lucky. It might only get played once that day.

I wonder if kids can even fathom that experience now?

There was just something about the song you really liked at the time coming on the radio unexpectedly. Naturally, your hand jerked to the volume knob, you probably gave a death look to anyone around not to talk for the next three and a half minutes so that you could thoroughly enjoy this one tune, and, at minimum you hummed along, if not sang it, once you heard it enough times to get the words mostly right.

It’s also part of what is special about having physical copies of albums or even mixtapes. That song was there, at your fingertips, ready to play when needed. It was now a semi-permanent part of your existence.

It’s not quite the same now with streaming, or even with downloading songs and saving them as MP3s. The process is almost too easy, maybe too impersonal.

That’s not to say I don’t like when I add an elusive song or artist to my MP3 collection, but it will probably never compare to the feeling of buying a CD back in the day. I didn’t have money for a lot of CDs, so if I did pay for one, it meant that I was committing to the long haul with that music.

And mixtapes – especially those taped from the radio. That meant waiting and listening and being ready to hit record at just the right time. It was capturing that moment and trying our best to make it last.