Over five years into writing about music for the second time round and I awoke to discover I am a BOOKKEEPER.
The most difficult thing about music writing in 2014 is keeping track of what is going on. With around 20 albums a week to review and as much again to listen but not write about, and literally five times as many individual tracks, and that’s a minimum , the writer is in a constant state of shuffling and filing: my day, week, month, year to date, going forward and moving backwards, listening and returning, checking the charts all the time so no next big thing blindsides.
The trick, or at least the dream, is to be just a nose ahead of the zeitgeist so you are never playing a serious game of catch up. But even with all that, I was two years behind on Iggy Azealea and a year behind on Lorde (who I got supremely wrong) . It took me a year, from around 2009 – 2010, to figure out the Brooklyn scene (meaning, to figure there wasn’t a Brooklyn scene as such) and from there to counting up albums and songs was just a small step for man.
With the advent of Spotify, I went from buying songs, maybe two or three on a given album and then buying the albums that interested me, and went back to listening to albums and the problem was finite time.
That’s what they mean by sampling albums, skimming the surface and seeing what sticks. Of the 20 albums I start a week with, only around 5 are still being listened to by the end of seven days.
What has happened through the years is I have tried harder and harder to organize the music I listen to so I don’t miss stuff, forget stuff, as I reach the end of the year.
It is like tending a garden, or maybe being an accountant, reviewing becomes about being access information and organize it as simply as you can. It is book keeping.
