i tried to listen to music like a child again

When I was eight years old, in 1998, a boy in my second grade class had a birthday party, and everyone in the class was invited. This party had many intrigues, including some games of skill and chance. One involved guessing the number of jelly beans in a container; the closest guesser would win a prize. Imagine my surprise when my jelly bean guess was the closest! We are talking hundreds of jelly beans here. I felt anointed by God, in communion with someone epic like Joan of Arc. The prize was a pair of bright yellow FM radio headphones.

Now, I was one of four young daughters and I shared a room with my older sister. My dad controlled the music programming for long car trips, and for his mysterious vinyl record player. We had a combination cassette player / radio / alarm clock in my bedroom but as I recall, time to enjoy it was limited and I was sharing a space with a whole other person whose tastes I needed to contend with. I was at least a couple years away from my first Discman. These FM radio headphones were my first true private music listening gear.

I quickly developed a delicious habit: waking up early on Sunday mornings and popping the headphones on to listen to early contenders on Casey Kasem’s newly revived Top 40 countdown program. Normally I would only catch snippets of the later, higher-ranked tunes when we’d drive to and from church. Tantalizing, unsatisfying. The headphones allowed me uninterrupted countdown access for as long as possible without disturbing my roommate/sister, and I consider those Sunday morns in bed absolutely formative to my future as a music enjoyer.

And not too long ago, I was feeling particularly weighed down by responsibilities. One of those days where I had to pay credit card bills, make sure to remember to floss so my upcoming dental appointment wouldn’t end up looking like a horror movie, shop for and cook food that would taste good and keep me alive, and generally stay upright on the surfboard just barely gliding through the wave of to-do list items closing in on me. And all through this, I was mostly listening to droll podcasts, or maybe a stray song or two as they were being released, to be able to ‘participate in the conversation’ and whatnot.

It would be nice to listen to music and enjoy it simply, as a child might, I thought. As I used to do! When I was wee, and found no greater pleasure than that of listening to the Casey Kasem Top 40.

So I tried to rediscover that certain frisson that came from my first true private music-listening experiences, in the hope that it would renew my spirit and reconnect me with the essential enjoyment of music — an enjoyment perpetually threatened by commerce and distraction.

Phase One: Radio Killed The Video Star

First, I bought a pair of FM radio headphones, figuring that it was the headphones themselves, combined with the experience of listening to music that I could not choose myself, that were the source of my original joy.

I put them on and tried to tune them to Z100, the closest NYC analog to my childhood pop station of 95.5 WXXX FM, “today’s hit music stationnnnn, 95 Triple Eeeeeex!!!” Perhaps the headphones were too cheap, or the radio signal in my home somehow weak, but I couldn’t get Z100 to play. My second solution was to use the Bluetooth function of the headphones to connect to the iHeartRadio app on my phone and listen to the radio that way. Already I was slipping away from the original format of my dreams, but isn’t this part of adulthood? Compromise? The radio headphones still sounded cheap and tinny, as I assume my 1998 ones did, so the attempt was close enough, I thought. I started cooking soup.

It’s been a while since I listened to current pop radio (other than a brief stint with a shower radio that broke almost immediately…ah, they don’t manufacture Stuff like they used to) and…hmm. A truncated rundown of the songs I heard while I was dicing carrots, potatoes, etc.:

“Die For You” - The Weeknd and Ariana Grande. Not a bop, not a ballad…a secret third thing. A thing I find merely okay.

“Heaven” - Niall Horan. I’m counting this ‘effort’ from ‘One Direction alumnus’ Niall to be just barely part of the wave of late 90s major-key romance-forward CVS Banger sound that is returning to our shores, which I wrote about in the AntiArt substack. But JUST BARELY. Honestly it more reads as a second-rate Train song from the indie rock car commercial era. Congrats to Niall for making Harry’s House sound POSITIVELY SPICY in comparison.

“Woman” - Doja Cat. I fucking love this song. I love that in the chorus she sounds more like she is saying “I can be your wooma, wooma wooma wooma.” She performs it live in a stunning way. If she can keep her wits about her, Doja will be The Next Truly Huge Girl (or should I say, Woman). We’re going to grind Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish into dust before they can really figure out how to represent Generation Zed longterm, and millennial megastars Taylor and Beyoncé are busy bankrupting their fanbase for nosebleed stadium seats. Doja is a Zillennial, she will bridge the gap, as long as she keeps her voice healthy.

“Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” - PinkPantheress & Ice Spice. It’s adorable, simple, and short. It’s like ordering one of those colorful Starbucks refresher drinks, but in the smallest size so you don’t get a brain freeze or too much of a sugar rush. When Ice Spice says “grabbin’ my duh-duh-duh”, it calms my anxiety. I could make a connection between Blackpink’s “DDU-DU DDU-DU” and Ice Spice’s “duh-duh-duh”…something about capitalism making all our brains go duh duh duh duh…..maybe something about Cat Marnell’s angel dust stutter: “I c-c—c-an’t find my d-d—debit okay, this is on credit okay, and can I get Marlboro Ultra Lights and uh Newports NO N—N-NOT 100s K-K-Kevin!”

“Kill Bill” - SZA. We’ve all heard this song a million times already, but I just want to lightly beef with the specific chorus lyric “Rather be in jail than alone.” SZA clearly has no confidence in her ability to pull off this double-murder of ex bf and his new gf. She assumes she will be caught for her crimes, tried and imprisoned. I am begging SZA to have a little imagination, to picture a world where she gets away with it. Don’t invoke Beatrix Kiddo of the Kill Bill movies in your song title if you think you’re going to end up in jail. The Bride was not going to jail. She was going to listen to sweet tunes in the car with her daughter.

The soup was in the pot, starting to simmer, and I felt…judgmental. I was running the pop radio through my personal critical meat grinder, and it was coming out the other side as sad sausage. This was not a childlike way to listen to music.

Phase Two: Let’s Go Back To a Time When Sean Combs Was Yelling About Remixes Constantly

I was being too judgy about current pop songs. I was crafting takes and feeling cynical. My next adjustment was to return to the songs that were likely playing when I first started my radio headphone habit. I was unable to find exact records of the countdowns that Casey Kasem helmed in the ‘90s, but I cross-referenced some Billboard charts, and put together a playlist on Apple Music that seemed to simulate what I would have heard in bed before church in 1998. And I listened to it while I cleaned the apartment, in regular headphones, hoping that the increased sonic quality might reveal new facets of the old songs.

An abridged list of reactions:

“Too Close” - Next. A perfect instance of a lyrical double entendre (“You’re dancing too close / you’re making it hard for me”) that made an 8-year-old Molly sympathize with whatever was afflicting these earnest male singers, not realizing the sympathy was for their dance floor boner.

“The Boy Is Mine” - Brandy & Monica. When I first listened to this song, I couldn’t really conceive of dating anyone, unless that anyone was Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys. And I thought Brandy and Monica fighting over this boy was normal adult relationship behavior. But when I listen to the song now, I’m horrified. This isn’t a case of both of these woman happening to enter the ‘talking stage’ of dating — dare I say, a ‘situationship’ — with a guy at the same time in a pre-monogamous context. These women both think they are seriously dating the same man. How does that happen? He is playing you BOTH, Brandy and Monica! Leave him! This is not going to be a fruitful relationship if he is this suspicious out the gate! Love yourself! The boy’s a liar!!

“How’s It Going To Be” - Third Eye Blind. I have evolved as a fan of rock music. I was born into Beatledom, eventually became a screamo aficionado, had a long twee indie rock girlie phase, and now I can enjoy anything from a live King Gizz saga to a brisk Wasp Factory post (?) punk chune. But this is the rock music junk food I crave at any given moment of the day. I have to be okay with this, this need for shininess and shimmer as part of the Rock Experience.

“You Make Me Wanna” - Usher. Good lord, was no man faithful in the late 1990s? I’m choosing to blame this glut of infidelity pop on the Clinton Lewinsky thing, but I guess cheating is always an interesting topic for songs. Sneaky, sexy, angry, cathartic: all good moods to aim for in music. We are perpetually in the body shop, doing something unholy.

“Been Around The World” - Puff Daddy & The Family. A song I didn’t remember from this time. My friend Matthew gifted me a ton of 1998 Rolling Stone magazine issues and in each one, there is at least one reference to the utter overexposure of Puff Daddy at the time. He was popping up everywhere like Beetlejuice. This particular song interpolates “Just Dance” by Bowie, turning that Nile Rodgers riff into something that would sound delightful on a yacht in the Caribbean. If there’s a deep dive on Puffy’s ability to turn around the unimaginable tragedy of Biggie’s murder into an ebullient comeback run, I would love to read it, because I don’t think we’ve seen anything quite like it since.

“Show Me Love” - Robyn. Still hits. When the Swedes write for Americans, it’s very special, but when the Swedes write for the Swedes…oh boy. GOTTA LOVE THAT WET-DRY REVERSE CYMBAL.

The experiment was starting to pay off. I was appreciating the production of the 1998 songs, all of them sounding vastly more expensive and well-thought-out than the current pop hits, while also acknowledging that music tech democratization, general post-Telecommunications Act consolidation, and an overall irreversible American vibe shift all contributed to the undeniable fact that we could never really go home again. But that was okay to me, really, because “seasons change, mad things rearrange,” and isn’t it kind of fun that the new avatar of New York Hip Hop is not Puff Diddy, but rather a breezy-voiced SUNY Purchase grad who invokes SpongeBob SquarePants in her beats? I think it’s kind of fun.

But I wasn’t catching that ineffable childhood music feeling, and I realized why. It was because I was still listening to music while I was doing chores. I was never going to reach the naive emotional peak I had envisioned if my hands were holding a chef’s knife or a vacuum handle.

Phase Three: That’s Why They Call Me Lanita

This is how I found myself in bed in an Airbnb in Los Angeles at 8:30am Pacific Time, with my eyes closed, listening to the relatively new album Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd by Lana Del Rey.

Why hadn’t I thought of this before? It came to me like a thwack to the forehead with a cartoon mallet. It wasn’t the content, and it wasn’t the gear. I didn’t need to revisit the horndog R&B guys who followed their erections toward unsavory situations. I didn’t need to have my emotional experience dictated to me by whatever focus-grouped DJ is running the show at iHeartRadio. I needed to lie down and listen to music while I wasn’t doing anything, just as I did when I was a kid.

I’m a modern multitasker, a work-juggling girlboss. I call my mom while I unpack groceries, dabble in new music Friday while checking my email, and listen to pop culture podcasts while I walk to the post office. I am so optimized that I feel leveraged. Listening to music in bed was the most luxurious experience I’ve had in months.

I will not give you a track-by-track rundown of Lana’s latest (maybe later! “the content must flow”) but rest assured it was just what I needed. I got lost in the lush piano…went on a guided golf cart tour of Lana’s various Angeleno reveries…definitely cried a few tears during “Kintsugi” and had to wipe them before they leaked into my headphone’s mesh…then came up for air positively giggling at “Taco Truck x VB,” which felt like both the perfect cheeky femme synthesis of everything she’s done in the past decade, and a controlled demolition meant to clear her slate for what’s next. Barbie Oppenheimer, I thought, thinking of the simultaneous Gerwig/Nolan movie madness day that my friends and I keep psyching ourselves up for. Blow up your fantasy life.

There’s one experiment left to do, which might be a Part Two of the newsletter, and that’s to actually listen to the current Top 40 countdown program that airs on the radio on Sunday mornings. It’s hosted by Ryan Seacrest (or an AI version of Ryan Seacrest, idk, the guy seems busy) and I figure if I lie in bed and listen to it, me and my inner child will shake hands in a businesslike style, once and for all.

So stay tuned for that, but in the meantime, if you’re still here reading, I’d really encourage you to try out the “doing nothing but listen to music” thing. Doesn’t have to be in bed. It could be on couch, or reclining in a field or something. The music really seeps in there and knocks some feelings loose when you aren’t distracted by tasks and such. I personally feel reborn (to die) and am ready to go to the taco truck.