The Cool Coincidence Of 2007

Two interesting things happened that year

I was reading a piece about how social media messes with our brains, shortens our attention spans, etc., and how a lot of nostalgia for the 1990s or summer or whatever is really a culturally specific way of articulating a longing for life at a slower pace. I think that’s basically true.

I remember life before smartphones and social media, when you checked email once a day, when there was a family computer somewhere that everyone logged into and it was a treat to use it. Outside of that you just kind of did things. It might be video games, or it might be a long walk in the woods during which you half-believed you were lost and were going to die in the wilderness.

Obviously, part of what’s changed is simply growing up. But part of it is also that you really were untethered from everybody for half an hour, an hour. You might have thought you were going to die in the wilderness. But nobody else thought you were dead because you hadn’t responded to a text message in 30 minutes. Because that technology simply didn’t exist at the time. And to the narrow extent that it kind of did (pagers and the like) nobody really thought it implied that we all had to be online and reachable instantly, all the time.

Anyway, the author of this piece, Emily Amick, put the ’90s nostalgia trips this way: “It’s less about retro aesthetics and more about retro tempo.” In other words, you have to separate the underlying sentiment from the trappings it has about old tech or tube TVs or giant tower PCs or childhood summers or whatever we think of as symbolizing less intrusive technology and a slower life pace.

One symbol of that old time is vinyl records. Amick’s piece gave me a thought, and then another thought. The first one I’ve expressed before: I believe strongly that the “vinyl revival,” the growing popularity of records, is more than just “retro aesthetics.” I think there’s something deep in wanting there to be a physical ritual, a thing you have to actually do, to play the music. It’s a qualitatively different experience to put on a record and listen to it than to just stream songs, skipping or pausing them at will.

There’s a reason song order is what it is; it’s called sequencing, and the sequencing sessions for albums are important parts of how they get put together. Obviously this applies to tapes or CDs as well as vinyl, but it’s basically blown up by the way streaming and online listening works.

Here’s an example: since I’ve been reading and writing about the Beatles, one of the most famous bits of sequencing in rock is the first side of Abbey Road ending with the ominous proto-metal outro of “I Want You/She’s So Heavy,” and then the second side beginning with “Here Comes the Sun.” The order not only mattered to the listening experience, but spurred your imagination. (Clouds/storm/doom/electric followed by sun/light/acoustic, etc.) That worked in tandem with the fact that it was somewhat frictional to get up and change the song or side prematurely, so the default was to let the record play, while the default now is to get twitchy after a minute.

Everything is just a click away, but nothing requires our full attention. It’s like the Twilight Zone guy who loses his glasses as soon as he has the time to read, except we’ve thrown the glasses away ourselves.) I think there’s something almost sacramental about summoning music with analog physicality. Not in a spiritual sense, really, but whatever it is that I mean by that, I’m sure, is understood by a lot of young vinyl enthusiasts. But anyway.

The other point that occurred to me—I wondered if it was the case, and serendipitously it turned out to be—is that 2007 is the year the vinyl revival began. It’s the first year after which every subsequent year saw higher and higher sales. Look at this chart:

Do you know what else happened in 2007?