Our Obsession with Vinyl Records: Is it Just a Fad or Are Records Here to Stay?
The idea of playing vinyl records may remind you of Sunday afternoons at your grandma’s house; perhaps you naturally associate records with hipster culture. You know, people who wear bell bottoms and ride a penny farthing to work. Perhaps you are simply too young to have relatives that owned any records, having grown up in the digital age and everything. However, within the last decade or so there has been a huge resurgence in vinyl record sales, both new and second hand.
This interesting cultural development contradicts our tendency as modern people to strive towards the newest, priciest and most up to date technology. Why go backwards, when we have music at our fingertips at all times? Spotify, Youtube, iTunes, Bandcamp - the list of online music stores and streaming services is growing longer everyday. These sources allow us to listen to whatever we like, in high quality surround sound, and in any given location - you‘d look a bit strange carrying your record player onto the bus with you! We have also become spoilt for choice, and some of these services will even pick bands, artists or soundtracks that we might like so that we don’t have to spend hours searching for ‘bands that sound like Nirvana, but are NOT Nirvana’. So then what is the point of spending £50 on a limited edition vinyl when that artist will only be charging £12.99 for that same album in MP3 format? Is it just trendy to reject the mainstream? Is vinyl a fad, or is this the second coming of The Record?
First off I have to admit that yes, I do listen to vinyl records on the regular. HIPSTER, I hear you scream at your phone / tablet screen / sock puppet friend, but you should never judge a person by their choice of audio format (didn’t your mother ever teach you that?!). Let me tell you why I personally love listening to music via vinyl - my answer is threefold:
Number one - I struggle with new technology in general. I find it all very overpowering and overwhelming, so I do indulge in past technologies as a sort of comfort. I like to play the radio when I do the washing up and a record when I have friends over. I do have an iPhone, but I only got it within the last few years and I am pretty sure it’s plotting to take over my life and somehow bury my body in the backyard.... I don’t trust it!
Number two - Do you find your attention span is shrinking by the minute? We scroll through Instagram, skip through songs on Spotify and flick our way through Netflix until we forget what we were looking for to begin with. Once I pop I can’t stop, and I skip and scroll until I get a migraine and have to lie down! Our lives require little focus and dedication, time passes and not a great deal is achieved and, ultimately, it’s really hard to live presently. Putting on a record is a commitment, starting at the beginning and ending when the music crackles into silence. There is something so simple about listening to music that way because it requires my full attention, and gives my scrolling fingers a well deserved rest.
Number Three - Before minimalism became so popular, the stuff you owned was an outward expression of who you were. Wearing a band t-shirt to college or reading a book at the bus stop was how you told others what you liked and your general views on art and politics. I now know that your belongings do not define you, but there are some things I just can't let go of. I will always have a bookshelf full of my favourite authors and a wardrobe full of weird and wonderful clothing, because they are more than just objects to me. I feel similarly about records, because just like my books each spinning plate has its own style and story to tell. So screw minimalism, I like my junk!!
But hey, that’s just me!
Vinyl has really only made a comeback in the last decade, and yes, hipster culture is to blame/thank for that. Oddly enough, ‘hipsters’ are defined as people who keep up with or adhere to the latest cultural trends; however, the hipsters we see out and about dress like they were transported from another time - crazy moustaches, vintage clothing, worker boots, riding rickety bicycles and yes, you guessed it, polishing their vinyl record collection. So how did these retro renegades come to be? My theory is that living in a world so centered around technology can ruin your brain a little bit. It’s so annoying that we can no longer go anywhere without our phones, even when we go to the toilet! So many things we grew up loving and living for have become obsolete because you can cram all your music, photos and conversations onto your chosen device.
These technological advancements were supposed to make the world more simple, and in some ways this has been achieved. But along with the simplification comes baggage - too much choice, too many options, too many opinions and all around confusion and brain buggery. Gone were the days when you just sat down with your book and your favourite album, because you are now constantly distracted by your phone as it pings and zings, and flashes exciting words and images every 15 seconds. Hipsters rejected this dependence on technology (or until it became too inconvenient for them), and delved into the past for something less complicated and familiar, something that didn’t exist in a ‘cloud’.
I used to know this person, let’s call her Tina, and she was the first person I had met who only listened to music on vinyl. She was a lovely girl and was always kind to me, but she was the full hipster special - typewriters, vintage furniture and a wooden drinks trolley shaped like a globe! One day, as we sat on her 70’s style shag rug and listened to her records, I asked her if she ever got bored of listening to the same albums over and over again. She didn’t seem to understand the question so I asked again, mentioning how much more choice there would be if she had Spotify or iTunes, or an internet connection in general. She shrugged and said that she never got bored of her albums because they were all her favourites, and who can get bored of listening to their favourites - that’s why they’re your favourites! In some ways this made perfect sense to me and I wished that I could think like her, being content with the old and trusted, never tempted by the allure of the shiny and new. Although she was a bit of an odd sock, everything she owned meant so much to her and she treated her belongings like they lived and breathed - especially the records! That happened nearly 10 years ago, and since then fashion and culture have moved on - hipsters no longer stand out from the crowd because most people wear vintage clothes and drink overpriced coffee!
We are now fully in the grasp of social media, with influencers encouraging us to clear out our closets, declutter our lives and become better people. Yet there are still so many, surprisingly younger people, who collect vinyl in spite of the threat of dreaded clutter. Yes, I think there is a certain element of romanticising the past, a lot of these young collectors were not even alive to see CDs let alone vinyl records. I know I am guilty of feeling nostalgic for a time that I was not old enough to experience for myself, and making up for it as a teenager and young adult (many fashion mistakes were made during this process). However, I think there is a more genuine reason why we are gravitating backwards - because the future looks a bit bleak and bare!
As we drift through life with nothing substantial to hang onto - Tweets, contactless payments, next to no furniture - everything blurs together. Going out and buying a record, taking it home and unwrapping it before playing it over and over again is a memorable action. Downloading that album onto your phone is more forgettable, because no discernible amount of love or effort went into it. Perhaps the younger generation are just trying to show who they are, to have something solid to cling to and to make some memories for themselves. Regardless of their intentions, they will always remember buying and playing each record without even posting it on Instagram!
I’m going to hand over to spoken word poet and performer Jonny Fluffypunk who conveys this perfectly in his poem, ‘Books and Records’:
“The records are me.
Played and dropped and scuffed and scratched;
Lives lived round and round
In ever-decreasing predetermined circles
Until one day they warp and die
And there is some small sadness
In a tiny corner of the world
And life moves on.
I cannot put my record player on shuffle.
Every listen is a deliberate act,
A Conscious Interaction. (‘Poundland Rimbaud’ by Jonny Fluffypunk).
Written by Katie McFaul
After travelling from place to place (much like Madonna in ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’), Katie finally settled in Bristol and spends her time helping animals in need, eating biscuits and constantly being late for everything. Her likes include vegan cuisine, movies of any description and writing god awful poetry. Her dislikes include slow walkers, narrowmindedness and talking about herself in the third person.
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