Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

A few last thoughts on the nine-album challenge, the friends who opened those doors, and this week’s playlist. If you’ve been on Notes this week, you might’ve noticed that the “9 albums that formed me” challenge is inescapable. (And if you’re not, and you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, congratulations!) I’m mindful that we’ve already spent a lot of oxygen and column inches on the topic, but if you’ll indulge me just a little bit more here, I want to make a couple of last points before we resume our normal doomscrolling media consumption. I’ve leaned really hard into the formative part of the prompt. One of the things that I keep circling back to is the delta between the ones you could say formed me—or at least sent me on a different trajectory—and the ones that I actually play with any frequency. For example, Van Halen’s 1984. A record I likely haven’t listened to in full for 30 years. It’s good, but it’s not even VH’s best (take a bow, VH II). But it was the gateway to…