- Long-Players: Writers on the Albums That Shaped Them, edited by Tom Gatti. Bloomsbury, $34.99.
Tom Gatti, deputy editor of the New Statesman, in his introduction to Long Players: Writers on the Albums That Shaped Them, traces the evolution of music listening over the last five decades, from LPs to cassettes to CDs and now streaming.
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Gatti notes the return of the popularity of the physical LP, with one in eight albums bought in 2019 being vinyl: "Listeners are returning to the album as an unbroken artwork...to be played from start to finish without interruption". They also provide a physical personal collection as with books over e-books.
Gatti asked 50 leading authors to tell him about "a record that changed them or shaped them or that was important at a particular time or place".
Most choose "virgin plays" of albums from their teenage years, "a time of heightened receptivity".
Contributors include Ali Smith (the only one to choose more than one album), Marlon James, Deborah Levy, George Saunders, Bernardine Evaristo, Neil Gaiman, Daisy Johnson, David Mitchell and Esi Edugyan.
The oldest album is chosen by the late Clive James, Ellington at Newport (1956) , and the most recent, Daisy Johnson's choice of Lizzo's Cuz I Love You (2019)
Deborah Levy, after listening to David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, writes it "was nothing less than throwing petrol at the naked flame of teenage longing and desire for another sort of life".
David Mitchell describes the impact of his teenage encounter with Joni Mitchell's "raw autobiography" Blue.
For Linda Grant, Joni Mitchell's later album, Hejira, indicates "the great paradox of 70s feminism . . . love pulling you one way and freedom the other".
Deborah Levy, after listening to David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, writes it "was nothing less than throwing petrol at the naked flame of teenage longing and desire for another sort of life".
Sarah Hall compares Radiohead's OK Computer to "a great short-story collection", while Ian Rankin, selecting John Martyn's Solid Air, writes, "Give me an album at a certain age and it is mine for life, as Miss Jean Brodie might have said".
Anglo-Indonesian poet, Will Harris, linking rap and poetry, reflects how Warren G's Regulate ... G Funk Era revealed "rhythm was life and life was rhythm".
George Saunders attests how the somewhat opaque lyrics of Fragile by Yes, reassured him that "to make something beautiful might mean to make something that you, the artist, don't fully understand . . . the aim is realised through the process of making".
Long-Players: Writers on the Albums That Shaped Them is an unusual and fascinating combination of essays, with each author's musical choices resonating in individual time and place.