This being a project I started a couple months into lockdown, I worried about F being the first letter I’d have to tackle with remote work’s generous allowance of me-time not even a hybrid or temporary option. But then things ranging from COVID running rampant through the office last summer to actually taking time off with hubs for our anniversary gave me more oases of time than I thought’d accompany this letter. It obviously still took seven freaking months to get through the F’s, but I feel like that was largely time well-spent. 

I flat-out had fun with this letter. Maybe I’m getting into a groove; maybe this has become a comfortable habit I actually look forward to; maybe I’ve fallen in love with music all over again because of this shameless vanity project; or, maybe starting off with the lighthearted vibe that three not-quite-throwaway ditties set established a truly delightful tone for the 500some ensuing songs to effortlessly sustain.

Those weirdly rewarding quirks of alphabetically reshuffling my iPod’s songs ranged from accidental poem fragments to fucking hilarity. Bouncing from the very un-Death Cabesque “Flustered/Hey Tomcat!,” the aural equivalent of stumblingly running through a funhouse of distortional mirrors, to the proximal musical whiplash that is “Trapped in a Jar” and its precise kind of raucous cacophony that exemplifies everything I love about Modest Mouse to The Beatles’ aptly named “Flying” and its tangibly airborne feel made for one wildly visceral throw-ride. The accidental neighbors that emerged offered up all kinds of unexpected gems, too, like two different Eels albums colliding to pair “Fresh Blood” with “Fresh Feeling” and two Rhett Miller projects bringing “Four Leaf Clover” and “Four-Eyed Girl” as close together as the two wildly disparate tunes should be. The full-circle lightheadedness of ending with “Furry Walls” (a joke song from the real soundtrack to Get Him to The Greek, a comfort movie that hubs and I glommed onto when he was working in the city with a similarly comforting musical accompaniment that we stifled laughter over with shared earbuds on some train ride home) beautifully underscored just how much gottdamn fun I had with this letter, and also was a welcome reminder that music doesn’t always have to be the for-serious life raft that I tend to make it. Maybe having the freedom of time to futz around with this blog and lose myself in music is beneficial to this project after all… ? 

Somewhere around “Florida’s on Fire,” though, is really where this started to feel less like an obligation and more like an extension of everything I love about the music at its heart. I have loved writing about songs I adore or that carry some significant emotional correlation so freaking much but, more than that, the intersection of music and writing really is turning out to be a cathartic, necessary and straight-up satisfying thing. I think it’s the confluence of an awful lot of welcome factors—namely the time and energy I’ve invested in this project nurturing it into a ruminative mental retreat from my professional writing, and the myriad emotionally rewarding external factors that have elevated my music-consuming habits, like a buddy inviting me to his other friends’ monthly music mix-off, buying more CDs than I have in years these past couple months alone (just take my entire paycheck already, Discogs), and proactively opening myself up to enjoying new-to-me tunes in general.

Specific to this project, I feel like it’s gotten really great at satisfying one of its initial purposes with aplomb, since I keep rediscovering a lot of acts who are freaking excellent but I never loved the way I should. Like, every single Matt Nathanson song has been a goddamn treat across six letters. And Ours. And Superchunk. I have absolutely loved finding out how much more room a song has to shine when it’s divorced from the context of artist/album expectations—like, I did Matt Nathanson a huge disservice by wanting every album to be like Beneath These Fireworks, my introduction to his music that feels like college and is all wrapped up in so many incredible associations that imbue that album in a special kind of magic. Buuuuut I’ll circle back to that when the next One More Second Chance comes around (lulz, in, like, another two years).

But above all, I think this letter intersecting with my CD-buying renaissance/Discogs deep dive is what really added another layer of musical enjoyment to everything. The painstakingly curating yet another virtual music catalog; the going through my musical collection album by album to throw it all on Discogs and then laboriously update my Rate Your Music account to better reflect what I have on CD versus digital-only (it’s currently 552 to 563, respectively, and it’s become weirdly important for me to keep nudging that first number higher—I’m not sure what I’m accomplishing with that, other than the shot of dopamine accompanying every CD that shows up in the mail) for categorical-medium accuracy; the subsequent and inexplicable discovery of bypassed treasures from scads of stuff from some obscure opening act I must’ve made nice with to secure so many of their CDs to unearthing long-time possessions that eluded inclusion the first time around, like some post-Waters Pink Floyd I love with all the fervor of a guilty pleasure; the joys of digging through virtual bargain bins to find CDs I’ve been hunting down for so long that I forgot I wanted them in the first place—it’s all contributed to making the music I love a more tangible entity in my life that it’s been one helluva enriching experience. 

It’s also effectively remedied the feeling that my CD collection and iPod have been as frozen in time as their now-antiquated technology suggests, fitting time capsules encapsulating how stodgy and rigid my taste in music was becoming, a regrettable trend further exacerbated by the much more modern advent of streaming music offering all the benefits of access so seamlessly that I could have sworn I owned some piece of music that only exists to me in Spotify. And if I’m going to straddle the worlds of the stubborn luddite and the buzzy modernist, I do not want to embody the worst of both.

(Somewhat relatedly, I wanted to do a Can I Just Rave About Barsuk Records for a Sec? post a few months ago after purchasing a steeply discounted herd of CDs representing the label’s past and present, but that title encapsulated the gist of it so well that I didn’t have much else to say beyond how fucking good their catalogue still is and how excellent they still are to their fans. And the latter point is essentially an excuse for some humblebragging anyway, since it pretty much boils down to either writing a laudatory-enough note to accompany my order or making a big enough purchase to score a freebie retrospective of the bands that defined Barsuk’s early days for me slid into to an otherwise delightfully alphabetized (!!!!) box of CDs that just made my day. Regardless: Barsuk is still a fucking awesome label made of some awesome people.) 

Also, from a practical standpoint, the F’s are when I found out that this blog not only doubles as a mighty reliable gauge for how I’m feeling about writing and that creative headspace I’m occupying, but also has proven to be one excellent warm-up tool. I don’t know if I’m just justifying the casually lingering impulse to procrastinate that manifests in dicking around here when I specifically got up at 5 to work on an article in uninterrupted peace, but like my figure skating days taught me, starting out with the fun stuff that invites you into that flow state so much more warmly and wakes up the brain far better than my two-coffees-by-10 a.m. habit seems to. At least I’m learning what I should from one of those tendencies. 

The most important thing, though, is that all I wanted was to wrap up this letter by the end of March. Given how completely this month’s at-work publishing cycle (and, uh, the worst-timed best freelancing opportunity I’ve ever had making my eyes waaaaaay larger than my stomach) has just brutalized my mental well-being and a suddenly active weekend social life being kinda nice but absolutely sapping my energy and gobbling up me-time, actually pulling it off is the proudest I’ve been of myself in a while. Never mind that I could’ve wrapped this all up a solid two weeks ago had I summoned just a skosh more initiative here and spent a little less time on my newfound hobby of making up for never owning a VW bus (the car of my dreams!) by painting and assembling a whole fucking 1:20-scale fleet of ’em. 

F Songs
Total: 510 songs
First song “F.O.D.” by Green Day
Last song: “Futures” by Jimmy Eat World
Shortest song: “Freedom Exists” by The Doors (20 seconds)
Longest song: “Fsc 2/The Quiet” by Seafood (10:51 minutes)
Most recurring song: A three-way tie, with three versions each: “Friend of the Devil” by Grateful Dead and covered by Counting Crows; “Friends” by Led Zeppelin and covered by Amy Anelle & The Shishi Valley Boys; “The Full Stop” by Matt Pond PA
Most time spent on one song: “Friend of the Devil” by the Grateful Dead and Counting Crows (15.4 minutes)
Number of songs not on Spotify: 17
Total playing time (letter): 1.3 days
Total playing time (cumulative): 10.2 days