2.2: "HMV Playlist Sampler April 2003" - Various Artists
Oh god, it's one of these again. I can't imagine a bigger test of my will to continue again that being presented with this musical barnacle, barely one step up from a free single on the front of a copy of Smash Hits, and yet, here it resides within my pile, waiting for my judgment. "Why don't you throw it away?" you might reasonably ask. I don't throw CDs away. I just don't. And I understand in this most modern era people's strong desires to declutter their spaces; all of this, this coffin-sized collection of plastic jewel cases and shiny discs could be ripped, encoded, and stored on a USB stick, and I would be free of them - and that would just be for the ones I cared about. Would this even make the cut, some hastily slapped together amalgam of alternative up-and-comers from 16 years ago? Almost certainly not. But when the Black Swan Event devastates the nations of the earth, and the King of Spotify is cast down and musi...