0.0.0 - Ian Wang Must Be Defeated - 2025 Edition.
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[[Edit: In reading this back, I realised that in any way calling this something like "Stupid Music Writing Project 2025" has unfortunate overlap with "Project 2025", the new American Fascist Manifesto/Policy Document. As such I thought I would edit the title to something less totalitarian adjacent. Just wanted to document that to show how stupid I am sometimes.]]
It's November 26, 2024 as I write these words but I'm putting them here a) because I will forget otherwise and b) because there's no way I am going to write this on New Years Eve, so I can save myself some time and get some admin done before I launch into this in earnest.
First, let's catch up, since its been 7 years since I wrote on here with any regularity, so here's what has happened since then.
I got made redundant from my job, got a better job, which rapidly became a more stressful and annoying job, and now I spend much of my time trying to find ways to be not annoyed at my job in the off time I am afforded from it. A mixed blessing.
Same house, same partner, no significant life changes apart from being 7 years older. I learned to play the drums, which I am not good at, but better than I was before I started to learn to play the drums.
World events are 7 years worse than they were in what we now look back on as the sunlit fields of 2017. at the time widely regarded as the worst year ever. So, rocky mental health times for people with persistent anxiety. Also there was a global pandemic, but I kind of addressed that a little in the last update I think.
Hope you are all well. Hope the seven years have treated you nicely.
OK, now we are all caught up, what am I doing here?
On the November 25th episode of the quiz show Only Connect, broadcast on BBC2 in the UK, (which you can find here on iPlayer if you are curious) one of the contestants - Ian Wang of the team 'Crunchers' - was introduced as "Ian Wang, an Auditor who listened to over a thousand albums in a single year".
I did some quick mental maths and assumed he'd listened to 3 albums per day for a calendar year which would end up with 1,095 albums consumed. Then I thought "I could do that probably" so here we are, throwing our hat over the fence again to try and commit to doing something stupid and writing about it for 365 days.
However, I'm going to make some changes to what I did last time to try and make it more sustainable and less likely for me to burn out and stop.
Firstly, I get to pick all the music myself this time, rather than pulling from a pile; that's going to make it easier for me to pick thematically, and pick stuff I want to listen to, which will hopefully keep me more engaged. Also, as sacrilegious as it is, I'm not committing to giving each album my undivided attention - lots of these albums I'll be revisiting after many, many previous listens; besides, Ian Wang's intro didn't specify he'd listened with great attention and dedication, so I am giving myself some leeway. I'm going to write about it, and post some updates, but probably not every day; I'll take notes of my listening, but if I don't have much to say about it, some updates might just be a check in of what I listened to and how I feel. In truth, one of the significant blockages when I wrote the original incarnation of this blog was hitting records where I just didn't have much to say about them. I'm giving myself permission here to just be OK with that.
Secondly, 3 albums per day is just the median pace required to reach my goal by Dec 31, 2025. To have listened to more than 1000 albums in that time, I can drop 94 albums from the 3-per-day schedule and still make it. So that potentially gives me 31 full days off, but might also mean I have two full months of only listening to one album per day and still be OK.
To make this a little more structured, however, I am going to commit to the following - On this blog I will make a record of every album I listen to; each album must be listened to in it's entirety with no skips inside the same 24 hour period, and every album must be unique. I'll also be avoiding any alternate versions of the same album, including live albums or remixes or whatever, that's cheating. No compilations or Greatest Hits, they all have to be commercially released albums in their own right. Those are the rules.
So join me while I conduct a pointless mental musical experiment for a calendar year., won't you? I can't promise it will be interesting or funny or insightful, but it will be something which happens.
I wonder how hungover future me is going to be when it comes to listening to albums come January 1st? Good luck, future me. And Happy New Year, everyone. Let's hope somehow that 2025 breaks the streak of awful years we've been going through lately.
