My 2024 New Year’s resolution was to expand my musical knowledge and taste. I have been writing album reviews since my sophomore year and I noticed a theme. Any hip-hop reviews I did were always a lot more in depth than anything else. This was due to the fact that hip-hop was my favorite genre and a majority of what I listened to in my free time. I wanted to find ways to make my reviews better so that’s what I did.
I created a spreadsheet so I could log what I listened to. I planned to write an editorial in January about what I listened to and how my taste expanded. However, that plan is no more. I never completed the goal I set out to do. There were multiple parts of the first half of the year where I fell behind and had to listen to multiple albums a day to catch up. By the end of June, I stopped logging consistently. By August, I stopped altogether.
This isn’t about new year’s resolutions. This isn’t about albums. This isn’t about setting goals. This editorial is about failure.
Failure is a negative word. When the letter grading system was in place, F was synonymous with “Fail.” You failed to do the task at hand. You failed to comprehend the information that was given. We are brought up through life and taught to avoid failure. Study to get an A, not an F. We are taught that giving up results in failure. Our parents encouraged us to try youth sports and re-enforced this idea that you shouldn’t give up just because something is hard. That would be quitting and what is quitting if not another form of failure.
I first had the idea to expand my music taste when Spotify wrapped came out. My top artists in 2023 were: Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott, JID, Logic, and Mac Miller. Together, they made up 19,415 streaming minutes combined. Outside of my top five, there was some variation. Dua Lipa, Justin Hurwitz, Olivia Rodrigo, The Rare Occasions are all near the top but, out of my top 25 artists, 18 were hip-hop. Even the disconnect in minutes was astounding. Mac Miller sat at my number five with 3,015 minutes. Dua Lipa sat at sixth with 1,837 minutes. I clearly had a bias towards Hip-Hop. I wanted to lessen that bias.
I created my spreadsheet and started logging. I didn’t really think about where I should start so I began in my comfort zone. On Jan. 1, I listened to Mac Miller’s mixtape, K.I.D.S. The next few days were some Logic mixtapes then back to Mac Miller. January was almost completely Hip-Hop. It was in February where actual change started.
While February still had a ton of hip-hop, there were some new genres poking through. Pop from Olivia Rodrigo and Dominic Fike came at the beginning of the month. I ended the month with R&B from The Weeknd.
March continued the trend. Bruno Mars, Black Country, New Road, Ariana Grande, Future, and mxmtoon were some of my top artists. April came with Fleetwood Mac, Kendrick Lamar, Rihanna, and Michael Jackson. May saw the largest expansion with artists like Justice, Justin Timberlake, Yeat, Dua Lipa and Vampire Weekend.
Going into the summer, the experiment was going well. With new music coming out each week, I kept finding more and more to listen to. I had developed a system of going through genre-defining artists’ disographies. It would help me not only get a feel for the genre but the artists’ distinct style of it. In June, I listened to the complete discographies of Beastie Boys, Charli xcx, and Radiohead.
However, this is where fatigue struck. When all you do in your free time is listen to music, you get sick of it. By the end of June, it felt like a chore. Instead of being excited to pop on a new album for the day, I would find whatever was next in line, press play and ignore it. When it finished, I would log it then start my day for real. This was occasionally punctured by a good find. Everything Everything, and Lord Huron were two random picks off of a Reddit thread that actually turned out to be a pleasant surprise.
Sadly, no amount of pleasant surprises could bring back the joy that I once had toward music. By the end of July I was playing catch up and by mid August, I gave up. I quit the experiment I had set up. I failed my goal.
It has now been four months since I stopped recording. This doesn’t mean that I stopped listening to music, I just did it for me. Instead of feeling an obligation to pick out a new album each day, I can listen to whatever I want, whenever I want. I have listened to albums I initially heard earlier in the year. I have gone days without listening to music and days where I only listened to music. I now feel the freedom that was gone for those eight months.
I failed my task. There’s no other way to say it. That isn’t a bad thing. Failure is good for us. When you fail something, it forces your brain to refocus. Before the failure, you were locked in on a goal. All of your focus was on that goal and you started to let things slip. After a while, you are so focused on your goal that your life can completely change.
If you fail, your brain is forced to refocus. For me, I examine two things, my motive behind that goal and how my life has changed since I started. If my life has improved and no important aspects have been lost, I examine the goal itself. Is it worth it? If It isn’t, it is time to refocus. If my life has gotten worse, it is time to refocus. If I lost an important part of my life or god forbid a part of who I am, it is time to refocus.
Failure is good. Failure helps you grow. Failure forces you to think of the things that you have been avoiding. Failure makes you say the things you have been dreading. Failure changes who you are. And sure, you always will run the risk of letting failure bring you down. Focusing on what went wrong instead of what’s next. But that is almost comically easy to avoid. Don’t look back. Make a decision and stick with it. Who cares what happened before, focus on the future and refocus your life.
Failure is good. Failure causes growth. Yes, it can be terrifying but just look for the light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t be afraid to fail.
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