Album Covers Are Life's Compressed Files — Mitsuhiro Nakano

Jacket buying 40 years ago at Shinseido in Namba — The Pretenders' Learning to Crawl.

TAPthePOP and "Why Do People Listen to Music?"

In 2013, when I started running a music column site called "TAP the POP," I thought about "why do people listen to music?"

• "To raise the energy of daily life"
• "For enjoyment and entertainment"
• "To gain courage and strength to move forward"
• "To feel saved during difficult times"
• "To heal fatigue and relax"
• "To connect with loved ones"
• "To sing together with everyone"
• "To revive the self from those days"
• "To explore and learn more about music"
• "To inspire work and project ideas"

Among these, ⑧ "to revive the self from those days" is the one whose power grows stronger with each passing year.

1984 Revived at a Bar

For example, sometimes a single song playing casually in a bar you happen to enter suddenly pulls you back to your past self.

That moment, that scene you thought you could never return to, plays back as if it had been saved somewhere, gradually becoming vivid images that come back to life.

And almost without fail, the album cover containing that song comes to mind at the same time.

Just recently, at a bar I visited alone, The Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang" started playing, and I secretly reunited with my high school self.

Jacket Buying at Shinseido: Blissful 40 Minutes

──That was in 1984, when I stopped by a record store on my way home from school. The place was Namba, the gateway to Osaka's Minami district.

Shinseido had an import section, and one of the album covers displayed on the wall there was The Pretenders' Learning to Crawl. Next to it were Michael Jackson's Thriller and Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual.

Intuitively thinking "This is it!!" I picked it up without hesitation and headed to the register. I went home, peeled off the vinyl in my room, smelled the import jacket, took out the record, and placed it on the turntable. Then came those blissful 40 minutes.

Just that fragment from 40 years ago played back in my mind. It was nothing special, an insignificant memory, yet my chest tightened just a little.

Back then, I could purely focus 100% on just the music in front of me. That was the privilege of being 15.

Album Covers Are "Life's Compressed Files"

The Pretenders' Learning to Crawl is still an album I can casually pull out and listen to. No musical theory required. That's why "Middle of the Road," "Back on the Chain Gang," and "Show Me" can be repeated endlessly.

I never thought I'd be telling this story more than 40 years later. Now, album covers have become "memory devices" and "compressed files" of my life.

Editor's Note

Currently, Album Sweet is partnering with TAPthePOP, organized by Mr. Nakano, believing in the power and stories of music, its potential to change things in this chaotic world, and providing services for each other toward days of rich musical life rather than just consuming music. This time I asked him to write about "one album," and I read it while listening to Chrissie Hynde's voice, which I loved in my twenties. It brought back nostalgia, scenes from those days, and street corners where this song was playing all at once. Thank you, Mr. Nakano. Let's continue to provide services that allow people to enjoy music richly.

Related: The Pretenders / Learning to Crawl