I Listened to 5 New Albums Without Skipping and Here’s What I Learned

I meant it when I said no skipping, even if I thought some of the songs weren’t my cup of tea.

Photo by Simon Noh on Unsplash

Why am I doing this challenge when I am somewhat a picky person when it comes to music?

Although I listen to various genres, I usually listen to specifically 4–5 artists on repeat all the time when I feel like listening to any music. I barely check out new music by artists that I am not familiar with and as the musical scene is constantly changing, I find myself a bit lacking in that department.

Also as someone who’s passionate about music, I find that I don’t know much about the current musical acts around the world.

Sometimes, I feel like I live under the rock when it comes to music

I decided to challenge myself and hold myself accountable on this challenge by writing about my journey listening to the new albums.

Getting out of my musical comfort zone

Everyone has their own musical preferences and most of the time it is our comfort zone. I am very picky in my musical preferences in the sense that what I listen to on a daily basis is usually songs I have been listening to for the past few years.

I also have certain artists I listen to even if they have no new songs released at the moment.

Basically, my musical regimen is very static.

In October of 2020, I tried something similar to this challenge. I listened to 10 albums released in January of 2020 and that was an interesting experience and a challenging one on top of it too.

10 albums were a lot and I don’t know what I was thinking to be honest.

My goal was to do that for every month but I think it wasn’t the best time to commit to that challenge a year ago. The albums I listened to were by artists I have never heard of before, genres I usually don’t listen to and few were languages that I didn’t understand at all. But language barrier has never been a barrier for me to enjoy a song because I listen to music in various languages already.

Why 5 albums and not more or less

Usually an album would have something around 8–12 songs in general so I thought by picking 5 albums, I get to experience a good amount of new music from different artists around the world.

Also, 5 albums sound reasonable and doable.

So I googled list of 2021 albums and decided to randomly pick albums and artists from January.

Then, I decided to listen to these albums on Spotify so that I only focus on the music, vocals and production of the album instead of getting invested in the visual aspect of the songs by watching the music video. I also thought I can keep track of the albums I listened to better through Spotfiy by making a playlist.

This would also help me to remember the artist’s name and songs better. It is also easier to go back to the songs if I end up liking a song.

Photo by Jamakassi on Unsplash

The January 2021 albums I listened to

1. Misako Uno, Sweet Hug album, 8 songs
2. Spyair, Wadachi, 11 songs
3. Passenger, Songs for the Drunk and Broken Hearted, 20 songs
4. Why Don’t We, The Good Times and The Bad Ones, 10 songs
5. (G)I-DLE, I burn, 6 songs

What this challenge taught me

1. Listening to a full album to get to know an artist is better than listening to one song which wouldn’t completely define what the artist stands for, what their sound is and what their message is. Sometimes one song off an album is just one piece of a puzzle.
2. Listening to an album by an artist you’re not a fan of is challenging. Listening to the whole album is a commitment.
3. Dedicating minimum one hour of your time to something potentially you might not like shows perseverance.
4. You might discover a new artist or a song that end up enjoying and even listen to the song on repeat for days.
5. It is easy to give a chance to an artist and you never know what you might end up liking.
6. Through this challenge, you learn to not judge an artist with one song. You get a taste of everything when you listen to an album. And sometimes, when you listen to another album by the same artist, you would find a different side of them.
7. You can develop yourself in many areas in life and that includes music. While listening to an album for an instance, I sometimes wanted to skip a song or two after few seconds because it didn’t catch my attention but I didn’t. This challenge helped me work on my patience too.
8. Choosing 5 albums at first glance looked easy. I even had the idea of doing 15 albums but good thing I went with 5 eventually. Regardless, I showed commitment and I’m happy about that.

I’m planning to do this challenge again. Through this challenge, I discovered a Japanese rock band like Spyair and I really liked two songs on their album that I’ve been listening to nonstop. I had heard of the band Why Don’t We before but never listened to their songs. Listening to their new album, I really liked their overall sound.

Without this challenge, I honestly wouldn’t have gone out of my way to check out new artists but by doing this, I was able to get out of my musical comfort zone and I’m happy I was able to complete this challenge.

Everyone who is looking to expand their musical perspective and challenge themselves should try listening to few albums by artists they have never listened to and they will really learn so much about themselves through this experience.