iTunes Music Store is vGood

A good friend of mine kindly gave me some vouchers for iTunes Music Store as a Christmas gift. Rather than buy whole albums, I decided to scratch a retro itch and purchase a collection of 80s songs that I loved as a teenager. The process of selecting the songs – listening to iTunes snippets, trawling the ‘net for information, and gazing into space awaiting for the name of a song to materialise from the segment of my brain that stores (evidently inefficiently) that kind of information – highlighted two things for me: the power of music and joy of iTunes.

As I sit here listening to my recently purchased collection of songs, memories and emotions from twenty years ago wash over me. Smiles come unbidden to my face in response to memories of friends, love interests (both realised and unexpressed), school, my family, and growing up. My recollection of the emotional intensity of being a teenager is surprisingly strong and quite pleasant to recall. At this moment I fully comprehend the value of these songs as the soundtrack to my teenage life. While these songs are no better or worse than many others, in fact some of them might seem quite ‘cheesy’ to some people, I don’t care; their connection to my past makes them invaluable.

What I think is brilliant about iTunes Music Store, aside from its effective functionality, is that most of the music from soundtrack of my teenage life is available to purchase as individual songs. I have created my own compilation album of the songs I loved – all original artists and performances. It greatly pleases me that the musicians who were responsible for giving me so much joy can still receive royalties.

I have continued to purchase the work many of my favourite artists from the 80s era – Sting/The Police, Mark Knopfler/Dire Straits, INXS, Peter Gabriel, U2, Ice House, Madonna, Pink Floyd. It is great to be able to purchase individual songs that were so important to the teenage me: Everybody Have Fun, Dance Hall Days, We Close Our Eyes, Wouldn’t It Be Good, What is love?, Things Can Only Get Better, The Heat is On, Addicted to Love, Don’t You Want Me, You Give Love a Bad Name, Owner of a Lonely Heart ,Love is a Battlefield, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me … ?, Rebel Yell ,White Wedding, West End Girls, Some Like It Hot, Another One Bites the Dust, Panama, You Can Call Me Al, Tainted Love, Road to Nowhere, All Night Long, Run to You … The hunt for the other songs that I loved continues.