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For years, so much of my brain has been dedicated to being obsessed with music that ruts like the one I am in now hit particularly hard. As much as music is a hobby that you can enjoy passively, I have always felt the most fulfilled engaging with it to a greater level. Researching about the artist and their influences, making my way through discographies, exploring new genres, taking recommendations from others, and deriving my own interpretations are all some of my favorite ways to dig deeper. This has been put to a screeching halt recently, and I am gonna claw my way back.
A numbered list for myself to follow in these trying times.
Do a careful re-listen
Sometimes, in order to connect with an album, I have to buckle down and give it my full attention. It is impossible on the first listen to truly appreciate enough the complexities within an album as my mind is often bogged down by an artist's sound or direction. Second listens often shine for me as I know enough of what to expect that I can sit back and truly take everything in better. Something especially lost to me upon first listening is the lyrics. For this reason, on second listen, I often like to just stare at the lyrics as they go by on Spotify.
Remember that Letterboxd is the enemy
Getting more into movies may seem like a fun thing to do, but this is not true, as movies and TV directly threaten the time one could be listening to music. Movies are especially dangerous because they can be enjoyed with friends who you may have a great time with and encourage you to watch more. If you must partake in this, at least pick a movie with a good soundtrack that you recognize or one enjoyable enough to listen to afterward.
Ask friends or family for recommendations
Although I love to get recs from a number of sources, ones that are personalized hold much more weight for me and give me another way to connect with the people I care about. In this extreme case, it will also hold me accountable for listening to more new music. I have taken it upon myself recently to ask multiple people in my life for playlist recommendations outside of my normal asks for albums in hopes of even more exposure to stuff I haven't heard.
Steer towards playlists
I am very much an album person and rarely ever throw on a playlist anymore. When listening to new music, it is almost exclusively the same. This can sometimes make it difficult to find the motivation to commit to that much new music. I have recently been trying to combat this by finding accounts with similar music tastes and saving their playlists that have a decent ratio of new songs.
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