Radiohead, Romeo + Juliet, and the strange way music holds on to our memories.
I was sixteen the first time I heard Exit Music (For a Film).
It was 1997, and I was sitting in a dark cinema watching Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. As the film came to an end and Radiohead began playing, something shifted.
I didn't have the words for what I was feeling. I just knew that whatever I'd heard had stayed with me long after the credits stopped rolling.
There's something about discovering music at that age. Everything feels heightened. The emotions, the intensity, the absolute certainty that nobody else could possibly understand what you're feeling.
And then a song comes along and somehow understands it perfectly.
I didn't know then that Exit Music would become part of Radiohead's OK Computer, an album that would go on to mean so much to me. I certainly couldn't have imagined that nearly thirty years later, I'd be placing that record on my turntable and finding myself right back in that cinema.
Sixteen again. Feeling everything for the first time.
That's the thing about certain records. You don't necessarily listen to them because you want to hear something new. You listen because they take you somewhere familiar.
A place. A person. A version of yourself you haven't thought about in years.
And that's one of the reasons I love vinyl.
There's something about physically choosing an album, taking it out of its sleeve and lowering the needle that makes listening feel different. More intentional. Less like background noise and more like giving the music the attention it deserves.
Some songs find you before you're ready for them.
And some stay with you for a lifetime.