BACK in the day, CDs were a serious financial investment which required careful consideration. Here are the moronic reasons you used to buy them.
You liked one song
If one song on the album was good, that must mean the rest of them are too, if not better, right? It’s not like a band would release a sub-par product and trick you into buying it by tempting you with the tastiest morsel, would they? Oh.
Everyone was listening to it
You didn’t see the big deal, but it had been at number one for seven weeks so perhaps you were wrong. After forking out £12.99 at Our Price, trudging home and listening through, you were relieved to find out you were right all along and it was terrible. Then all you had to do is head back for a refund.
You were trying to impress a potential sexual partner
Lust makes people do crazy things, so purchasing a CD your crush mentioned is pretty low on the scale of humiliating behaviour. That’s until you realised the majority of your collection was purchased in this manner, and was essentially a creepy shrine to potential shags that never came to pass.
It had a cool parental warning sticker on the cover
If this sticker was designed to warn and deter younger listeners, it had the opposite effect. Not only did it look cool, it was also an indicator that you were in for some hardcore language and themes of a sexual nature. Sadly it had no correlation with the quality of the music, which was often shit.
You got 30p off with your MVC card
£14.99 for ABBA Gold? Outrageous. They’re good but they’re not that f**king good. However, with the help of your little friend you could slash that price right down to a much more appealing £14.69 and feel like a boss slapping the card on the counter. Bargain.
NME told you to
You weren’t a connoisseur of emerging musical talent. You lapped up whatever was alternative but also readily accessible, and the NME was there to do the thinking for you and guide you toward your next purchase like the gormless little drone you were. These days algorithms have picked up that baton.
You were bored
What else were you going to do, go home and watch YouTube? That was years away from being invented. You could always watch TV, but there were only four channels and you had to hope something good was on. CDs you had control over, and you got to know those handful of tracks really f**king well.
You thought vinyl was dead forever
How could you have known there would be a vinyl revival in a couple of decades and you’d have to buy your favourite albums on wax all over again? The mere idea was ridiculous. CDs are the future, you thought, and your only concern was upgrading them to MiniDiscs in a few years.
You wanted to feel cool
The most pathetic reason to do anything, but also one of the most popular. Screamadelica was about as far removed from your musical tastes as it was possible to get, but all the cool kids who sat at the back of the bus were listening to it and you wanted to feel like them. They never did let you hang out with them though, did they?
