Dear CDs -- A Love Letter

Dear CDs,

I remember the day we started seeing each other regularly: it was Christmas morning, 1995, when my parents surprised me with a brand new CD player/stereo system and 3 shiny, new CDs: Jars of Clay's debut, D.C. Talk's Jesus Freak, and Mariah Carey's Daydream. I listened to those albums over and over, then I grew my collection with one of those CD-for-a-penny clubs. For my birthday the next spring, one of my friends got me the Grammy CD collection from that year. Oasis was included; so was Alanis Morissette. Those were heady days of listening to complete albums, waiting for the CD changer to change and then listening to the next complete album, and poring over the beautiful glossy liner booklets, so much easier to read than the cassette liner notes had been.

One night, after staying up late gabbing with girlfriends while a CD played in the background, we continued talking after the music had ended. Suddenly, after several minutes of CD silence, we got a surprise: a hidden track! Oh, CDs, there was always something new to discover about you. You kept the relationship fresh with those deep cuts and hidden tracks that let me feel superior to my friends whose tastes were confined to whatever single had just been released.

When I got my first car, you were with me. I jammed out to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and I discovered the subtler thrills of Simon and Garfunkel. Wherever there was one voice, I added a second part; wherever there were two parts, I added a third. Oh, the musical education I received, cranking up the tunes and singing as loudly as I could, feeling the full range of emotions as only a 17-year-old can.

By then, we had a more intimate relationship, for I had begun to make my own CDs, recording in an improvised home studio, burning CDs at home, printing liner notes and case inserts and CD labels myself, and then cutting out the pieces and assembling them on the way to gigs where I was paid in coffee and tips. Amazingly, people bought those homemade CDs. None of those tracks are online today; these were the days before downloads had caught on and when streaming anything meant waiting half an hour for the stream to buffer. So my first CD offspring are out there, somewhere, never to be seen again.

Throughout college we remained close, even as digital downloads began to rise in ease and popularity. It wasn't until after college that I got an ipod, and that was when our relationship began to change. I started to use you, CDs -- I'm ashamed to say it -- but I would rip your songs onto my laptop and callously put you back in the plastic sleeve of my zip-up CD case -- where you would stay until my next road trip.

Through the years, I saw less and less of you. I made mix CDs sometimes, but then my newest laptop came without an optical drive, and I stopped doing even that. I plugged my mp3 player into my car stereo and listened to my curated playlists, the beauty of a full album lost somewhere in the back of my mind. Meanwhile, CD sales at my own shows slowed to almost nothing. Now that I had a cooler product, no one was buying CDs anymore.

Suddenly, last year, you came back into my life. When I put you into my car's CD player, I was amazed at the superior sound quality and the joy of listening to an album from start to finish. When I was in the passenger seat, I became a child again as I devoured the lyrics and the acknowledgements in the liner notes. It was so refreshing to read an official lyric that didn't come from some random online fan with poor grammar, and to find out exactly who played mandolin on track 7. You didn't have to forgive me; you didn't have to treat me well, but you returned to me with open arms (and Amazon's policy of providing an immediate, free download with many physical CD orders), making it so easy for us to pick up where we left off: volume up, my voice raised, while you sear those twelve songs in that order into my soul as we conquer the open road together.

Thank you, CDs. I remain yours.