And yet here we are - me writing this while listening to Ziggy Stardust, having flicked on the record player upstairs for the first time in over a week. And I’m…happy. It sums up going back to work after - for a myriad of reasons - being at home for the majority of the last 12 months. Of course I have less time in the company of my music.

Now, a good portion of my day is spent listening to Gold Radio, of which I have some more ramblings coming for you soon, because what a radio station that is by the way…

Naturally, being out of the house for the best part of nine hours, five days a week, is meaning less time in the company of my own music. I don’t stream music at work, nor do I have all those spare hours to play my records at home.

The idea of listening to a new-to-me album for every day of the year (as I did in 2024 and 2025) feels genuinely impossible. Not just because of a lack of free time, but also because my attitudes to listening to music have changed.

My reasoning for undertaking such mammoth listening journeys was to fill the sizeable blindspots in my knowledge. It was never meant to be about gaining a following on here or Twitter and BlueSky (although the online music community becoming a fair chunk of my life and communications was a very happy by-product).

Now I listen to music the way I want to, the way everyone should, because it’s what I want to listen to. Ditching more than 19,000 ‘liked’ songs on Spotify and starting from scratch with Qobuz was a huge part of that. No longer could I listen to ‘On Repeat’ playlists or struggle through years of uncurated additions to my library.

That has now stretched into my physical media listening. No longer do I have the time on weekdays to listen to record after record after record after…well, you get the picture.

Now, on days when I have an hour spare on getting home, I choose a record carefully. I really need to make it count. I really have to want to listen to it. And the joy I get from each record as a result is nothing short of staggering in difference to before.

I have gained purpose in my life outside of listening to music once more. I hated my old job, and my redundancy was a blessing in disguise. Now I am in a job I enjoy in a workplace that’s a joy to be in and people that are wonderful to be around.

I made good friends at my previous job, and one mate for life too, but I was not in a good place. It’s a big part of what led me to so much time off, for one reason or another, before the ties were finally cut. The last year has given me so much time with records that my collection multiplied almost exponentially from week-to-week at times.

Convincing myself I needed all the records I did was understandable. I was succumbing to depression and I had to listen to as many as I could, hear as much music as possible, because there were far too many days that felt like I wouldn’t have many left.

Now, I can listen to two or three records a week and get so much more pleasure from them, because I’m entirely certain I’ve got a lifetime left to enjoy them.

My mum’s dad, the last surviving grandparent, and one of the greatest men I have ever known. Forget familial ties, and I know we’re all biased, but I have never met anyone with a bad word to say about him.

I know he reads every single piece I put out. I know he listened to Pharoah Sanders’ Promises because of my waxing lyrical about it last month. And I know he hates being praised, so he might well be wincing as he reads this.

But it’s true; he was one of my very first subscribers and not just to help make up the numbers. When we are together, there are two topics which will take up hours of our time: football and music.

As I’m a staunch Rotherham United fan and he a huge Sheffield Wednesday supporter (and former season ticket holder for decades), those football-centric conversations induce a lot of moaning and groaning.

Music, on the other hand. Well that’s just as it should be, enthusiastic discussions about music dear to ourselves and, in time, hopefully to each other. I shared The Blue Nile’s Hats with him last year and he fell in love with its charms just as I and many others have done.

He has given me entry routes into jazz and classical music, as well as sensational singers from his youth. Your Marty Robbins’ and your Merle Haggards. We have delighted in our shared love of Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash.

Of course, we don’t love everything that the other does, but we take so much from each other’s knowledge and enthusiasm. On a Tuesday in February, Grandad and I took a journey to the Alpine.

Richard Strauss was a German composer and tone poet, and he soundtracked our latest afternoon together. On Grandad’s music player - atop a cabinet chock-full of records that I think predates my own existence - he made his best David Byrne impression: “There’s a piece of music I’d like you to listen to.”

For me, listening to something my Grandad is eager for me to hear, is just as exciting as front row seats for Stop Making Sense. It was a CD, Strauss’ Alpine Symphony. This version is one of dozens recorded since the original was released in 1915 (Strauss started writing it in 1899!!), Bernard Haitink conducting Holland’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1985.

After listening, I described it as a ‘sort-of-concept’ album, but I’ve since learned the correct terminology is a tone poem. The result is similar. A tone poem is a continuous movement of orchestral music. The Alpine Symphony is just that - music to close your eyes to and play the film in your head. The piece follows a journey through the Alpine, from night to night, and 11 hours of daytime in between.

After assuring Grandad that I was enjoying it after the opening stretch (Night, Sunrise, Ascent), we spent the rest of the runtime in silence. I closed my eyes and put myself into the scenarios the music prescribed.

Regular readers will know that I’m not the best at describing music. I can only talk about how it makes me feel. I remember that when I shared my blog with Grandad, he said he would be interested in reading my thoughts on Alpine Symphony.

He didn’t have to read them, because I told him there and then just how much I enjoyed it. Not just the music, but the entire experience. If I had listened to it on my own accord and by myself, then I certainly would have enjoyed the music.

Strauss’ work and that of his close friend Mahler (another of Grandad’s favourite composers) is a canon I can’t wait to dig into more.

But whichever of his symphonies and tone poems I delve into next, none will feel quite as special as that afternoon. That was what music is all about. My Grandad is one of the most special, most selfless, and kindest people in the world.

I have dozens of stories from the past few years alone where he has helped his family, friends, and even near-strangers for the pure reason of that being in his nature. The music he loves is as important to me as it is to him, because it makes me feel close to him, even when we live over an hour away from each other.

And to feel close to a man who still gives his absolute all to making the world around him a brighter and better place is a privilege. I’m lucky to call him my Grandad, and doubly so that he has such great taste in music.

Music has not just been my friend this past year. It has kept me sane. In truth, it might just have saved my life. There have been days when the right song got me out of bed. There have been record deliveries which have made getting through the day worthwhile. There have been days that make next week seem impossible.

There are details which I can’t go into for a variety of reasons, the chief one of which being I don’t want to bore you. I’m also not liable to discuss much about the second half of last year, professionally, so I’m sure you can all read the lines there.

But more than 12 months after my professional life came to a standstill with an enforced mental health break, it’s been higgledy-piggledy since to say the least. After returning to work in June, I was on the lookout for a new job in September for unrelated reasons, albeit not voluntarily.

I had a couple of job offers in the mix since well before the New Year, both of which required time and patience to wait for the pieces to fall into place. And now, they have.

So this week’s feature is a small one to say thank you to everyone online who has played some part in making the days to this point manageable. Be it taking part in music challenges, commenting on my album discoveries, sending private messages to check on my wellbeing, or just being there to chat to and take my mind off things, it is appreciated more than you will probably ever realise.

I’ve said many times in this blog already that 2026 is going to be a good year. It’s not been without effort, but I am in such a good place compared to this time last year, and things are only looking up.

I wish I’d started writing these blogs when I was first off work as they have proven to be a great distraction. I’ve been wanting to get back to long form writing for years, and this Substack has proven to be the best possible way of doing that.

In reality, it’s only been two months as I write this, but I have loved every single blog I’ve written. The effort to engage my brain (no AI is used in the making of anything I do) has been welcomed, the desire to make something worthwhile a feeling that had been lacking from my everyday life for far too long.

The purpose of talking about music like I do online has always been primarily to engage with people with passion, knowledge and enthusiasm and a willingness to share that with me and vice versa.

Obviously, as I start a new job, keeping up with the four scheduled pieces a week isn’t going to be easy. I always want to prioritise quality over quantity, but we’ll take it as it comes as the time spent on this blog is always beneficial to my mental health and keeping me happy.

And this week, that’s all there is to say, because it’s my last week before full-time working for the first time in far too long, and I’m making the most of it. Cheers, everyone.

Four-thousand, five-hundred and twenty-four (4524) days separate Ultravox’s Brilliant tour at the O2 Academy in Sheffield from seeing Mogwai in Leeds at the start of 2025. There are myriad reasons why it took so long to see another live gig, and regular followers of this blog will have an inkling why.

There’s no set reason; social anxiety, bouts of depression, and life getting in the way are the three biggies. In a twist of fate, seeing Mogwai in February 2025, over 13 years after Midge Ure & Co, came just as I was taking an enforced break from work owing to many of the reasons above.

Having reckoned with myself that 2025 needed to be the year I finally got over my fear, tickets for one of my all-time favourite bands back up north seemed like a no-brainer. Lisa, who likes the post-rockers more reflective and quieter work, was more than up for it.

Now, as much as anyone who has read previous For The Records on this blog may believe, my life is not all doom and gloom. Far from it. But it’s much easier to attribute stories to bad times. At least, it is for me. So to that end, it would have probably made sense to hand this part of the blog over to Lisa.

But she’s working and I have self-enforced deadlines, so I’ll speak on her behalf - “NEVER AGAIN!”

Not to any gigs, but certainly to Mogwai. Their softer work was not forthcoming on The Bad Fire tour, and if she had a headache by the time the encore came around, then the nuclear blasts of sound in Like Herod to close out proceedings was more than enough to make her first Mogwai gig her only one.

But back to me, what a night! Yes, I couldn’t hear properly until long after we were back home the next day. Lisa was the same, and she’d worn her earplugs, albeit to minimal effect.

In the moment, it mattered little. After thousands of days since seeing Ultravox in 2012 with my mum and her partner, I had proudly ended that hoodoo. And it wasn’t all plain sailing. The drive from Leicester to Leeds is at least a couple of hours, and the venue itself was probably best described as rough and ready.

All in all, it made me realise that closer and nicer venues could make sure I didn’t ever come anywhere near reaching that dry spell again without live music. I was a couple of weeks shy of turning 18 at that Ultravox gig, and in the final year of my twenties when witnessing the behemoth of Mogwai’s music live. It was worth the wait.

I’m not a huge believer in ‘bucket lists’, but Mogwai was something I needed to tick off. One of the most important bands in my life, and even though I don’t listen to them nearly as much as I did as a teenager and university student, that love will never wane.

Finding other bands and artists with a similar meaning to me touring live in 2025 wasn’t as easy as I’d expected it to be. But that didn’t stop me from booking more gigs.

Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew performing Remain In Light and other Talking Heads songs in Wolverhampton was perhaps the best gig of the year. It was also my first gig with mum since Ultravox, of course. Standing just a few rows of people from the front, the gig was euphoric, and the venue an absolute treat.

With Lisa, there was a George Michael tribute act at Leicester’s De Montfort which was so much better than we could have expected. Another tribute band I saw at the same venue was with Lisa’s dad, The Aussie Pink Floyd Experience. As 2025 was the 50th anniversary of Wish You Were Here, the first half was that album in full, and then the second half a variety of classics from their vast and wonderful discography.

Last in the year was the most intimate and potentially my favourite of the lot. Martin McAloon, bassist in Prefab Sprout and brother of singer and songwriter Paddy, performing an acoustic set at a church in Lichfield.

It was just him, just shy of a dozen guitars, not much more than a hundred people, and exactly one cup of delicious mulled wine. It was a magical evening as he performed Steve McQueen in full and then an absolute treasure load of other songs from that band’s similarly vast and wonderful discography.

After that, it was The Snowman Live in Nottingham for a pre-Christmas family treat, which was about as far removed from Mogwai blasting our ears off some 10 months previously in vibe, but certainly not in quality.

Me and Lisa share a lot of similar love in music and listen to things the other doesn’t enjoy. One of our most shared affections is Tears For Fears. Ridiculously, they headlined Radio 2 In The Park in the summer of 2023, just 10 minutes from us.

My insecurities of being in a crowd and social anxiety made it so that getting tickets didn’t ever really crop up in conversation. We watched the recording multiple times on iPlayer, and again when it was re-uploaded late last year, wishing we had been there.

I know you can’t have regrets in life, but you can learn your lesson, and I like to think I have done that. Whenever it is that Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith are back touring in England, we will be there, learning that lesson.

As for the certainty of this year, I’m going full circle. Our next booked gig is Ultravox in Sheffield. Isn’t it funny how life works out?

Perhaps I hadn’t thought through the ramifications of such a big purchase.

Last Christmas, I gave Lisa the Goonies Lego set. She wanted it, but she had no idea. In fact, so unaware of nice things she is, that she didn’t notice its grandiose nature under the tree since the start of advent, nor did she realise why there was one more present on Christmas morning than there had been the night before.

Some deceptive playing on my part to get the presents from under the tree for the three girls (two human, one labrador) saw to keeping the surprise through to morning. But even as other presents were unwrapped, one by one making the Danish elephant in the room more and more noticeable. That is, to everyone other than its recipient.

And so, when the time came and all known presents were open, it was time to alert Lisa to the fact that the biggest present in the room was hers to open. Well, actually it was a present for all of them, but Lisa was of course the primary benefactor.

It took the three of them with human hands (and the paws of the fourth) to bring it down to the floor and tear it open, at which point gasps and tellings off for spending so much money filled the room.

Anyway, the point of all of this is that, despite Lisa not noticing it, this is a pretty big set. And we live in a less-than-pretty-big house. Storage space is at a premium, and anyone who knows our combined love for music, books, and ‘nic nacs’ will realise there isn’t a lot of room to spare.

Another Scandinavian four-letter behemoth has been our saviour the last few years - with IKEA shelving being our main storage for countless books and records accrued. But it was no longer enough.

Building the Lego would be one task. A much more difficult one was finding a place for it. For reasons not important to this, we do have a relatively recent spare room upstairs.

It wasn’t the plan for it to be such at this point, but circumstances dictated that it became one and it had been a good extra room for family staying over and other similar ventures.

It also houses an IKEA shelf which was dotted with odds and sods. Given my propensity to just get on and do things without permission or backing, I took a risk and moved all my records upstairs (I don’t know the actual amount, but it’s easily in the hundreds).

This birthed an entire free shelf-and-a-half. I was a bit annoyed with myself for making the rash decision. Our setup prior to all of this was a Marley turntable in the living room, and the records in the dining room. The shelf that my Twitter and BlueSky followers see on a regular basis houses a few recent plays and the piano to the side a similar number.

But now, it felt like the distance between my records and the medium on which to play them had been exponentially increased. Silly, first world problems, I know, but still, it was a little perplexing.

I wondered if this would affect the amount that I would listen to records. A whole staircase separated the wax from the turntable. Given the speakers on the Marley are also Bluetooth enabled, I feared my collection would increasingly be left to gather dust while the necessary evil that is streaming took over.

And then came Lisa’s eldest’s Twilight Lego. Another space needed. Although we believe in sharing in this house, and although physical media is largely group classified, it had been realised that the half-shelf on the right was largely mine.

It was newly acquired not long after I moved in, after all, to house my books and (at the time) few records. As the months and years went by, I acquired more of both. Now the records were shifted, I figured it was win-win to accompany them with some of my favourite books, including my burgeoning collection of 33 1/3 books.

After a fair bit of shuffling, reorganising and redistributing shelf space and the shelves themselves, I realised I had just enough room for something that would tie it all together.

And as I said, I’m a doer when I get the thought in my head. It didn’t need to be flashy, nor did it need to be Earth-shatteringly expensive (I’d already done that with the Lego after all), it just needed to fit the space and sound decent.

So I browsed a few reviews for the best cheaper turntables and came across a Roxel set with Bluetooth and wired speakers that would (with a bit more organisation) fit perfectly into the space that was left.

Audiophiles should stop reading here - this is not a five star record player. It’s not what I needed. What I wanted was another space I could play my records, a haven with which to enjoy my records without taking up the entire house.

The Marley in the living room is brilliant, but when there’s other people in the house, it’s not fair to subject them to, say, Tago Mago or Suicide. Just because I can listen to Frankie Teardrop alongside eating my Weetabix doesn’t mean anyone else should have to.

Now, when I want to write, I bring my laptop upstairs, shut the door, and play my records in solitude. What started as a rash decision to make way for a Christmas present has ended up providing me with the greatest gift of all - a new haven in which to love my records all over again.

Bless my cotton socks, I’m a hypocrite. And yet, my reward is great.

After far too many years and dozens of flimsy excuses not to, I have finally left Spotify. Don’t get me wrong, none of the streaming alternatives are perfect. If I was that bothered about the multitude of issues Spotify presents, then I wouldn’t be using any other streaming service.

For as much as some - all - of them are better, none are perfect. Not even close. But I’m a big believer in taking steps in the right direction. A week ago today, I did just that.

I’ve always been a quick doer once my mind is made up. It often takes me a while to get started, but once the wheels are in motion, I am on it. And so, within hours of realising that I really didn’t have any legitimate excuses left for using Spotify, I went from listening to Boards Of Canada in the afternoon to setting up Qobuz by the time the sun had set.

Just hours prior to setting up my account, I’d not heard of Qobuz. I was certain that Tidal would be my go-to, although I was considering Apple Music and YouTube Music too, as well as any other recommendations. But the apt buzz around what appears to be the best streaming service, all things considered, is so far proving to be true.

Wanting to leave Spotify is easy. I’ve been managing that feeling for years. Actually leaving is much harder. At least, it was for me. It’s not anything to do with great tactics on their part, nor is it subconsciously being conned into believing there’s nothing better out there.

I convinced my girlfriend to leave Apple Music a couple of years ago so we could have a Dual subscription on Spotify. Although she got used to it, she has always preferred Apple Music, and is happily returning to it when our Spotify subscription ends.

The main reason is sheer laziness. Given my propensity for discovering and listening to so much new-to-me music over the past couple of years, as well as my lack of curation and selection, I had well over 19,000 (nineteen-thousand!) ‘Liked’ songs.

So on those rare occasions when I don’t know what music I want to listen to or just wanted a shuffle (think car journeys, showers, exercising), the app couldn’t handle shuffling that many and would crash. That was frustrating, but manageable. After all, 75% of my time listening to music is physical media, and 75% of my streaming time is listening to albums. It was frustrating, but not a deal breaker.

Much more importantly was that, as a self-professed music lover and believer in a better and fairer world for all, especially those in the arts who are dealt such a rough hand now, it was so hypocritical of me to carry on believing that yet giving to a company whose output to ‘lesser-known’ or ‘smaller’ artists is nothing short of ridiculous.

I won’t bore you with the details because there are people who can and do write about it better, but I’m sure you all know the score by now.

There’s also the matter of the sound quality, but with my ears, that was more of a nice-to-have than a necessity. What I spend on records, I’ve saved on inexpensive players because I just can’t appreciate the difference of the really expensive rigs (and am super jealous of those who can).

Other excuses I had for staying all whittled down over time. My music challenge days are now over. When I was hosting these challenges, I would compile the playlists on Spotify, given it’s popularity with streamers, but I no longer need to worry about that.

And as for my laziness, well that’s a mindset to get out of. I’ve applied it to so many other areas of my life, and with 2026 shaping up to be a net positive year for me, this was an easy fix to make.

There are many free apps which translate playlists from one streaming site to another. Not only are they something I contemplated using, but I even went as far as copying a few over to Tidal when I thought that would be site of choice.

Then when Qobuz came along, I thought again. I want to curate, I want this to be better and more focussed. If I set about copying anything directly over, I wanted to be in charge. There are playlists which are important to me for sentimental reasons (car journeys to Cornwall and Edinburgh especially), and others which are ongoing (Jazz, Ambient, 2026 Discoveries, Best 2026 Music), but none of these are so big I can’t recreate them manually.

In a world where so much is done for us by computers, it’s nice to take back a bit of control.

And yes, that is another slice of hypocrisy from me. If I was all that bothered by everything above, then I shouldn’t be using any streaming site. Some have already rightly questioned it. The answer is simply that I’m not perfect. Given the nature of streaming, somebody is always going to be losing out. Us listeners certainly aren’t, and neither are the bosses making lots of money.

The artists are, and no streaming site which can provide all the music you can think of at your fingertips is going to be fair on them. Steps in the right direction are better than none at all, though. I also think that it’s much more useful to hate the game and not the player.

We are all pawns in the world, and it’s a tough enough life as it is without beating ourselves up over these things. I have no qualms with anyone still using Spotify, despite the above. These are my reasons and they are entirely personal to me.

To use streaming at all isn’t perfect; I acquiesce myself with the fact that I spend far more money on physical media because of the artists I’ve been able to discover with streaming than without.

I also have an ever-growing record collection of which I am immensely proud and to which I listen to almost every day. As a collective, it is my most prized possession, and something that will only get bigger and grander over the next few years. Without streaming music first, this wouldn’t be nearly as easy, nor as successful.

And so, a week into using Qobuz and I am very happy. I still have three weeks left on my free trial, but have no doubts that I will be going permanent with it.

It does offer artists a much fairer deal, and I am curating playlists and adding artists in slowly but surely. Every time I load it up (I listen to a lot of music at bedtime too when I can’t sleep, which is most nights), I feel so much happier than I did with Spotify.

So yes, it’s far from perfect. Yes, I am a hypocrite. But it’s a big step in the right direction, and in this horrible world of ours, that’s more than enough to make me happy.

What should I read next?

The picture above was not taken on Monday morning’s dog walk.

Yep, that’s the hook. It might not be very interesting to most of you. I can’t believe it’s all that interesting to me, but here we are.

As is often the case, the story begins with a New Year’s resolution. Not this year’s necessarily. Not even last year’s. Or any in particular. It probably can’t even be attributed to New Year. Every night, when I go to bed, scrolling through my phone, I tell myself off.

I can’t even get through a film without checking for…well, nothing. I never thought I would be that person. I’m thirty-years-old now. Half my life ago, I didn’t have a mobile phone. I was one of a handful in my school year who didn’t. I specifically remember not having one even when I started my A-Levels.

That’s because I got my first one when going on a residential to the Lake District. I was certainly the last in that BTEC Sport group to have one. It was a smart phone, but I was only getting it for simple reasons.

In Case Of Emergencies.

So you can see why I never thought I’d become the sort of person who would have a device glued to my hand, mindlessly scrolling. I typed out and deleted ‘doomscrolling’ three times here, because that’s not what I do. Around 90% of my screen time is looking through carefully curated and algorithmically accurate music posts on Twitter and BlueSky.

But that still isn’t healthy for me. I know that. I think we all know that. But it doesn’t make it any simpler to stop.

As with anything, I’m not looking to go cold turkey. I don’t participate in Dry January because I often go weeks without drinking alcohol. I have actively been getting fitter since this time last year, but I’ll never cut out sugar and sweet treats completely. And it works - I’ve lost weight, feel better in myself physically and mentally, and have no desire to have a six pack or run a marathon.

But I do want to be on my phone less. I need to be on my phone less. That’s part of the reason I started blogging this year. My individual posts have gone down a fair bit from last year, and my enjoyment of music is already so much higher.

I’m still getting used to writing longform pieces for the first time in a few years, and very much enjoying doing it for my own pleasure as opposed to getting paid for it. All round, it has been a positive move and something that I hope can continue for the long term.

And so, back to Monday morning’s dog walk. I had no grand plans to make it special. To so many of you, it won’t be. That makes me happy. Most weekdays, I give our black labrador a long walk, through busy parks and a big muddy field. I love it.

But it isn’t always easy. As someone who has dealt with social anxiety since before having a mobile phone, just getting out of the front door has been a real struggle in the past. If you know, you know.

There aren’t nerves, but crippling, debilitating thoughts that sabotage your life. If I’m walking with my girlfriend, then it’s rarely a problem. But by myself, that’s when I need the comfort of earphones.

It’s a very male privilege to be able to walk with music in (one ear only, but still), and not fear for my safety. But this morning, I didn’t know what I fancied listening to. So I saddled up the dog, put on my wellies and thought I’d figure it out on the way.

And I did. It was early enough still that the birds were chirping and the grey skies bright enough to make it feel like Spring is just over the horizon. It was nice being present in it. So I kept it that way.

It ended up being a sociable dog walk, which as anyone who knows me in person, is not ideal. Again, when I’m walking with somebody else, then it’s fine and dandy because I’m not the one in charge of the conversation.

But it felt good. I didn’t have to pull out my phone to turn the noise down, or fidget an earbud from beneath my woolly hat to make idle but pleasant chit-chat with fellow walkers.

And it was only once I was halfway around that I realised, this could be the first time I did the full, 45-minute-ish dog walk by myself without any distractions.

One of the many problems with Spotify (or any streaming service) is that, with it being on your phone, once you go to do something with the music you’re listening to, you then have access to everything else within. Sometimes something as simple as turning up the volume leads to checking emails, responding to messages, and of course, skipping songs (not that I do that often - most of you know I’m a staunch lover of albums, not songs).

At the end of the walk came panic. As somebody who gets regular social media notifications, my phone is almost always on silent. I know I’m not the only one from my generation who is allergic to ringtones. But my girlfriend was driving to work when I started the walk. Ordinarily, I would be on my phone often enough that if she had needed to get in contact with me, I would see a message within five minutes, or know a phone call was coming in because my music stopped.

So when I got back in, de-saddled the mucky pup and made a cup of coffee, I took my phone out with a sense of relief and pride. No emergencies. And then, another step in the right direction.

Volume on. Notifications silenced for everything but the essentials. It shouldn’t be impressive. It shouldn’t be worth more words than I dedicate to my music pieces. But for me, it’s a great step in the right direction.

That wonderful picture at the top of this blog was taken on a walk when I should have been enjoying the beauty rather than looking at the scenery through my camera lens. The same goes for the picture of my company on every walk below…

How I got from that to putting together some of the finest playlists is incredible and down to the hundreds of you who came along for the ride.

Ironically, #Top30FirstAlbumFirstTrack will be my last Music Challenge for the foreseeable. It feels right - I’d run a Top 10 on it in May 2024 but couldn’t keep up with logging the results or making playlists because I was going through an especially tough time.

It felt right to launch an expanded and remastered version of it to kick off the New Year. When I announced it, I didn’t know it would be the last. I had a Top 30 Kate Bush challenge set for April, and a Sonic Youth one lined up for February or March. As well as that, I was racking my brain for a celebration of music from across the globe, entitled #AroundTheWorldIn80Songs. That was due to start on October 2nd, in line with the classic book itself.

But in stretching to such ideas, I quickly realised that I wasn’t going to enjoy them as much as I had done. The highs of #Top31DavidBowie were never going to be matched again (that was by far my favourite challenge).

So what started with #Top10SongSongs, a fun challenge with a thematically weak final playlist owing to these songs having no theme outside a song title, ended up becoming a privilege. I’m ending it before it becomes a chore.

In hosting a wide array of challenges, I have had access to swathes of great music. It has been a massive boon in keeping my music tastes expanding exponentially over the past couple of years.

And now that I’ve forged my own path for the foreseeable with delving deeply into jazz, ambience and non-English speaking music, as well as continuing with my blindspot discoveries (I’m listening to Trout Mask Replica for the first time as I write this), I no longer need access to the treasure trove that are your dozens of daily suggestions for, amongst others: late night songs, instrumentals, albums with great bookends etc.

I’m sure I’ll miss the thrill of it all; creating graphics was a steep learning curve and some of those early efforts were certainly something. Come the final few months, it became a brilliant exercise to forge artwork that I feel worthy of those artists (Tom Waits and Bowie playlists were my finest work).

In truth, I’ll miss almost every aspect of it. But with new and fresh ideas increasingly hard to come by, and so many other brilliant people in the Twitter and BlueSky music challenge community keeping up their ends of the bargain, it’s so much better for me to focus my music content efforts elsewhere, such as here on Substack where my promise of writing more longform content in 2026 is already taking shape.

The beauty of the challenges was always in those who played along. Without them, it would have been making pretty (and some less so) pictures and naming my own favourite songs from artists and genres.

Because of all of you who played along, it became an absolute thrill ride, a daily joy when so many days were otherwise very much not good.

You have shared so much great music with me, so many stories and ideas, so much support and help.

In 2026, things are really starting to look up for me. I have a great new job on the horizon, I’m more on top of my mental health than ever before, and I think the signs are pointing towards a brighter future for me and my loved ones.

I no longer need music challenges to keep my mind off the bad things, nor do I need hundreds of new suggestions for music. It was a great pleasure. Now I’m packing it in before hosting challenges becomes one in itself.

The links to every completed Music Challenge playlist are below. Feel free to download and play LOUD (apologies for the necessary evil that is Spotify for these purposes):

Top 10 Song Songs
Top 10 Final Album Final Track
Top 10 Question Songs
Top 10 Catherine Wheel
Mogwai Anthology
Top 10 Puressence
Top 10 The Blue Nile
Top 15 Talk Talk
Top 20 Long Songs
Top 31 Depeche Mode
Top 20 Short Songs
Top 10 Bleak Songs
Top 31 The Cure
Top 10 Japan
Top 10 David Sylvian
Top 20 Bookend Albums
Top 20 Roxy Music
Top 10 The Velvet Underground
Lana Del Rey Anthology
Ultravox Anthology
Top 10 Lush
Top 10 Scary Songs
Top 20 Late Night Songs
Top 10 The The
Top 30 Tom Waits
Top 31 David Bowie
Top 30 First Album First Track

Deacon Blue’s Raintown was a glorious start point to my #365NewToMeAlbums journey, and a mighty fine way to start any year the right way. It felt even more apt to make the first new listen of 2026 Big Star’s #1 Record. Again, what a brilliant way to set up a new year.

But much as I enjoyed Alex Chilton, Chris Bell & Co., I could already tell that this year wasn’t meant to be a carbon copy of last. The whole reason I started listening to so many new-to-me albums from the spring of 2024 onwards was to cover my gaping music blindspots.

Having since listened extensively to and fallen in love, amongst others: David Bowie, Talking Heads, Pink Floyd, Tom Waits, Sinead O’Connor, Kate Bush, and Cocteau Twins, I consider that that is done.

That’s not to say that I don’t want to finish listening through Bruce Springsteen’s discography or hear Fiona Apple’s latest, blistering record. But it is belief that I have achieved what I set out to do, and become all the better for it.

What started as a mission became a labour of love. This year needed to be about something else for me. It had all become a bit too paint-by-numbers for my liking. Counting, reviewing, ranking! All so tedious now that I look back on it.

And so, January has belonged to jazz. It’s a broad term but I’m exploring so many avenues, so many paths, and so much wonderful music.

From my existing interest in jazz exploding into adoration, an intrigue with ambient and house music has arisen too. I’m finding that, as I look to read and certainly write more this year, getting lost in music without obvious melody is the way forward to productivity on both counts.

I’ve been asked many times how I’m able to listen to so much music. The truth is that I don’t like silence. For all my social anxieties, I hate being alone. Just this week, I was at home with my partner’s eldest in her room. I was in my own company, but I didn’t feel isolated. When she left in the early afternoon and I had the house to myself, I didn’t like it.

Those are the times that I most have to console myself in the world of music. And the best music for getting lost in the music that takes you away. Away from your own mind, away from thinking. Away from words and melodies. It was a subconscious decision at the end of last year to listen to non-English speaking music (Serge Gainsbourg’s cult classic Histoire de Melody Nelson was one of my first discoveries of 2026).

But it has unlocked new levels of music appreciation. Rubbish for a blog, but it’s hard to put into words. I feel I can lose myself in music without words or certainly more standard song writing. I’m a sucker for lyrics too, but I end up thinking so much about them that I can’t ever truly switch off.

And on some days, I really need to flick that switch on my brain. With extended jazz records, on first and repeated listens, there’s always so many new things happening to keep me interested, but enough about it all to sink back and listen without being fully present.

So while nothing is ever perfect and I’m still on a seemingly never-ending journey to redress the balances I desperately want to in life, January has been brilliant for giving me the perfect distraction. Here’s to more of the same in February…

Below is a non-exhaustive list of some of the best music I’ve discovered this month (Artist | Album | Recommended track). If you enjoyed this or discover any new music, then a free subscription or share is the best way to thank me. Have a great February, everyone…

• Moodymann | Black Mahogani | Runaway (feat. Roberta Sweed, Norma Jean Bell & Pitch Black City

• Jeff Parker | The Way Out Of Easy | Freakadelic

• Chris Corsano, Bill Orcutt | Made Out Of Sound | A Port In Air

• Shrunken Elvis | Shrunken Elvis | K-House

• Total Blue | Total Blue | Chaparral

• Yasmine Hamdan | I Remember I Forget | The Beautiful Losers

• Go Kurosawa | soft shakes | Autowalk

• Sun Ra | Lanquidity | There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)

• Dollar Brand | African Marketplace | The Wedding

• Kelan Phil Cohren & Legacy | African Skies | White Nile

• Dream Dolphin | Atmospheric Healing | Stars

• Hiroshi Yoshimura | Green | SLEEP

• Software | Digital-Dance | Oceans Breath

• The Cosmic Tones Research Trio | The Cosmic Tones Research Trio | Ba Hi Yah

• Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays | As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls | September Fifteenth

• Swayzak | Snowboarding In Argentina | Speedboat

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My love for Tom Waits was immediate. The feeling he sparked inside of me reignited a love for a musician that I hadn’t felt in years.

I used to be obsessed with artists. Over the last couple of years, I have become obsessed with music. It’s fair to say that I’m not altogether ecstatic with the parameters I set myself last year.

Targeting listening to 365 new-to-me albums across the course of 2025 was ear-opening ecstasy. But it went against everything that I believe art should be. Too many numbers and far too much data.

Of course, if I completely followed this, then I wouldn’t share the records I’m listening to, nor keep records of every album I hear. But if everyone did that, then I wouldn’t have heard so much of the amazing music that I have these past couple of years.

For every Pink Floyd, there is a Morphine. For every PJ Harvey, there is a Sibylle Baier and an Anna von Hausswolff, and an Okonski for every Sun Ra. You get the picture.

But it’s not like it used to be. The self-inflicted caveat of listening to hundreds of new-to-me artists is that I don’t have the time to delve into them, to immerse myself beyond the studio albums. There have been times over these past few years where I’ve checked off albums in order, listening more for the mission than for my pleasure.

Back when I was getting into music properly as a teenager, I had a few bands that I loved. In chronological order of my getting into them: The Killers, Keane, Radiohead, Mogwai, Boards Of Canada.

That followed being shown the wonderful ways of, amongst others: The Human League, OMD, Ultravox, Depeche Mode, and Duran Duran as a child with rather cool parents.

Of those first five bands, I knew not just every album, but the B-Sides, the trivia, the collections, the live recordings. Everything there was to know and more. I was immersed in those worlds. It felt like they belonged to me, and I to them.

It had been years since having that feeling of belonging, of kinship with a musical artist. Yes, Dark Side Of The Moon means a lot to me now (after the initial, ridiculous hatred), and Talking Heads absolutely have careered their way into being one of my favourite bands, but I still wasn’t completely getting lost in their worlds.

As a teenager, I would go full weeks listening to just one band. Throughout 2024 and most of 2025, I could listen to half a dozen in one day. But that all changed when out of stage left, came Mr. Thomas Alan Waits.

The folk singer-cum-madman of the societal underbelly is the one artist who trapped me. He made me fall in love with the artist all over again. Not ticking off numbers, not pressing ahead before being ready.

As soon as I heard the gateway drug that is his gravelly voice sing:
We sail tonight for Singapore, we’re all as mad as hatters here
I knew I was in for something, and someone, special. As is often the case in the era of streaming, there was no grand story to the start.

I had come across Pitchfork’s perfect review of Rain Dogs and was immediately intrigued by his ‘carnivalesque and romantic’ nature, and wished to read no more. Going in blind was always more fun.

In truth, no amount of words or writeup can prepare the first-time listener for what a trip listening to Waits is. He’s obviously not for everyone - no artist is. But if you do like him, then you love him.

And I fell head over heels from that first listen. So much so, that I didn’t post about it for a long time. Ordinarily, I would listen to an album at least two times (often in the same day) before sharing my thoughts. With Rain Dogs, it took two months of listening to just that one album before I could comprehend what I was thinking.

Waits doesn’t let you think - he makes you. He bundles you into the back of his wagon and drags you through a madcap universe of gritty surrealism that feels more relatable than standard songs of love and loss. That’s the pull and power he has, all the way from Closing Time to Bad As Me and every stop in between.

There aren’t many artists who can claim to have such a near-perfect discography across so much range and so many releases, with no exceptions. If ever there was an artist across these journeys of sonic discovery that would make me go all in, then it’s a man who never did any wrong. When I’m looking at The Heart Of Saturday Night and Real Gone as the least epic records he released, then the bar is too high to touch from the ground.

I share a good 75% of what I’m listening to on my Twitter and BlueSky feeds (although I’m trying to significantly reduce my screentime on both), but if I’d posted every time I was listening to Waits in the eight months and counting since discovering him, my feed would almost primarily have been exclusively him.

It was Waits that made so glad I took up the task once again of committing to hearing so many new-to-me records. It was the obsession with him that made me realise I couldn’t do it again this year, or indeed, any other year. Despite hearing some other absolutely sensational artists and albums in the last months of 2025, I was almost always sat wishing for Waits again.

And with music, as with anything fun, you should always listen to exactly what you want to at any time. Now, just as last year, Waits is on my mind a lot. No other artist has come close to occupying so many of my waking hours in the last decade of my life.

Half of my Christmas presents were Waits-related (a record, a t-shirt, and a pair of socks). His is an extensive discography that belies even my spending habits on wax to complete, but with every addition to it, my heart is fuller.

With Waits, it is never about buying a record to show off or to look cool. It is because, he, more than any other musician, has stolen a place in my heart and mind and soul. It’s a feeling that I didn’t realise I had been missing all these years, until I got it back.

And considering the vast numbers of you who took part, that opinion is shared far and wide. None of us can be blamed. The lure of celebrating the great man was too hard to resist, especially during this season of goodwill.

Now that the fun is (almost) over, I thought it great and ever so slightly self-indulgent to dig a little bit behind the scenes of all things #Top31DavidBowie.

Setting Up

My second successive grand December Music Challenge was announced in May 2025, almost seven months before the kick-off at the start of Advent.

Many, myself included, would say that still wasn’t enough time to make a complete list of 31 favourite Bowie songs. Others may argue that it was too long, such is the ferocity of choosing, re-choosing, and constantly changing minds. One thing that was never in doubt was that we all had a fun second half of the month trawling through Bowie’s stupendously sublime career.

Almost as importantly, the extensive run-up time gave me plenty of time to set up graphics. Trial and error is the route to optimum artwork, and I only arrived at a style with which I was happy halfway through December. Believe me, there were some absolute stinkers in the run-up to the final selection. I think the graphics below showcased Bowie’s distinctive eras finely while maintaining a consistency befitting of his own constant quality through the decades.

The Results

Now for the main part of why I wanted this follow-up. I have committed to writing (at least) two long-form pieces per month on this Substack. This should also help with my sole New Year’s resolution to spend less free time on my phone. Most of these will be music-based, although some may be personal depending on how much I want to share, but this piece is primarily about the Bowie results that I want to share beyond the final playlists.

I’m not much of a stickler for setting rules, but I did continue with a new one that I set up on my previous challenge, #Top30TomWaits. Before, all votes, both ranked and unranked, were worth one point each.

With the Waits challenge, I found it much more entertaining and fair to offer players the choice. If they wanted to play unranked, each of their picks would receive 10 points. If they were ranked, then their picks were worth the points corresponding to that day (Day 1 = 1pt, Day 2 = 2pts, Day 31 = 31pts).

This incentivises and rewards players to play ranked, while also making unranked picks worth a great deal in themselves. I think it made for a fairer result, and also much more entertaining for me inputting the results.

Speaking of which, Life On Mars? was the winner, as you know. But it had an unprecedented run in the final few days, largely because of those ranked picks taking it to 1346 points, nearly some 300 points ahead of Ashes To Ashes. For comparison, another jump of ~300 points gets you to sixth place Starman.

A quirk in the top two that made the ranked/unranked points system all the more worthwhile. While Life On Mars? was the runaway leader on points, Ashes To Ashes received one more individual pick (58 v 57) across the challenge. If this was hosted like other challenges before November, then the latter would have been crowned your favourite Bowie song.

The semi-surprise leader from the end of Day One all the way to midway through Day 30 was Sound And Vision. Fourth place was still a cracking result for a typically less-celebrated single amongst the masses, but it was a shame it couldn’t hold onto a podium spot after topping the the board for 95% of the challenge runtime.

An unsurprising pattern in the results is Bowie’s 70s period dominating the upper echelons of the table. Of the Top 20, only Blackstar and Let’s Dance were released after 1980’s ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) album, which marks the end of Bowie’s golden artistic period, otherwise known as his long 70s timeline.

And even though no songs from ‘Ziggy Stardust’ made the top five, 6 songs from the album made the Top 20 (Starman, Ziggy Stardust, Moonage Daydream, Suffragette City, Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide, Five Years), solidifying the notion that it is the most popular Bowie album.

Now back to those ranked and unranked points - the average point each song received per vote (ranked and unranked) was 11.78. And unsurprisingly, given the number of final week picks it received, Life On Mars? had the highest average PPV (point per vote) with 23.61 (of songs with more than five picks).

The next highest were:

• Heroes (20.71 PPV, 3rd overall)

• Under Pressure (20.36, 48th)

• Ziggy Stardust (20.33, 7th)

• Station To Station (18.60, 5th)

• Sweet Thing… (18.44, 31st)

How about the other end of the table? With 289 different songs picked, there was something for everyone. But many songs were something for just one person - 81 different songs were picked just once.

Of these, 17 were ranked and 64 unranked. The highest ranked single pick was The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell, which received 27 points, meaning it was someone’s fifth favourite Bowie track and yet failed to make any other players’ Top 31 list.

But the only place to finish is with our dead last pick, albeit one of the very first in the challenge. Of the once picked songs, only one received a one point vote (that is, a ranked pick on the first day of the challenge). Step up Tryin’ To Get To Heaven, the 1998 cover of Dylan’s original released a year earlier.

The Outcome

That’s the results of the challenge covered in more detail. But the outcome for me was a great ending to a very busy year of music challenges. As some of you know, 2025 was not easy for me. As I wrote earlier, I may well be talking about this more in 2026. Thankfully, things have been looking up for quite some time and this year is shaping up to be much more positive.

One result of that will be less time available to host music challenges (the current First Album First Track challenge and a Kate Bush challenge in April are my only currently confirmed challenges), but there will still be many dotted throughout the year.

The December challenges (Depeche Mode and David Bowie) have been two of my favourites to host and take part in, so I will have a big one set up for December 2026, I’m sure.

But like many other music challenge hosts on Twitter and BlueSky, I started to create ideas for challenges I was waiting for other hosts to start. Those original ideas were exhausted long ago and it’s hard to keep conjuring up new ones, as well as artists worth dedicating challenges to. It is difficult finding the motivation to record results and create artwork with few people playing, after all.

And that’s where I have to say a final thank you to everyone who took part. As you can tell from the above, you’ve kept me extremely busy and while it could be exhausting when I sabotaged myself with a lazy day of not recording results, it was never anything less than fun.

Of course, thanks too to the legend that is David Bowie. I didn’t appreciate him in his lifetime, but this year will mark 10 years since his passing, and the world really does seem to have gotten worse since he left us all. Discovering his music over the past few years, and falling absolutely head over heels with such an overwhelming amount of it, has been a tonic against increasingly difficult times.

When I listen to Bowie, everything feels right. Sharing those experiences of joy and unity with so many of you for an entire month was an unbelievable experience. For that, for you, for me, and for Bowie, I am beyond grateful.

It all started with my two hours per day commute from Leicester to Nottingham, whereby Junction 21 of the M1 caused colossal headaches. I was often getting to work tired and back home absolutely exhausted. It was just about manageable with my trusty playlists, at least for a time.

But when my self-professed favourite song of all time, Tears For Fears’ The Working Hour began to grate on me, I knew I was going wrong. I was tiring of something so precious to me, such was the dilution with which I was hearing that magnificent sax and Roland Orzabal’s gorgeous vocals.

I’ve covered the start of the journey before, but this year was intoxication of the most luxurious nature. Having played catch up on listening to 366 new-to-me albums in the leap year 2024, this year was to be much more structured.

In the end, I had listened to the quota before the midpoint of November. That was fun, but also made a slight mockery of the point of it all. Due to having much more spare time than expected this year, it was easy to swallow up as many music discoveries as I craved. And I was hungry.

Music, for me, like for so many others, is not a cure for pain, but perhaps the best painkiller, and I’ve been in need of that so much this year. Now, as things look up once again, I’m able to reflect on a year that has introduced me to - not exhaustively - Tom Waits, Pink Floyd, The Velvet Underground and its alumni, Sinead O’Connor, PJ Harvey, Tracy Chapman, Bjork, Marvin Gaye, David Crosby, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, Scott Walker, Tim Buckley, Tom Tom Club, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Mercury Rev, Fiona Apple, Cocteau Twins, Porcupine Tree, The Beach Boys…

In a much better place, I can look back on the 365 new-to-me albums that have guided me through this year, as well as old favourites and the wealth of great records and artists introduced to me last year too.

As for 2026… Well, it won’t be a repeat. Despite the love of so much of the music that came to my attention this year, I don’t want to put a target number on my discovery. It never sat completely right with me, the idea listening to records as part of a number.

Instead, I’ll be taking on a very similar journey, albeit one without a target. It could be 365 albums, it could be more, it could be less (it will almost certainly be less!). I’ve already begun the journey with some albums released this year shaping my listening for the months ahead - Midlake, Anna von Hausswolff, and Just Mustard to name three.

I’ve also spent December listening to 2025 album releases, reaffirming my belief that great music is always being made. It might be harder to find, but there’s a great deal of it out there. I will be keeping up with music released in 2026 all throughout the year, as well as continuing to fill in those blindspots of mine from years and decades gone by.

And therein lies the other reason I expanded my music knowledge and tastes extensively over the past couple of years. Those blindspots of classic albums and artists were astounding in retrospect, and I don’t think there are many absolutely glaring ones left.

A look down the typical Greatest Albums lists suggests that The Rolling Stones’ ‘Exile On Main Street’ to be the biggest one I haven’t heard. And I think for a 30-year-old, that’s absolutely fine. I believe I’ve now heard 90% of the classics. That’s not to say I won’t be listening to more, but I’m much more at peace with what I know and have heard than I was even this time last year.

I’ve got plenty of other avenues to explore - world music, foreign language artists, and avant-garde jazz are all high up my list of music to discover more of.

But I’ll be doing it at a pace that I enjoy and feel comfortable with. Some weeks will be hectic. Some days will be hectic. But I’ll never feel that I have to reach a certain target by any specific point in time. That will be a relief and a marked improvement on the enjoyment of it all.

And that is what it’s all about. This life is bloody hard enough as it is. This year certainly has been. But through it all, music has been a solace with which it would have been immeasurably tougher.

Surrounding my mind and spirit with so much of it has been a miracle, and I can’t wait to continue that journey in 2026 and beyond.