A CD Affair

The first album that I ever bought (or, more accurately, that my dad bought) was actually two albums, and they were both by Stevie Wonder – Talking Book and Hotter Than July. The latter was on cassette while the former was on the relatively new compact disc (CD) format. My dad and I bought them at Woolworths in Coventry city centre in 1988, and we’d actually only planned to buy one album (or, more accurately, one song – ‘Happy Birthday’, the last track on Hotter Than July). Not knowing at the time that it was a plea by Wonder to commemorate the life of Martin Luther King Jr with an official US holiday, I wanted the song to play it on my ninth birthday, ideally on CD, as my dad had recently bought a new CD player extension to his Pioneer hi-fi. However, this branch of Woolies only had the song on cassette, and somewhat bizarrely, the lady on the music counter also brought out Talking Book because it was on CD (as if to offer my dad and me a compromise between the song we wanted and the format we wanted).

So, by accident, the first CD I ever got was Talking Book, which, coming at the start of Stevie Wonder’s 1970s purple patch, is a pretty good first. I was fascinated by the CD. Having grown up with audio cassettes, with their analogue hiss, rewind and forward functions, and tape that was prone to get chewed up in the deck, I saw the CD as a futuristic entity, a magical, metallic marvel that reflected a rainbow of colours when you moved it and could play pristine, digital tracks that were accessible, skippable, and programmable at a few clicks of a button.

Thirty-six years later, the CD is still here but no longer a dominant audio format. In September 2024, it was announced that car manufacturers would no longer fit CD players in their new models. Some charity shops have even stopped selling them. CDs now find themselves falling between two stools. The format that CD supplanted in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, the LP, has seen a resurgence in the last 15 years, and “vinyls” are a more credible format among boomers, hipsters, and audiophiles (with many of them often pointing to vinyl’s “warmer” analogue sound) and are seen as a more tangible piece of visual art. The CD, despite its dominance in the ‘90s, has never entirely thrown off its uncool origins as the Dire Straits-loving yuppie’s format of choice. In the digital realm, it was superseded by first the iPod and then streaming platforms such as Spotify. Why listen to a disc that you have to load into a player and contains, at most, around 74–80 minutes of music (its length apocryphally attributed to being able to contain Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony) when you can have instant access to seemingly endless online playlists on your phone or smart speaker?

Yet, I continue to buy CDs. Why? Part of it is down to my hoarding tendencies and the need to have a tangible object in my music library. You can get that with vinyl, of course (and I am as much a sucker as anyone for a limited-edition, coloured LP), but I am somewhat sentimental about the format I grew up with; most of the singles and albums I bought as a kid were on CD. Admittingly, much of the time I spend listening to CDs is in the kitchen as a soundtrack to the washing-up, and I always rip the ones I buy to my external hard drive and save MP3 copies on my smartphone’s SD card, which I play through the Poweramp app for music on the move.

Another reason I still buy CDs is that having to have an internet connection to listen to music is anathema to me. The likes of Spotify are great for sharing and discovering new music, but you are beholden to the streaming service giving you access to the music you want, often accompanied by algorithms and adverts. Although there are millions of tracks on Spotify, I was put off the platform by the way it treats its smaller artists regarding royalties and the fact that some of the acts from my childhood weren’t initially on there (usually for rights reasons), including the KLF and De La Soul. Then, you have the likes of iTunes adding new albums to your collection without your say-so – most notably, U2’s 2014 album, Songs Of Innocence, which was downloaded automatically to Apple users' libraries (some might argue that was enough reason to delete your iTunes account permanently).

For these reasons, I prefer buying CDs and downloads, even if doing so costs more than a streaming subscription. You can pick up second-hand CDs dirt-cheap at most charity shops and on eBay, and in an about-turn from the ‘90s, they are now more affordable than vinyl. A couple of years ago, I found cult hip-hop crew Handsome Boy’s Modeling School’s 1999 album So.... How’s Your Girl? on CD for 50p at my local Cancer Research shop; the same year, the album was reissued on vinyl for Record Store Day, retailing at around £25.

There are, of course, downsides to collecting CDs. My collection numbers in the thousands, and I’m running out of space at home. Also, CDs that I have of a certain age are starting to suffer from bronzing, a type of rot that affects the reflective layer of the discs, rendering them unplayable. But there is still a market for the CD, and record companies such as Ace, Soul Jazz, and Cherry Red continue to offer lovingly compiled and curated releases, often with bonus tracks and informative liner notes.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the first CD I bought with my own money was Michael Jackson’s Bad. In hindsight, I think claiming Talking Book was my first CD is the better boast.