Spotify dementia: why I can't remember songs without a record cover

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Not like that: Reaching the vinyl with your fingers was considered sacrilege (symbol photo)

Photo: Thais Varela / Stocksy United

For me, cleaning is only possible with music, it has to roar through the whole place.

With the scrubber I follow the wide keyboard sounds, the Feudel almost hovers over the floor, while I sing out loud with Elif: "I'm only mine!"

Almost like Pippi Longstocking, who wiener on the wooden floor of her Villa Kunterbunt on her brushed shoes.

This is the only way to endure this annoying activity.

To person

Christina Pohl

was born the year the US bombed Vietnam with napalm.

In her youth she sought peace in the hippie caves of Crete.

She has been working as an editor in the SPIEGEL Group since 1991.

Photo: 

Lina Moreno / DER SPIEGEL

I am wringing out the Feudel with my cleaning gloves when suddenly a terrible piece blares from my stereo: Silver moon!

I definitely didn't order that.

I desperately try to peel the rubber off my hands so I can unlock my phone.

It's about every second that dirty my ears with this toothless.

On the way to my smartphone, which is attached to my amplifier, stumble over the cleaning bucket, the gray water pours on the floorboards.

Annoyed, I press the home button with my finger, but he just doesn't want to recognize the wrinkled fingertip.

Spotify continues to play.

A less well-resourced algorithm plays a so-called mixtape.

Do they even know what that is?

What effort and dedication did it take back then (at a time that is as far away for our children as we used to be stories from the war) to get a valuable, lovingly composed compilation?

I can still remember how I sat in front of the radio with the cassette recorder, tuned in to BFBS, the British military broadcaster, and finally, after a long wait, they played Joy Division.

Pressing "Record" at the right moment was a great art.

Usually the moderator's last or first chunks of words could still be heard on the magnetic tape.

The associated noise was the background for the sound of a better world, a universe with musical taste.

For a long time I fought against a streaming service.

It wasn't just the fear of silly algorithms that didn't hesitate to play Helene Fischer.

Above all, I was worried that I would forget the band names and titles.

Everything is gone with one swipe!

I still don't understand whether I can sometimes remember so badly because I'm getting older, or whether memorizing song titles just works better when I have a record with an artistically designed cover in my hand.

It has been scientifically proven that memories are particularly good at remembering when they are accompanied by strong emotions.

After that I would have to memorize the Silbermond song, which makes me really aggressive, better than Elif's.

I sometimes long to go back to a time when not everything was immediately available.

Back then we met with the people who had the best stereos, gathered in front of meter-high speakers, and everyone looked for the sweet spot in front of the amplifiers with their dizzying wattage.

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"The old man," as we called him, had his stereo set up solemnly as if on an altar.

The then 30-year-old (very old!) Then pulled a rare imported disc from the shelf.

For those who had not seen this before, he then explained how to treat the vinyl: never touch the grooves, fingers are greasy!

To this day it has become so burned into me that I want to scream when someone grabs the holy vinyl with their paws (like the woman in the photo above!).

When the "old man" blissfully lowered the tone arm, very slowly and solemnly, the crackling sound came out of the speakers and the first notes came down on us, it was a revelation.

Like the disciples, we sat around our Messiah and stared in awe at the album cover: "PIL" was written on it in large letters, it was a 12-inch from "This Is Not a Love Song".

Only when the last note had faded away and the "old man" had pushed the disk - every movement part of a ritual - back into the antistatic lined inner shell, was it allowed to speak.

We then talked shop about whether John Lydon (formerly Sex Pistols) had betrayed punk with Public Image Ltd.

(PIL).

That seems ridiculous to me today, after the complete globalization of the music business and the compression of songs into files.

But I will never forget the PIL cover and the incisive voice of John Lydon, formerly Johnny Rotten.

That won't happen to me with Elif.

I only know her from the stream.

I've been behind with my memory since the CD era.

Sometimes I hear a song, I know I know it, but then I have to use Shazam to research it.

That would never have happened to me before, because we learned the credits on the records by heart, knew who the songwriters and producers were.

When the writing on the CD inlets shrank and became illegible, I slowly got out.

The other day I wanted to hear Johnny "Rotten" Lydon sing again and searched for "PIL" on Spotify.

The streaming service suggested a playlist called "Pilates Lounge".

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