Aggie Miller’s new sound rooted in old traditions forces me to consider where connection created through music sharing is going.
The hand drawn cover of Aggie Miller’s lead single from her forthcoming debut album, an insidious hint about the song’s, and perhaps the album’s themes.
Music changes. How it’s played, listened to, and exchanged are ever evolving hues. When my best friend Masha sent me the song “The Referee,” by Aggie Miller, a Manhattan raised peer, I didn’t expect to get chills on the first listen.
Rumor has it that friends used to sit down and listen to records together for hours in frothing marijuana smoke and cushy carpeted ambiance of suburban basements. Now we send texts with ready made sound bites. Not only is this optimized for the most rapid and rampant distribution, but it makes it easier to “share” music with those you love. I’ve since streamed the song over 100 times and shared it with 12 friends. Obsession is a whale in my stomach – I’ve got to let others know about what is captivating me.
The encounter – so commonplace to younger generations – of tapping the iMessage app, keying into a new piece of music on Spotify, and allowing the sound to captivate is such a soothing addiction to supply and perpetuate. Problematic. “The Referee” sends to another friend. I’d rather be captive to raw sound, to analog sound than to the repetition of the familiar modern gestures of a screen. Intrinsic within this feeling is the nexus between past, present and future ways of listening and experiencing music. I’m so far away from the glory days of music feelings, of farms gushing with hippie psycho heads and Hendrix magic, of enraged sweat wall punk basements with no telephones flashing at the stage. I can feel it as Aggie grieves, ”if your mother’s love feels different now, remember you’re the one who asked to grow.” She feels it too.
A wistful dread comes over me as I play the song over my house’s JBL Party Box 3000 for several comrades: I pine for a musical encounter that is deeper, more real. The Portuguese word “saudade” almost fits here, a nostalgia for something that doesn’t or can’t exist. More specifically, me and some of my closest have a nostalgia for the past before we were alive. And maybe something that never existed. Though the song’s piano syncopating in minor key is dreary it is also grounding – a piano note shouldn’t pound but it boils in my chest.
Yes, I’m worried about the future and how we can connect deeply with music. Although the sheer accessibility of music has increased, my rooted fear is that the deep emotive overhang that music provides is waning, that my sister of 13 won’t feel a tune with the same vigor that stabilizes me. With TikTok views, YouTube hits and Spotify streams, we devalue music by quantifying it. As I said, music changes. I’m just not sure how.
“And everyone that loves you doesn’t live here anymore
A shame”
-Aggie Miller