"It's A Kind of Sensory Memory"
Polaroids, Nostalgia, and the Lost Art of Liner Notes
With the recent re-release of Taylor Swift’s blast into pop music, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) brought with it memories of the original CD plastic jewel case from 2014, complete with liner notes, song lyrics, and a set of thirteen Polaroids. A total of sixty-five polaroids, all depicting a “sepia-toned” Swift living her fascinating life in New York City, went into five different CD sets. This became a fun game of Russian roulette for fans to play.
According to Former Polaroid Corporation chief executive Scott Hardy, 1989’s release “propelled a revival in instant film,” particularly among the newly minted hipster subculture (portrayed by shows like HBO’s Girls), who valued “nostalgia” and “the retro element of what Polaroid stands for.” This speaks to what 1989 represented: Taylor’s rebirth into pop from country and the romanticization of all things 80s: synths, instant film, and the eccentric flamboyance of the New Romantic and glam rock music subcultures.
If you were a teenage girl in 2014, it was impossible to avoid this album. Not only did 1989 feature Swift’s arguably most iconic singles (“Shake It Off” and “Wildest Dreams” come to mind), it also propelled Swift to an even higher plane of fame and celebrity, one which we know now was not the most positive for her. Even still, this album was everywhere. Or at least, I heard it everywhere. I was a teenager in 2014, in the space between 16 and 17. I was smack dab in the middle of the target audience for 1989: self-assured enough to begin experiencing the sorts of heartbreak, love, and general excitement omnipresent in the songs, but not old enough to be living the same kind of captivating life (a young, talented creative living in the greatest city in the world).
In 2014, I was also on the cusp of an indie music awakening that would define my young adulthood well into my mid-20s. It was as if I turned 17 in October of 2014, and my love of popular music (including Taylor Swift) disappeared completely as I adopted the dreaded, “pick me” catchphrase: “I’m not like other girls.” Somehow, my early fascination with Debut, Fearless, Speak Now, and Red paled in comparison to the works of St. Vincent, Hozier, The Head and The Heart, Beach House, and The War On Drugs (To some extent, I believe this is true. Though, the St. Vincent collaboration on Lover leaves that point moot.) I spent most of my waking hours at school, in rehearsal (a theater kid, unfortunately), or in the basements of my outsider, loser-y friends, trying to prove to them (and myself) I could be cool simply by shitting on 2014’s biggest pop star.
After many years of reflection, therapy, and my discovery that girls my own age do in fact make the best kinds of friends, I can proudly acknowledge I love Taylor Swift, in all her eras, moods, and genres. I recognize her songwriting and empire-building genius. I follow every re-release like a sport and find myself watching Eras Tour reels on Instagram at 2AM. In short, I think I may be a Swifty— or is that with an “ie”?
But the point of that long, drawn out story was not to degrade myself in front of the world’s many, many true Swifties, though I’m sure that will come. Instead, I want to bring attention to those sixty-five Polaroids, given out in the long-forgotten CD jewel cases of yesteryear. Or, more accurately, Taylor Swift’s truly magnificent understanding of how nostalgia affects our shared music listening and collecting habits. That is, how the 1989 Polaroid Collection, amongst many other forms of album ephemera, brought back a renewed appreciation for the lost art of liner notes.
Liner, or album, notes are defined as “are the writings found on the sleeves of LP record albums and in booklets that come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or cassette j-cards.”
Standard liner notes often include a list of personnel of the album (musicians, producers, engineers, etc.), lyrics for all of the songs on the album, and copyright credits. When physical media was in its heyday (arguably anytime during the 1960s-1990s), liner notes took on artistic intentions and personalities of their own. Artwork, zines, photographs, posters, short stories, and personal essays filled the liner notes, often contributing to the theme, message, and or world of the album itself. Created by the artist, friends, and/or others, this ephemera arguably became just as important to the album as the music.
I became vaguely aware of liner notes when I was a kid and used to collect CDs and Soundtracks of various Disney Channel and Nickelodeon artists. (To this day, I maintain that A Little Bit Longer has some of the coolest liner notes of any Hollywood Records release. The suits, the vaguely-Belluccia cursive font, the “Lord and Savior” s/o in the Thank You’s section, the vests, the LAYERS. I carried that CD case around like a security blanket. My first “dinger,” or no-skip album, truly.) I spent hours going over the details of all these booklets, singing along with the lyrics, ogling at the cool, teenage stars, and truly enjoying an album in its entirety because my CD player wasn’t a goddamned smartphone. Every Christmas or Birthday was a new CD, a new tactile experience. It was as close to an immersive experience as I could get, as a poor kid from Appalachia. Concerts weren’t an option for me in those days.
I’d also steal my parent’s CDs and giggle over the sheer drama and humor of some of those liner notes. I distinctly remember my mother’s Barbara Streisand CDs, particularly The Way We Were. Likewise, my step-dad’s Steely Dan, Beatles, and Pink Floyd albums were simultaneously gorgeous and amusing, if a little beyond what my 10-year-old brain could comprehend.
But it was my dad’s Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra CDs that truly captivated me. It wasn’t so much the artwork at that point, though Duets I & II were interesting, but it always impressed me just how many people actually contributed to a single album. So many musicians, engineers, and producers listed in their entirety. It was a treasure trove: to see the names of the people who made the thing I was holding. I was nothing short of inspired.
As I grew older, I found myself drawn to the convenience of iTunes and digital. I owned a green iPod shuffle where I’d transfer my library of Glee, Miley Cyrus, and Adele songs to a handheld device that could fit in the middle of my palm. I had Pandora and Spotify before their widespread appeal. Even to this day, I am a self-proclaimed Playlist Curator. My playlists are my pride and joy (okay, borderline obsession).
Shameless Plug: Follow me on Spotify for weirdly specific, yet oddly satisfying playlists.
It wasn’t until high school that I found my parents’ old Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack on vinyl. It was massive: a two-record set complete with lyric book and original concept artwork. I was transfixed by the texture and minimalism, holding it in my hands as my step-dad pulled out his old turntable and speakers so we could listen. The sound quality was foreign to my born-digital ears, but the crackles and pops of the records soon became a fascination of mine.
The next three years, I scoured antique stores for Original Broadway cast recordings and Frank Sinatra albums, asking my poor mother to spend a small fortune on a growing collection of vinyl records devoted to my obsession with theatre and musicals. It was always a high I was chasing: the pursuit of a time lost to streaming, Dolby, and surround sound.
I didn’t even realize it then, but this was the beginning of my musical awakening. By the time I was 19, I’d left theatre and musicals for indie/alternative and punk. Spurred on by access to hundreds of thousands of songs and artists through streaming, I became a freak of nature, spinning through genres faster than I could digest them. I spent six years throwing myself into a world I’d only really begun to understand. All I knew was this: I wanted more.
At 22, I fell in love for the first time. After a lifetime of hiding myself behind massive hoodies, insecurities, and unrequited love for older men, I found someone who became my whole world. Music was, in many ways, our entire relationship and most meaningful connection. It was the first time someone else cared about music in the same way I did. It was the first time someone else viewed me as their equal. It was everything.
When that relationship ended, it broke my heart beyond anything I’d ever experienced. That’s what they don’t tell you about the experience of connecting so deeply with another person: when it ends, every single reference point you have for your life completely disappears. I was forced to start from scratch, rebuilding my passion for this artform brick-by-brick. I had to find other outlets to express the pain of losing the greatest connection I’d ever known. I did that by buying a record player, growing a new collection of vinyl, CDs, & cassettes, and pouring myself into finding my love of music independently of anyone or anything else.
Taylor Swift was, of course, part of that journey, as were so many other artists I grew attachments to: Palace Music/Brothers, Smog, Fiona Apple, Bruce Springsteen, U2, The Breeders, Belle & Sebastian, Adrianne Lenker, boygenius, The Cure, etc. Too many to name here, but they all meant something to me. Music became much more than just a passive sound to work, ride, or sleep to. It was my solace in the most devastating and chaotic of seasons. It was an active part of my everyday life: always listening, writing, crying, and reflecting.
My appreciation for analog media grew along with it, as I listened to beloved albums on vinyl for the first time and discovered lesser-known artists in the long rows of record store displays. My newfound connection to the DIY-ethos of artists like Will Oldham (Bonnie “Prince” Billy) and Bill Callahan (Smog) showed me just how detached digital media consumption had become. My entire approach to music fundamentally shifted. It took on a slower pace, one that moved with intention and an appreciation for being present in the moment. It was at a Bonnie “Prince” Billy show a few weeks ago that I noticed every single person was smartphone-less. Not a single person took a video or a photo the entire night. Nothing existed to prove any of us were there, except our own word. It was fucking incredible.
The next week, while browsing CDs at the used book/media store of my adolescence, I found a cool, lone album sitting by itself. The cover was a black-and-white photo of two figures standing in a meadow. It caught my eye immediately. I decided to buy it without really looking into it. When I got home, I opened the case to find the booklet folded out into a full-length poster on one side, while the lyrics, resembling spoken word poetry, were haphazardly typed out on the other. There was no rhyme, reason, or song titles to speak of, just a long string of lyrical phrases.
Even more incredible, I read the album credits and noticed two of my favorites, Will Oldham and Mimi Parker (Low) were collaborators on the album, created with two other lesser-known artists: Jesu and Sun Kil Moon. This is precisely the sort of music anecdote I love to find, and one I likely would never have found if not for analog media and the liner notes. When I looked up the album on Spotify, Will Oldham and Mimi Parker’s names were decidedly missing from it. This made me wonder just how many cool and interesting facts and ideas could be nestled in the liner notes of my favorite albums, all lost to digital formatting.
I also had the same revelation while looking at the liner notes for American III: Solitary Man, the third installment of Johnny Cash and Rick Rubin’s incredible American Recordings series. I realized that Cash not only covered a Will Oldham song, but Oldham was asked to sing and play piano on that particular song, alongside Cash on guitar.
All because I sought out and read the liner notes…
I find myself doing it more now: looking for the strange, incredible, and captivating in the liner notes of vinyl, cassettes, and CDs. The tactile experience of actually listening to an album, while you read about and immerse yourself in the world of the artist, is like no other. It’s primal, in the best sense, and innately human. It’s connecting with another human being’s thoughts, fears, and joys. It can be humorous or devastating. It’s real life, plain and simple.
I’m sure I sound like the Gen X punk and Boomer rocker, bemoaning the loss of real listening and music collecting culture. “The kids these days and their TikTok music,” I scream, as I wave my fists in the air from my figurative front porch. I’m only 26, but my Gen X co-workers insist I’m 53 at heart. Maybe that’s true. Maybe I’m simply an idealistic romantic lost to the nostalgia of an era I never experienced.
The thing is, I’m actually not alone. Perhaps in part because of Taylor Swift’s vinyl renaissance, young people now have a preference for all things analog. Portions of Gen Z are increasingly resentful of the extremes of social media, smart phones, and the advent of generative AI. Despite every news media outlet, comedian, and politician cursing young people for their air of detachment, antisocial tendencies, and less-than-stellar concert etiquette (arguably, this one is true), evidence to the contrary exists. Members of Gen Z participate in many forms of analog culture, as shown in articles written for The New York Times, Forbes, CNN, and CNBC.
Left for dead with the advent of CDs in the 1980s, vinyl records are now the music industry’s most popular and highest-grossing physical format, with fans choosing it for collectibility, sound quality or simply the tactile experience of music in an age of digital ephemerality.
~Ben Sisario, NYT Music Reporter
I’m now an academic librarian employed by a university in New York City, the sort of life 17-year-old me could only dream of living. I am amazed by the sheer amount of newly-minted 18-year-old first-years who make zines, print/post flyers, and host events dedicated to analog culture and disconnecting from our increasingly connected digital world. Some are even choosing to use “dumb phones,” the internet connection-less flip phones of our recent past. Are there young people dependent on social media and newer technologies, resulting in behaviors and beliefs still in desperate need of further consideration and study? Yes. I’m one of them and won’t pretend otherwise. But then again, so many of us are now, regardless of age or identity marker. It’s the lay of the land. We are slowly becoming the worst versions of ourselves: fearful, fake, and devoid of empathy.
However, I would like to believe we are capable of more than simply exhibiting and encouraging the worst parts of ourselves. (Looking at you, concert shit disturbers and main character syndrome Karens. Stop throwing objects onstage.) If my deep appreciation for analog media and liner notes has shown me anything, it’s that real life connection is still possible. Oh—and, also, it’s better.
Stop recording the concert and just enjoy yourselves. I will believe you when you say you saw that cool band at that great venue. I promise :)
In doing research for this essay, I read about Taylor Swift’s decision in 2014 to remove her entire discography (up until that point) from Spotify. Citing the platform’s app-supported free subscription tier and her own fears about the decline of the album as a “economic entity,” Swift wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal detailing her frustrations with the harm digital music and streaming could do to songwriters and artists. Still, Swift is remarkably optimistic about the future of the music industry, as well as exceedingly prolific in her predictions. Many of them have played out over the last decade just as she described them. The amount of fans you have (from streams or TikTok hits) can definitely get you a record deal. The element of “surprise” is ever-important in the music industry, as evidenced by Swift’s own Eras Tour. Genres shift and evolve all the time. Even her poignant point about the fascination with artists’ lives rings true, in light of the internet being obsessed with her relationship with Travis Kelce. Taylor Swift has always been this clued-in and engaged, even if she’s lost some perspective in other aspects of her life.
On a personal note, her musings on certain artists being like relationships in your life (the “fling”, reasons/seasons, and “the one”) struck me as one of the last remaining forms of the old order. Music does speak to us in this way. It certainly has for me, through the last two-and-a-half decades of change, heartbreak, and experience. I organize my life in music. I turn to the words written by those I’ve never met, but connect with on the deepest level. I associate certain artists with certain people, places, and things. On this point, I share Swift’s optimism.
After a tussle with Apple in 2015 over streaming royalties and a feature in a few Apple Music commercials, Swift ultimately decided to release her work on Spotify once again in June of 2017. Seeing as though she was just announced as Spotify’s Most Streamed Artist of 2023 and Time’s “Person of the Year”, this is an interesting moment of her career to reflect on. It speaks to the larger change in our music listening, collecting, and sharing habits. Yes, even the great Taylor Swift has embraced streaming, while selling limited edition vinyl, cassettes, and CDs of every new album and re-release since 2020, complete with personal essays, photographs, and song lyrics. I appreciate her insistence on participating in both worlds: analog and digital, even if streaming really only benefits artists like her at the highest level.
Yet, she still sees the value in preserving the artistry and intentionality of music as a physical artform. Despite every piece of criticism she’s received from the media, cynical indie boys, and chauvinist pigs across the decades, she manages to keep her passion for music, storytelling, and creation alive, all while remaining completely herself. Here’s hoping authenticity will always remain in vogue.
If you’ve made it this far, Congratulations! You get a Top 5 List of my favorite albums based exclusively on how well I think the liner notes and inserts expand the world of the music and artist(s):
the record by boygenius (More people should make zine inserts. ‘nough said.)
Dear Catastorphe Waitress by Belle & Sebastian (Stuart Murdoch writes the best short stories.)
The Head and The Heart (Self-Titled) by The Head and The Heart (The atmosphere, color scheme, and photographs included in this 24-page CD booklet are breathtaking. 17-year-old Abby had great taste.)
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauryn Hill (The LP and CD are both gorgeous and insightful, but the cassette J-Card is my personal favorite.)
All Things Must Pass by George Harrison (I would be remiss not to include my favorite Beatle and his solo work on this list. From the photography/artwork on the original LP, along with the Apple Jam outtakes, to the 30-year-retrospective essay Harrison wrote for the 2001 reissue, All Things Must Pass is a perfect example of how albums can contain entire worlds within them, often heightened by the liner notes and their contents. Oh, and apparently, a young Phil Collins may have played the congas on “Art of Dying.” How cool!)
All Things Must Pass, George Harrison
Further Reading/Listening:
A love letter to the lost art of the liner note by Felix Rowe
The Lost Art of Liner Notes Podcast from Rumble Yard
AlbumLinerNotes.com (An archive of the best and coolest liner notes of music’s past and present)
Title Song: “Sensory Memory” by Jen Cloher
This was such a fantastic read! I am GenX and grew up with physical media. I taught myself to read with the album jackets and liner notes of my parents’ vinyl collection. The liner notes were always at least half of the excitement for each record purchase (or cassette to CD as technology evolved). My biggest disappointment would be a blank insert instead of the lyrics and liner notes or just the cover art on the cassette or CD.
The funny thing is that since I’ve transitioned back into the physical forms of media after a decade or more of only streaming, I get so excited about playing the record when I get home that I forget about checking out the sleeve and reading the liner notes! I have to remind myself about them!