Every so often — and a lot more frequently just recently — I find myself thinking back to the collection of music CDs that I once had, and ponder whether or not I should attempt to rebuild that collection. After all, with streaming services generally agreed to be a net shitter for the music industry — and several of them starting to bring in AI slop, because I don't fucking know — it is becoming fashionable, once again, to have a physical collection of Stuff.

Now, you know me. I know this. I have a living room whose walls are at least 85% video games. But I got rid of my whole CD collection when we moved into this place, because… well, there wasn't really room for it anywhere, and at that point, the digital future of music seemed pretty certain. Also the few quid I got for the collection by sending it to musicMagpie certainly helped.

One of the things I find myself getting hung up on is exactly what was in that CD collection. It has literally just occurred to me that I can probably just look at my musicMagpie account and see what I traded in 11 years ago, but that's much too easy. (EDIT: also, apparently I did not create an account when I traded all this shit in.) So I'm going to attempt to do it from memory, with explanations where necessary.

In no particular order other than as they come to me:

• Definitely Maybe (Oasis) – the first album I ever bought with my own money, after I learned about what modern music it was "cool" to like. Embarrassingly, I bought it literally the day before (What's the Story) Morning Glory? came out, which got me some ribbing, but not that much, because Definitely Maybe was still a decent album.
• (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (Oasis) – I actually don't think I bought this for myself, because I had it on cassette, not CD. I often considered buying it on CD but never quite got around to it because I always thought my money was probably better spent on something I didn't already have. I quite liked the tape version. It was easy to play in the car.
• Be Here Now (Oasis) – People seem to hate this one now. I thought it was good.
• Jagged Little Pill (Alanis Morissette) – I'm actually not sure why I bought this, because I had heard its greatest hits so many times on the local radio station the school bus always had on, and was thoroughly sick of them. But for some reason I did buy it — and I'm glad I did, because I ended up liking pretty much all the songs on it, particularly after reading along with the lyrics while listening. Fun fact: I'm pretty sure this album taught everyone in my friendship group and surrounding acquaintances what the term "going down on" meant.
• Blurring the Edges (Meredith Brooks) – After accepting that yes, I actually did quite like Alanis Morissette, I sought out some other "girls with guitars" albums. I became rather fond of this one. Not every track is a winner, but there are some great songs on here, with Bitch probably the most well-known of them.
• Left of the Middle (Natalie Imbruglia) – Not quite "girls with guitars", but sort of adjacent. I wasn't really thinking about that, though. I primarily bought this because several of us really fancied Natalie Imbruglia.
• Footprints (Holly Valance) – See above, with even more tenuous justification.
• Spice (The Spice Girls) – I have told this story before.
• Spiceworld (The Spice Girls) – I'm not sure that justifies this, though.
• Travelling Without Moving (Jamiroquai) – My best friends at school were super into Jamiroquai. It didn't take long for me to join them, subsequently adding Emergency on Planet Earth and Return of the Space Cowboy to my collection also.
• Essential Indie (Various) – A CD that came free with my Discman when I got one for Christmas or a birthday or something. My favourite track on it was Sick & Tired by The Cardigans, primarily for its unusual flute and bassoon backing.
• Essential Acid Jazz (Various) – A double CD that I picked up not long after getting into Jamiroquai. This was a varied selection of acid jazz weirdness, with only really one track by the Brand New Heavies being familiar. My friends and I all enjoyed this album a lot though, and a copy hastily recorded to tape was a fixture in my mum's car (which I often borrowed of an evening) throughout most of my time at sixth form. Favourite track was, without a doubt, Big Kahuna by Jeremy Bun, a track which my friends and I parodied in our brief incarnation as the sonicfunkstars shortly after we learned to use Sony's ACID Music. (Fun fact: my Xbox Live Gamertag is still sonicfunkstars, because I am not paying Microsoft money to change my fucking name.)
• The Lord of the Rings (Unknown) – The Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies came out while I was at university, and we all enjoyed them. I bought this album because it had a cool box with a nearly naked lady on it and it said The Lord of the Rings on it. I didn't mistake it for the official soundtrack or anything (which I also bought) — if I'm honest I primarily bought it because of the titty lady. When I got it home and opened it up I discovered that titty lady actually got them out in the sleeve notes. When I put the CD in the player, I discovered that the whole album was literally just noise. I have no idea what it was supposed to be or why. I was so ashamed of the purchase I actually threw it out. To date I haven't been able to rediscover exactly what this fucking weird CD was — as I'm sure you can imagine, tracking down something just called The Lord of the Rings is not easy — nor am I sure I want to, because I think it might have been haunted.
• Painkiller (Judas Priest) – My friend Owen, who I did teacher training with, introduced me to metal. A particular favourite of us both was this excellent album. On one memorable afternoon, in a chemically induced haze, we produced a spectacular Judas Priest remix using ACID Music. It helped distract from the horrors of the working day.

There's a bunch of compilations also — including Shine 7 and 8, which I talked about here — but those are most of the ones I can remember without taxing my memory too hard. I know there were a lot more than that. And now I really want to know what happened to that receipt for all the CDs I traded in 11 years ago. It must be somewhere!

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