Hayley Long offers an impassioned defence force of cassette tapes in the latest in our serial of essays on some of the modernistic culture's most maligned items.

Cassette Tapes
Cassette Tapes

In that location are some songs that will never sound as bad on the radio as they do in my head. Take, for case, Simon and Garfunkel'south 'Span Over Troubled Water.' That vocal ought to sound sublime anywhere, but in my head, there is a bespeak – just most the starting time of the second poetry – where Art Garfunkel jumps into the troubled water and about drowns. A second or so later, he resurfaces and the moment of crunch is over. But not for me. Every time I hear that track played, I hear the ghost of a gurgle as his lungs make full with water. Fortunately, it's not a song that I encounter very oftentimes these days.  Only so there is as well 'In Bloom' by Nirvana. Is there anyone other than me who hears Kurt Cobain burp all the mode through the song'due south opening line? And what well-nigh 'Enjoy the Silence' by Depeche Fashion? Given the fact that – in my caput just – the 4 minutes and twoscore seconds of this track are brindled throughout by momentary lapses into full pettiness, information technology's a very appropriate title.

This is no random quirk of private weirdness. This is the result of having songs hardwired into my encephalon at a young and impressionable age via the twin evils of a cheap stereo and a misused cassette record. My fate is now sealed. I am doomed forever to remember every crinkle and crease in the magnetic tape.  Some songs will make me revisit tearing fluctuations in volume. In others, I volition recall every gaping nanosecond of silence where I repaired my cherished teenage dreams with a sliver of Sellotape.

And at present they are telling us that the cassette record is dorsum. Recently, a inundation of artists including Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue and Billie Eilish released albums on a format that most of us threw in the bin ages ago. Iceland's queen of fine art-pop, Björk, has even released her entire back catalogue on tape. But why? Why would any sane person choose the sound equivalent of a bottle of Asti when they tin can take Champagne?

Tapes? Are you kidding? Not for me. Not again. No way.

Except that… well… somehow… quite by accident, I've spent the whole of 2019 buying hundreds of them.

Let me explain. Earlier this year, I was walking past i of the many 2nd-hand record shops in Norwich when I spotted an old tape cassette in the window. Even without my glasses on, I recognised the album immediately. Information technology was Strangeways Here We Come up by The Smiths. Some strange impulse fabricated me go in and buy it. It cost just two pounds and reconnected me at in one case with my sixteen-twelvemonth-old self. What meliorate way could there possibly be to part with a couple of quid?

It was only when I got home that I realised that the record inside the case didn't match. It was the correct band but the incorrect album. It was also the perfect starting betoken for my adventures in the unpredictable world of the tape cassette.

cassette tapes
Cassette Tapes

From hither, I'1000 aware that my story gets strange and non entirely rational. One evening a few days after, I started searching eBay for that missing Smiths tape. Before I knew it, I was bidding on cassettes past The Happy Mondays, EMF and PM Dawn. I don't know why. Fifty-fifty worse, I started behest on the task with lots of utter junk. Only I hadn't totally lost my mind. I kept my bids depression and reassured myself that I couldn't perchance win.

Inside a calendar week, I was the bemused owner of several boxes of used tape cassettes. Having a no bigger plan, I decided to just practise the obvious and mind to them.

The first record I put into my cassette thespian was the cocky-titled debut by 80s goth-rockers All Most Eve. It was an anthology that I'd played to death during my A-Levels. Clearly, this copy had been played to death too because the sound that came out of my speaker was the upsetting deadened screams of Julianne Regan beingness eaten live. I chop-chop pressed End and tried a dissimilar record. Once more, the same thing happened. 5 dead tapes later, I texted my friend who'd spent her teenage Saturdays working in a tape store in King's Lynn.

None of them works, I wailed.

Fast frontwards through them a few times, she said. They might need to wake upwardly.

I did as I was told and whizzed repeatedly through REM'due south Out of Fourth dimension earlier trying over again. And this time, equally soon equally the speakers outburst into life, I felt my heart lift. My friend was right. Tapes are like people. Sometimes they fall asleep and take a lilliputian time to perk upwardly. What's more, when they're shit, they're best avoided only when they're good, they're a joy. Suddenly, I understood why Björk and so many others are enamoured with the tape cassette. A fully operation tape sounds sublime. I'm not exaggerating. It seriously does. After years of MP3 downloads, I could hear the deviation immediately. I was hearing details on this REM album that I hadn't heard in years. It was a reminder that the convenience of a digital download isn't everything.

cassette tapes
Cassette Tapes

And then there's the look of them. OK, so it's true that some of my tapes were and then filthy that I didn't desire to touch them but once I'd done the cases and advisedly used a little magic eraser on the grimiest cassette shells, I was able to appreciate them equally the cute objects that they are. Unlike vinyl which is almost e'er black and digital downloads that are only always invisible, cassettes vary enormously. The afterwards ones sold in the 90s and early noughties are normally on transparent shells with white transfer lettering. Older ones come on shells of whatsoever color and have analogous paper labels. Amidst my favourites are the early tapes from Island Records. Rather similar early Penguin paperbacks which came in a singled-out orange livery, vintage releases from Island are uniform and instantly identifiable. They all have black cassette shells, pink paper labels and pinkish inlay cards. Back in the 1970s, somebody at Island Records had the lovely job of ensuring that their tapes looked classy and bonny. Classy attractive tapes! Who fifty-fifty knew? We were all so busy shoving them into our Walkmans and swapping them and losing them and taping over them that most of us never noticed.

But to my mind, the prettiest tapes of all were not Island tapes, they were the early Elton John albums, released by DJM Records. These beauties take brilliant green cases, matching green shells and cheerful xanthous labels. They are the Brazilian football team of tape blueprint. The 1 I briefly owned was called Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only The Pianoforte Thespian and it was so magnificently handsome that I was excited to hear it even though Elton John's music brings me out in a rash. I slid the tape into my cassette deck and – remembering my friend'southward advice – pressed fast forward. Nothing happened. I turned the tape over and tried rewind. Once more cipher happened. The play push gave me no joy either. After a quick investigation, I discovered the trouble and experienced another of those emotional big-dippers that only a mechanical format tin can give you. The magnetic record within the shell had snapped and information technology was now fit merely for the bin. Sometimes beauty is useless.

And as odd as information technology sounds, maybe that'southward an essential part of the record'due south appeal. In a world of digital uniformity, each tape tells its own private story. It tin can sound great but it oft doesn't. Sometimes information technology sounds like Darth Vader is shouting at us from a distant galaxy. Tapes were never meant to last forever and so if we find one which sounds perfect, it simply means that it's either very new or still waiting to find the right owner. And when the right possessor finally gets hold of it, they'll hopefully exercise the right thing and play it to expiry.

As for me and my several hundred tapes, I'm hooked now. For the sake of cupboard infinite, I'chiliad trying to stay abroad from eBay but my cupboards proceed filling up anyway. I or two of my friends have noticed my weird fascination and kindly fed my obsession by donating their dusty tape collections to me. And as for those brand new Björk tapes? Well, I had to get hold of a set of them, evidently. And then there are car boot sales. Because… well, who knows? Maybe one Sunday morning, I'll discover a lovely old tape in the colours of the Brazilian football squad. And peradventure, merely maybe, it will sound absolutely amazing.

Hayley Long's latest book is Music To Make Friends By, a title in the Quick Reads series from Rily Publications.

For other articles included in this collection, go here.