Someone once told me that all songs can ostensibly fall into one of three categories – they can be a banger, they can be a classic, or they can be a tune. I’ve given this proposition much thought over the years and I like to think about some of my favourite songs and where they might land, e.g.: Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road is an absolute classic; Sean Paul’s Get Busy is clearly a banger; and the Spice Girls’ Too Much is such a tune. (N.B.: definitions of the terms classic, banger, and tune are highly subjective and not an exact science, but that’s the fun part).

I’ve been listening to the same music for twenty years. In fact, I have somehow managed to avoid listening to new (to me) music because sometimes I find that doing so induces a mild sort of anxiety deep within (why is this?) so instead it’s easier to blanket myself with the nostalgic songs that were the soundtrack to the comparatively less complicated years of my life.

I will admit that up until I made the decision to actively not be, I was one of those gatekeeping millenial snobs, like, “I was listening to that band before they were even a band” level of jerk. What an idiot. I don’t have time for that wankery any more, for caring about what people like or for caring what people think about my tastes, but I feel like I’ve really missed out on some good stuff because of it. These are the seeds from which this project was born.

My husband James recently decided to work his way through the The Beatles discography in chronological order. He’d never really listened to them ON PURPOSE, and he turned it into a bit of a game to pick out a favourite track from each album. I was happy to play along because I was one of those kids that were obsessed with the 60s in the 90s (and now 30 years later the cycle repeats). The Beatles are deep within my DNA, my lifeblood. I cannot overstate this. It is a point of pride of mine to watch those David Bennett Piano “Guess the Beatles songs in under a minute” type YouTube videos and pass with a shocking level of accuracy. My best friend and I would write and perform our own Beatles themed productions to our long-suffering, patient parents.

I loved finding out what James’s favourite songs were as he worked through their catalogue and I ended up playing the game too. It sparked something in me. He initially picked the Beatles because he recognised that they were (are) a huge deal, and regardless of how people feel about them or their music, it cannot be disputed that they made an indelible impact. We thought that this could be a fun project- to pick culturally significant artists that we had either bypassed, neglected, or avoided, work through their discographies, and pick at least ONE favourite song from each album.

Then, I decided to “habit stack” this project alongside another – my running training. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with running ever since I was a kid. The love part is that I love doing it. I love how it feels when it’s hard, when it’s easy, while I’m doing it, when it’s over. I was a competive, state-level sprinter right up until the point that it wasn’t possible to be considered an athlete and a self-identifying Jane Lane art-block kid at the same time. I hope it’s different now. I picked up running again in my mid to late 20s as a way to either clear my head or work through writing the chapters of my PhD. I got pretty fit towards the end but then one day I stopped and I didn’t realise that it would be my last run for 4 years. Funny how that happens. The hate part is hating how hard it feels to start again. Last year I started running because I remembered that moving my body made my mind feel good. After my recent ADHD diagnosis I found that I needed to run for my head even more. But, I was impulsive (haha!) and I pushed myself too hard too fast and ended up with some pretty debilitating shin splints (medial tibial stress) that forced me to STOP. My physio gave me some great advice though and he told me that some marathon runners choose to train by simply picking a time to run for rather than a distance. For example, you might say to yourself “I’m going to run for 30 minutes and I’m not going to focus on how far I run during that time.” This approach has really helped me even though it has been a massive blow to my ego to see my time “blow out” when I compare my pace now to when I was at my fittest, but it’s silly to keep thinking like that. I’ve needed to slow down to go further (what an analogy if there ever was one). Picking an album and running for that amount of time, regardless of how many kms I can do in it, has been my current approach to running. After my run, I scroll back through the track listings to pick my favourite from the album, and that’s Banger Moves: My Running Project!

I’ll record the artist/album that I’ve listened to after my runs, alonside my favourite song (and perhaps a cheeky special mention). If you’re interested in knowing any of these things, reading my thoughts, and following my training approach, please stick around and check in whenever you like. Feel free to suggest any artists that I should listen to!