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Back in the day, when I was younger, we used to walk over to Record Time off Vaughn and Plymouth Road just to look at CDs and vinyl. We’d flip through the racks for hours, studying album covers, reading liner notes, and trying to decide which one we could actually afford to take home. Sometimes we’d pool our money just to buy a single album — and that record would become our soundtrack for weeks.

If we didn’t catch a song on the radio, that was it. There was no Spotify, no YouTube, no instant stream. The only other shot we had was to log on to AOL — after waiting through the dial-up tones — and hope the track was there. Music wasn’t just something you clicked on; it was something you searched for, something you earned.

There was something special about that time — the patience, the discovery, the excitement of finally hearing a song you’d been chasing. It made every listen feel like an experience, not just background noise.