Albums that taste like childhood.
I find it fascinating how our senses store different things in our brains, connecting them to obscure scents at Grandma’s house, food I tasted once at school, or even a song listened to in the car on a Scottish holiday. I was reminded of this recently, coming across Martyn Joseph’s discography on my phone and choosing to listen to one of his albums. Instantly, I was transported back to my Mum’s car driving anywhere from swimming lessons to holiday playschemes, or on the way back from after-school clubs. I was surprised at how easily the lyrics came to me, as unthinkingly I was joining in as if some sort of muscle memory had been prompted.
Martyn Joseph was certainly not the only artist to grace our car speakers or to soundtrack my childhood. In fact, there were far more artists and bands than I even realise now, as a large portion of their songs I have incorrectly attributed to WHAM! (I am slowly re-educating myself, but there’s always at least one song that slips the net). In tribute to those artists and songs that I was brought up on, here are five albums that are undeniably childhood to me.
Martyn Joseph by Martyn Joseph
Having already mentioned it, how could I not include Martyn Joseph’s self-named album. At this point, I just want to see how many times I can include the name ‘Martyn Joseph’ in this blog post in the hope of being the first link to come up if you search for him online. But also, Martyn filled my childhood with such incredible lyrics like “everything in heaven comes apart … the olive branch, the passport queue, the fifteen-minute super loo” and “demons and diamonds and lovers of gold, and those who stand warm whilst others freeze in the cold”. There’s such an incredible rhythm to them that makes belting them out as a young girl pretending to perform to adoring fans so much fun. Also, it mentions a toilet.
We did also listen to other Martyn Joseph albums, however, I think this album included the songs I remember most and consider to be his greatest hits. There was a story told in every song, whether it was returning from a hard day of work to a boring partner, changing the world for someone you love, or becoming perhaps a little too self-aware. As someone who didn’t really listen to lyrics for a long time, the music was so expressive that you didn’t need to listen to the words to pick up the sounds and drama.
Mamma Mia! (Original Cast Recording)
For those wondering, this was my introduction to ABBA’s music. However, there are some key differences between ABBA’s recordings and the original cast recording – mainly that the pop songs don’t have pauses for speech within the song. This really threw me off when listening to the actual songs, not being ready to be thrown into another verse or chorus and waiting on the speaker to announce “I know why you invited me here… Sophie, I’m your DAD!” It also has led me always to distrust the song ‘I Do, I Do, I Do’ because the actor in the original cast recording sounded creepy to me and I felt like Donna was getting forced into marrying him unwillingly.
However, over time and with the support of friends, I did discover the rest of ABBA’s discography and also that the songs are a bit easier to dance to if you’re not stopping for dialogue so frequently. Yet the resonance of those actors’ voices will always remind me of long drives on holiday, probably raining, en route to a British beach. Of course, there is no match for Agnetha and Anni-Freid, but there’s some nostalgia for the musicalized versions that will take me back every time.
Call Off the Search by Katie Melua
Back in 2016, along with my parents, I went to a Christmas radio recording of a concert that Katie Melua was performing at. I don’t remember much about the event, other than it was at the Royal Festival Hall, I ate soup, and generally was not feeling well throughout. However, Katie sang an incredible rendition of the Carol of the Bells in a Scandinavian language that was truly magical. Her voice has always been soulful and rich, adding depth and character to her songs as in Call Off the Search, which I grew up with. Occasionally, often around Christmas, I return to her music and again am reminded of the expression her voice contains.
I do partially blame Katie for my dissatisfaction with the working world. ‘Crawling up a hill’ all too easily provided me with words that explained how I feel about working for corporate bosses as well as the craving to be performing instead. Other songs from this album that I assumed were worldwide hits included ‘The Closest Thing to Crazy’ and ‘Blame it on the Moon’. Both these really appealed to me as someone who wanted to be a bit different and original, as I related to what I interpreted the words to mean rather than the bluesy love ballads that they were.
Help! by The Beatles
I believe for the majority of my childhood, the only band I was actually aware of was the Beatles. Whenever anyone asked me to describe my family (as you often are when you’re learning to write and have to practise by writing about your weekend every Monday), the description of my Dad would include that the Beatles were his favourite band. This may be because I didn’t know of any other bands my Dad liked and barely was aware of any songs beyond ‘Yesterday’. However, on reflection, my childhood has been filled by my Dad bursting into song using a Beatles lyric to segway into it with varying levels of success. I can quite easily visualise him passionately singing ‘Ticket to Ride’, no doubt in response to being given any sort of ticket, as well as aggressively dancing to ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’.
Really, we listened to a lot of the Beatles so picking out one album by them does seem a little unfair. Yet there’s something about the beginning of ‘Help!’ that feels distinctly like childhood. Perhaps just the frequency that I needed help and so was on the receiving end of Dad’s best rendition of the song. But also the pace and joyous feeling of the music – I know the lyrics aren’t the most positive, but as I’ve mentioned, I didn’t listen to the lyrics at a young age. What mattered was the feel of the song, and to me, this was a chaotically happy song.
Yours Truly, Angry Mob by Kaiser Chiefs
This album perhaps marks the latter stages of childhood and a move into teenagedom, which is almost the ideal angsty setting for it. Although the album did belong to my Dad, the clearest memory is of my year 3 (or 4?) teacher telling the class that his wife had had a baby and they were naming her Ruby (the baby, not the wife). Either someone in the class was incredibly trendy and knew the song Ruby at the time to then teach the rest of us, or our teacher taught us himself. This teacher had previously created little plays for our class and rewritten song lyrics to be on a theme, so it wouldn’t be beyond him to have introduced us to Ruby the song and the baby.
Other songs from the album that seem to be in my subconscious include ‘The Angry Mob’, ‘Heat Dies Down’ and ‘I Can Do It Without You’. Also, on reflection, lyrics such as “I want to retire, no longer required, I want to get by without the man on my back”, again may have contributed to my attitude to spending the majority of my life working. This album also saw a revival in my listening to it during my bus journeys to secondary school, adding to the anarchic and rebellious themes I got from the beat and tone of the music. The singers seemed to me to put minimal effort into sounding good, almost making the whole album coincidental that it hadn’t turned out to be rubbish.
If you want to read more about my musical history, you may be interested in my falling back in love with Bastille or my thoughts on travelling by song.
Rebekah's Ramblings 
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