Many of us can link a certain album to pivotal moments in our lives. Whether it’s the first record you bought with your own money, the chord you first learnt to play on guitar, the song that soundtracked your first kiss, the album that got you those awkward and painful pubescent years or the one that set off light bulbs in your brain and inspired you to take a big leap of faith into the unknown – music is often the catalyst for change in our lives and can even help shape who we become.
In this new series, Music Feeds asks artists to reflect on their relationship with music and share with us stories about the effect music has had on their lives.
Here are their love letters to records that forever changed their lives.
Pete Murray: Radiohead – ‘OK Computer’
Dear OK Computer,
It definitely wasn’t love at first sight! I remember a lot of my friends saying how amazing you were but I really couldn’t see what the big deal was.
It would have been at least 12 months since you had been hanging around when I actually took a good look at you. I guess I was intrigued as to what the big deal was so I started to take notice.
I remember touching you for the first time and turning you on and I was like, ok, you have something different. But I still wasn’t that interested in going any further. Just the fact that all my friends were still loving you so much I had to try you again.
This time I took you for a drive in my Kombi and I even let you stay over for a few nights and you started to get into my head. Without hearing anything of the outside world it was just you and me. There was something really intriguing that I started to like about you. You were so different to all the others. You looked different, you sounded different and you were just there for me and no one else could even get close. I started to connect to you in certain ways that I had never connected to anyone else before. There were all these different amazing parts to you that I had never noticed before and my feelings were really starting to grow stronger.
As time went on I could not let you go. You were fully in my head and my heart for about a two year period and I really struggled to be with anyone else. The way that you spoke to me, no one has ever spoken to me like that before. Your softness and tenderness would float like a leaf blowing in the autumn wind and would then erupt into the most mesmerising powerful explosion I had ever experienced. There wasn’t a moment when being with you that I wanted to skip anything.
You took my day, you warmed my soul, you changed my life and make me roll until all my dying inside was done. You carried me through my darkest pain, my death was gone my angel came and there you stood exploding in my mind. That’s when I knew, my heart was completely connected to your soul.
Thank you.
Love,
Pete Murray
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Pete Murray’s new album ‘Camacho’ is out now and the Byron Bay singer-songwriter has just kicked off a huge national tour that runs through July, August and into September. See dates and details here. This year, to mark the 20th anniversary of ‘OK Computer’ Radiohead reissued their seminal album in a new edition called ‘OKNOTOK’, out now.
