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 Love Letter To A Record 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.
ROMderful – Justin Timberlake, Justified, (2002)
Hey there, Justified.
Wow, it’s almost been 20 years. I’m 25 now and I still remember being 6 years old, coming home from school and rushing to MTV just to see if ‘Like I Love You’ or ‘Rock Your Body’ was playing on TV. Also being one of the first CDs I bought, I would listen to you every day and just wish that one day, “if I ever get to make albums when I grow up, I hope I can make one as good as this”.
This is what made me fall in love with The Neptunes and would eventually lead on to N.E.R.D which had just debuted the year before. The funky and infectious synths, the chord changes, the bouncy, crispy, percussive drums, the harmonies. I could NOT get enough of you.
You always take me back to a happy place when times were simple and I was just starting to really fall in love with music and you took that curiosity and ran with it. It was shortly after this that I began to follow my interest in making music and beat making and I didn’t know that down the line, it would end up changing my life in ways I could never have imagined. I became older, my skills became more refined trying to reach that audio honey that I had discovered and the happiness and rainbows that I felt from this project and eventually became this character called “ROMderful.”
The love and happiness this project made me feel taught me to be unique, to be myself, to chase my feelings and never let anyone take that from me. When everyone else was listening to other things on their iPods and mp3 players as the years progressed, I still found myself listening to you every single day even up to this day in 2021. I’ve been able to see the world from making music alone and create a life that makes me feel happy and that all started with the feeling you gave me. All of those days watching MTV just waiting for you to show up, all those days of studying how to make something that made me feel exactly that same way and I hope I’ve been able to make you proud. I still have a lot to learn but you’ve been the best teacher. I always know who to go to when I get lost.
Thank you for being so timeless,
Love Rom <3
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ROMderful’s forthcoming record, ‘PLEASE RECONNECT CONTROLLER?’ is out this Friday 29 October. Listen to latest single ‘ALIENS!’ here.
