Lost in the Noise

In the early 1990s, music was a treasure. My father, in his late twenties, would save every spare penny to buy cassette albums of Andy Lau, Aaron Kwok, and Jacky Cheung. Most were cheap copies, but a few originals—rare and precious—were locked away. My brother and I were never allowed to touch them. Originals were expensive, and living in our remote village made them almost impossible to find. Even if you could pay, authenticity was never guaranteed. Music demanded effort; it had value because it was scarce.

I remember my father’s ritual: washing his hands, drying them carefully, and gently inserting a tape into the radio recorder. I could not always tell if the songs were truly great, but the attention and care surrounding them made them feel special. Music was rare, deliberate, intimate.

As I grew older, I wanted music that could also teach me. I asked my father for an MP3 player—a small, no-name device with 128 MB of memory, enough for forty songs. I downloaded BBC and VOA programs to practice English, but soon it became my main portal to music itself. Every track was chosen deliberately: songs I loved stayed; others were deleted as I explored the Internet’s shared libraries. Music required attention; every song mattered.

Today, music is everywhere. Streaming platforms promise endless access, yet discovering something truly worthwhile has never been harder. Algorithms dictate what we see, social trends dictate what we hear. The abundance, ironically, has made music feel hollow. I try to follow new trends, but it is overwhelming. The songs that once carried meaning—the ones my father treated like treasures, the tracks I curated on my MP3—seem almost lost in the noise.

My father remains faithful to the music of his youth. The artists and songs he grew up with form a narrow but enduring universe. I, by contrast, explored far wider worlds—from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China to Western artists like the Backstreet Boys, Avril Lavigne, and the Eagles—but even I struggle to find music with the same depth.

Music used to be a pursuit. You had to search for it, earn it, savor it. Today, it arrives effortlessly, yet it feels fleeting, almost disposable. The thrill of discovery—the patience, the anticipation, the joy of finding something real—has been replaced by constant streams, endless playlists, and fleeting clicks.

And yet, I return to the songs of my youth. Not because they are trendy or technically perfect, but because they resonate. They are the music that mattered—the melodies that shaped my memories, the echoes of a time when music demanded attention and care. In the abundance of today, that deliberate, meaningful listening feels almost impossible to find.

Music surrounds us, yet in a strange way, it is more elusive than ever. We have access to everything, but we lose the sense of discovery, the connection, the wonder. And so, I cling to those old songs, small islands of authenticity in a vast, noisy ocean.