when something is already perfect, why must I try to make it even better?

January 24, 2011 | Filed Under Music 

this is one of my favourite albums ever. It is just.. absolutely, kneebucklingly, heartbreaking, and I tend to go for that. Yes, I know I am weird and masochistic, but I really can’t help it. I can’t remember how I first heard about it, but I’m sure it was somewhere on the internet. The internet is wonderful in that way. It was love at first listen, and I wanted to hear more. I needed more. There had to be more.

Being the girl I am who grew up on boybands, I tend to fall more for the male singers in pairings like these, so I decided to look up this da Costa dude. Firstly I found out that he is younger than me. The little bastard is younger than me, and he has been going for years and he is this fantastic. I hate him.

And then I remembered I don’t really hate him at all, well only a little, and that I really needed to find more of his music.

This was what I could find. It wasn’t his first and only album, but it was hist most recent one, and it was the only one I could find, even with my, quite extraordinary (if I say so myself) googling-skills. I didn’t mind so much though. I didn’t have any time to think about all the songs I was missing out on, because this one was just so gosh darned brilliant. I mean, really, truly, this little boy could sing my heart out of my chest and into his hands if he wanted to.

With these two albums I was content for a couple of years, knowing in the back of my head that I had tried to find more, and I couldn’t. Maybe even mentally blocking out the fact that there even existed more of them.

Content up until today.

Today I got back into one of my da Costa-moods. Yes, I have them, they are sad and wonderful and beautiful and magical. Jealous?

Anyways, I tried googling again. I found that he actually has three albums out that I hadn’t even heard of, one of which had come out in 2009, a year or so after Typical American Tragedy. Now this is like Christmas to me. Like true, joyous, I’m five-years-old-and-I-can’t-sleep Christmas. But still, my leet searching skills are to no avail. I can’t find it anywhere. No less-moral sites have it on offer, none of my normal CD-ordering sites have it.. I mean I’ve been known to frown at people who start liking the music I’ve liked for years when everyone else hops on the band wagon all of a sudden, but seriously, give this guy the credit he deserves and start liking him enough so I can at least find him in online record stores?!

Then I remembered that I’ve recently started bending my principles when it comes to buying music. I buy CDs as often as I can, because I truly want to support the musicians I adore, but I don’t like paying for music when I don’t get the physical CD in exchange. Buying from iTunes just feels wrong, but as I said, it’s become an acceptable last resort, so to iTunes I went. And oh, miracles of miracles, there they are. All of his albums. I was very, very tempted to immediately buy all the ones I didn’t have, but I managed to convince myself that maybe it would be a good idea to just start with the newest one, before I go all VISA card-crazy. As you do. So bought it I did, and after a painfully slow download which completely bottlenecked everything I tried to do online for twenty minutes or so, I had it.

Now picture me reverently pressing play on something I’ve wanted for years. Because that’s what I did. Why? I had two absolutely masterpieces of albums that moved me more than I can say, why did I go looking for more?

Ir’s not that the new one is bad. It’s just not magical. Maybe one or two songs have gripped me after a few play-throughs, and in all it sounds way to radiofied. In the way that everything feels produced and held back and it’s just not wonderful as it should be. I will keep listening, and it might grow on me. In fact, I’m sure it will. It just will never be as good as what I already had, and I’ll always ask myself why I even tried.

Sorry, Anthony, I still love you.

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