Cat Stevens - Greatest Hits

My friend Natasha enlisted me in that album thing going around on social media. A fun quarantine distraction and way to get reacquainted with some of the music in your life.

The first album I remember putting on was this record. Yes, it was a record, released in 1975, 4 years before I was born. I would put it on loud in my family's living room and position myself in the middle of the room. I'd spin around and around on our wall to wall carpeting until I couldn't stand anymore. Unceremoniously, I’d throw myself to the floor with my eyes closed. Mind unwinding.

A few years later, during talent week at my kindergarten (or was it preschool?), I needed a talent to perform. It was a low key affair, just for the class, no audience. My mom said, “You know all the words to Moonshadow, why don’t you sing that?” I wasn’t very enthusiastic, but my mom is pretty encouraging, she’s good like that. So, I brought the record to school and showed my teacher where to queue it up. As the day went on I was like, “IDK about this…” Singing is not my thing and I already knew that about myself. I wished I had picked a sports thing to do and with the pressure building, I couldn’t come up with anything to do instead. So a few kids go and they are not memorable. Five-year-old me is not impressed so I start to get my confidence back a bit. Then the kid in front of me goes. He does a HEADSPIN* and I. AM. SHOOK. I make a mental note to try and hang out at this kids house and also to teach myself a headspin immediately. I told the teacher to pull my number and never regretted it. For the next many years I held this album in my mind as something akin to “nerd music,” in the 80s pejorative understanding of the word.

It was many, many years until I heard it again and when I finally did, it was magical, as it had been once. It brought me straight back to our 80s living room watching dust rise from the carpet creating tiny cosmos in shafts of sunlight as I stomping around screaming Hard Headed Woman.

Nowadays, I am flabbergasted that many people here in Turkey know of this album. They have an inexplicable love of American Classic Rock.

* I later realized that this was my intro to Hip Hop.