Love Letter To A Record: Joyride On Cody ChesnuTT’s ‘The Headphone Masterpiece’

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 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.


Joyride: Cody ChesnuTT – The Headphone Masterpiece

To my dearest The Headphone Masterpiece,

I sometimes worry that my love for you may ruin me.

36 songs on an album seemed so foreign to me when we first met.

Arrogant even.

The way you toyed with songwriting norms turned my world on its head. You hopped effortlessly from genre to genre, all seamlessly woven in a bedroom by one man.

When you love something so much, what choice is there but to imitate it in the hope that one day you will also attain the perfection you see in this thing that you love so much?

The rawness. The honesty. The beauty of the quiet moments. The aggression of the loud moments.

The rawness!

This album symbolised confidence in one’s own art so perfectly to me. Bravery in storytelling, humour and seriousness coexisting and “perfect imperfections”.

The deeper I’ve gotten into my own music career, the more I’ve realised that I place a high value on a lot of these traits when it comes to writing and performing.

And through all of that, this is what I’ve realised: taking inspiration from something so subversive may make you end up not being like all the other things. I think the greatest achievement you can have as an artist is to be acknowledged for being good at being different.

Thank you for giving me the courage to try.

Love forever

Joyboyyyyy

Wrap your ears around Joyride’s latest single ‘Blue Batmans’ — an all-star collab with Holy Holy’s Oscar DawsonKingswood’s Alex Laska, and Ali Barter — below.

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