It hadn't got a past

Nothing about a first listen announces itself as a first listen.

A first listen is not looking for a timestamp, or anticipating the bridge or your favourite part. It's discovering, it's learning the song. From the second listen, you know what to expect, you already know the song, so you start looking for the details, consciously or unconsciously. The harmonies, the bass line, the back vocals.

You'll never get back to the state of hearing it for the first time. You associate it with the moment you heard it for the first time. It's context-dependent memory. It's a Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memory, a MEAM.

The song and the moment encode together. They become inseparable.

The neurological pathways reactivate that exact same moment the next time you listen to that specific song. You're brought back to the emotional state of that time. It's not a memory anymore, it's replaying the moment.

The song will never exist in that same state again. You can never get that back.

It hadn't got a past, not with you.

You created that past, and therefore that association, by hearing it for the first time and noticing it. That link will forever hold. But it will not always come back. Not every time.

Not knowing it is the first time creates an innocence in hearing the song. As soon as we start acknowledging it, it changes.

The song remains unchanged. The meaning does not. It is not only memories that are recalled, but past versions of ourselves. Sometimes, years later, a song reveals something that was there all along, waiting to be recognised.

Every first listen is already ending before you even realise it's happening.