Twelve inches of vinyl adorn my bookshelf. In various colors, each circle is distinct, although it may not appear so at first.

My vinyl collection is made up of seven of my favorite albums of all time: Red (Taylor’s Version), folklore, and Midnights, all by Taylor Swift; Brightside and The Lumineers by The Lumineers; Let It Be by the Beatles; the soundtrack of Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2.

Although my collection is small and far from complete, it is one of the most characteristic aspects of my bedroom. I am a musician and a music lover. Rhythms and notes, melodies and harmonies—they will forever be ingrained in my mind, run over again and again like the grooves of a well-loved vinyl album.

So, what better way to store that love, to collect it, than in the ‘purest form of music?’ My cherry-red Audio-Technica record player and my bookshelf speaker sit proudly among my plants and books, the other great material loves of my life.

The modern resurgence of vinyl is warranted and overdue. This form of music appreciation should never have gone out of style in the first place.

Vinyl is an art in and of itself. It can shift with the trends of the day just as any other timeless art form. Each individual vinyl record can have its own color, its own design. The physical limitations of a twelve-inch circle do not apply to the beauty that vinyl can bestow.

Record players themselves are just as flexible. This is one major reason why vinyl has made such a resurgence. These days, aesthetics is everything, and that is what these have become. Record players, once an eye-sore, have been compacted into pretty little decorations that add to the ambiance of any room’s style.

Some of the most popular of these are the Victrola vintage suitcase turntables. While these machines may look extremely appealing, they are the opposite of what any true record collector could hope for in a turntable.

Vinyl is incredibly fragile. The tiniest scratch can cause skipping and destroy the integrity of an album. These Victrola turntables, which are cheap, accessible, and pretty, are not made in a way that will protect the records it plays from harm.

Among several disappointments including packaging and quality, especially of the stylus (the fiber that runs along the grooves of the record), the most degrading to vinyl is the lack of a counterweight. 

The tonearm—the part of the machine that holds that stylus—has a weight of its own, and therefore, without a counterweight on the other end, the stylus will dig into the vinyl grooves, pushed down by the weight of the arm. This causes the grooves to be deepened and will eventually render the record unplayable.

In the case of turntables, quality over quantity (or, in this case, price and aesthetics) is certainly the way to go. But, this doesn’t mean that it is impossible to find a pretty turntable that both adds to the atmosphere of the room and preserves the warm, rich tone of the records.

This tone is what sets vinyl apart from other forms of music. Analog music, which can be enhanced by a good speaker, will never match the tone quality and depth of a vinyl record.

Vinyl is back in fashion. It may have missed a few decades, but it wasn’t out for long—the boxes of my father’s vinyl sitting dusty in our basement are a testament to that. It wasn’t out for long, but hopefully, it will be in forever.