In Defence of the CD: Give It the Love It Deserves

Here’s a not-so-hot take: I think the CD is due a revival.

There’s nothing quite like pulling a record from its sleeve, dropping the needle, and hearing that first satisfying crackle. Vinyl is magical, and I’ll never stop loving it. There’s a ceremony and romance to it that feels uniquely ‘real’ in a world that seems increasingly unreal and disposable. It’s a quiet but poignant “fuck you” to Spotify and its soulless algorithms.

But here’s the thing — the vinyl revival? It’s never really felt like mine to revive. 

My first memories of vinyl are sitting cross-legged on the living room floor as a kid, smudging fingerprints all over my dad’s Led Zeppelin and mum’s Simon & Garfunkel records. Vinyl was how I experienced their music, not how I discovered my own. It got me on the path, but it wasn’t my journey.

For me, the format that truly defined my formative years was the humble CD. And yet, somewhere along the way, CDs became uncool – dismissed as the awkward middle child between vinyl’s romance and streaming’s convenience.

But honestly? It deserves better.

CDs have all the tactile joy of holding music in your hands – the artwork, the lyrics, the sleeve notes – but they’re compact, portable, durable, and cheap enough that I don’t panic when they get scratched. They’re small enough, too, that I can slip one past my wife without her noticing every time the postman delivers a new addition.

They sound great on almost anything. And, crucially, they’re a format I feel more connected to.

I’m talking about CD cases rattling around behind the passenger seat of my rusty Fiat Punto on road trips with friends. The burned mix CDs for school crushes and best mates. The Sony Discman that accompanied me on school trips, family holidays, and endless hours of bedroom escapes.

Lately, I’ve found myself buying albums on vinyl that never even existed on vinyl when they were first released – and it feels a bit like I’m chasing a nostalgia that isn’t mine. 

My nostalgia lives in running straight to HMV the moment that brown envelope hit my palm after a shitty Saturday job, then catching the bus home with a bag full of CDs just waiting – hoping – to discover what musical treats lay within.

It’s the scratched copy of Dookie shuffled between ABBA’s Greatest Hits and Dire Straits in my dad’s multi-CD changer in the boot of his Vauxhall Astra. That’s the soundtrack of my youth – not some vinyl revival from a decade I barely lived through.

So yeah, vinyl rules. But CDs? They deserve equal love. They were my first musical companion, and I’m guessing it’s the same for many of you who come to Cat’s Claw Records — the format that shaped the way we discovered, collected, and carried music through our teenage years.