The first in our Thanks for Listening conversations, with the curator behind Indie Music Vinyl.
Almost everything about the way we listen to music has changed. The formats, the products, the rooms we play them in, the people in front of the speakers, everything. What hasn’t changed is how music shapes our lives. The soundtrack behind a million tiny moments (and big ones too). All of it forms who we are. Whether it’s the song that was on the night you met someone you love, lyrics you used to scream-sing with your family in the car or the melody your grandfather would hum when he was feeling well enough to go outside.
This month, as part of our Thanks for Listening campaign, we’re sitting down with a few of our partners to hear their stories. Everyone who loves music has a story to tell, and we’re overjoyed to hear many of them revolve around how we gift music to those we love.
We’re starting with Odette Nader of Indie Music Vinyl, whose story begins decades before she was born.
A record before a first date
In 1971, at a local carnival in Tampico, Mexico, Odette’s grandfather was introduced to the woman who would become her grandmother. He already knew her parents — it’s a somewhat small town after all — but he had no idea how to approach her. And on paper, the two actually had very little in common.
As good fortune — and friends — would have it, Odette’s grandfather received a tip from a trusted confidante: she was a huge music fan, with a record player and a vinyl collection to go with it. He loved music too. So, he walked into her father’s store the next day, where she worked, and asked if she would show him her records.
While Odette’s grandmother wasn’t initially sure how she should handle this cold advance, a quick glance and a nod from her father helped put her mind at ease. This boy was OK.
The next evening, they spent hours talking while the soundtrack to the 1970 film “Love Story” played in the background. From then on, he visited her every day. A year later, they were married. To this day, her grandparents call the theme from “Love Story” their theme. It’s not just the song they danced to at their wedding, Odette explains, but something bigger than that. More foundational to their relationship.
Odette only learned the story of how her grandparents met a couple of years ago, long after collecting records and listening to music had become the center of her life. “I had no idea that my grandparents literally met and fell in love because of a record,” she says. Today, her grandparents’ record collection still lives in her room. And just recently, a box of records turned up from her great-grandmother’s house, so the family archive keeps growing.
“If it wasn’t for music,” she says, “I literally wouldn’t be here.”
The playlist that changed everything
Music was always around Odette’s house growing up. Her parents loved Latin romantic ballads from artists like Luis Miguel, Alejandro Sanz and Enrique Iglesias. Odette was all pop: the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Disney Channel hits. School was a struggle, she admits, but music always came easily. Lyrics, research about band members, the stories behind the songs. These were the things that she naturally gravitated to, the things that innately evoked her curiosity.
She spent much of her childhood in Texas, and moving back to Mexico as a teenager was hard. Her older brother, Juan Antonio, noticed how much she loved music and how little of it she had actually explored. So, he sent her a list of 30 songs and told her to pick the ones she liked. In exchange, he’d build her a playlist from there.
She picked indie rock. Bands like Vampire Weekend, The 1975, Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes, The Killers, The Smiths, Nirvana, The Beatles, Oasis, and Radiohead. She still has that playlist her brother made for her. “It literally changed my life,” she says.
It was also the first time music ever gave her literal chills. “I do believe there’s people that feel music more than others,” she says. “I feel music so much.”
Her brother, Juan Antonio, is still her guide. The two host the “Record Room” podcast together and trade song links on WhatsApp almost every day. Her friends call him the “Juanager.” “Everything I know about music is literally because of my older brother,” she says.
Every record is an era
When Odette decided to start collecting records, nobody around her was collecting them. She didn’t know how to play one. She ordered eight records online and figured out the rest on her own, with some advice from her brother, naturally. The system wasn’t necessarily the part that mattered the most; it was simply enjoying the music.
What hooked her about the beauty of listening to music on vinyl was the experience of needing to listen to the album in its entirety. It’s also the curated experience the artist wants people to have with their music, including the cover, the gatefold, the order of the tracks and the stories they try to tell across a whole album, not just a single radio track. For the first time, Odette fell in love with albums rather than just songs.
Her collection now numbers more than 800 records, and she can tell you when and why she has nearly every one. “Every record in my collection represents an era of me,” she says. The ones gifted to her typically mean the most. “That person becomes a part of me, too.” We jest that, like tattoos, records are timestamps of where you are at that point in your life, and the people who played a role in it too.
She calls herself a deeply nostalgic person. “Having nostalgia means that you have something to look back on.” It means that there is something worth remembering, or someone who played a big role in your life, it means that there’s things worth hanging on to.
A collection for everyone
Odette’s channel, Indie Music Vinyl, started about eight years ago as something closer to a résumé than a full-time gig. Odette wanted to work in the music industry and needed a way to show people how much she cared about music. At the time, Odette thought she was among rarefied company, but she quickly discovered just how big the vinyl community already was.
For the first three years, she kept it a secret from almost everyone she knew, which gave her the freedom to share what she loved without worrying what anyone at home might think. Today the account has more than 200,000 followers, and Odette thinks of it less as her music collection and more as a shared one. “My favorite part of it is just connecting with people over music,” she says. Every post fills with comments from listeners explaining what an album means to them. Many of her followers are a bit older, and watching a young woman play the records of their youth sends them back to simpler times. “I always get people telling me stories about the music I’m playing, what it means to them and reminding me of how they see themselves through the music I’m playing, it’s special.”
With records as expensive as they are, she knows not everyone can buy the albums they love. So, she posts what she genuinely loves for people who can’t necessarily go out and experience it themselves. The goal is not to chase viral hits, but to share music that she authentically loves, and then invite everyone else in her community (and beyond) to join in. “My collection is for all the community to see and hear.”
It’s also an ode to what her brother did for her so many years ago. “There’s people that don’t have anyone to show them,” she says, “so they fully rely on us to do that.” Introducing new music to people, and replaying the hits they love, is the type of nurturing we all hope for, especially when it comes to music.
Finding the passion again
Turning a passion into a job can come with a cost. As her account grew, Odette admits she had stopped listening to her own records purely for enjoyment as much as she used to. It had become overwhelming, and the hunger to feed active communities can be a huge time commitment.
Then we sent her KLH Model Five speakers and introduced her to the folks in the audio industry to build out the rest of her stereo system. Like many people, when Odette got her new stereo system, the first thing she did was play her favorite music.
The first record she put on was Radiohead’s In Rainbows, one of the first albums she ever played the whole way through. “It felt like I was 14 again, listening to this music for the first time,” she says. “It gave me chills again.” She has been listening ever since. “I literally got a piece of me that I lost back again.”
Music Is life
Ask Odette what she’d want people to take away from following and hanging out with her, and she doesn’t hesitate. “Music is life, music is therapy, music is everything,” she says. For the people who feel music the way she does, she has a simple message: “We’re in the minority, and we have to unite.”
After two long conversations with Odette over the course of a couple of days, a pattern started to emerge. Music has a way of bringing together people who otherwise have little in common, whether it’s through a record collection, a concert or simply talking about albums online. It’s the same thing her grandparents discovered in 1971. More than 50 years later, those records still live in Odette’s room, a few feet from the collection she shares with hundreds of thousands of people around the world. The rooms and the gear have changed. What music does for people hasn’t.
Thank you for listening, Odette.
…and listening
…and listening
…and listening.
Follow Odette on Instagram at @indie_music_vinyl, subscribe to her podcast and explore the KLH Model Five.