In his final show for Radio 1, Nick Grimshaw summed up his lifelong passion for radio, explaining “it was all the things I loved, conversation and music.” Across the many timeslots he occupied during his fourteen years at Radio 1, Grimmy always struck that balance between easy, conversational style and a clear passion for music. More recently he has been able to use streaming services and social media to curate playlists and highlight songs which have formed the soundtrack to his week without the constraints of official playlists which dictate much of the musical content on primetime shows at Radio 1.  
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In an interview with Gentleman’s Journal in 2018 when he made the move from breakfast to drivetime, Grimmy commented that radio is “so much more intimate than television…you’re talking for three hours, completely unscripted—the background to someone’s morning.” For years Radio 1 served that function for me. I used the radio as my alarm clock and woke up to the breakfast show, getting ready with presenters such as Chris Evans, Zoe Ball and Sara Cox every morning before school. At the weekend I would sit at my mum and dad’s stereo with a blank cassette tape and record my favourite songs from the Top 40 countdown and at night I listened to Radio 1 legend John Peel and Mark and Lard’s late-night show which was vastly better than their short stint on breakfast. I discovered so much music through Radio 1 and local radio stations during a time which was defined by the rise of New Labour, Britpop and the countless indie bands that covered my bedroom walls together with clippings from NME and Melody Maker.

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As the world grew quiet and countries imposed localised or national quarantines and shut down large public gatherings, music has been in a state of flux with new releases postponed, concerts cancelled and many artists describing a sense of creative malaise. For music fans, that joy of liveness became a site of palpable longing. The sweat and thrum of bodies in a pub or concert hall turned into an impossible dream and the sunshine and freshly cut grass served as a reminder of cancelled festivals and the absence of friends. Missing live music is something Rob Sheffield wrote about in a piece called Life Without Live featured in Rolling Stone magazine and I won’t repeat those sentiments here. Instead, I want to reflect on just a small sample of the music that has been produced during lockdown and the way musicians and music fans have adapted to life in lockdown. 

​I didn’t know much about LA based electropop group BEGINNERS before I discovered ‘Who Knows.’ It passed me by when it was first released in 2014 on the group’s self-titled debut EP, but I stumbled upon it a couple of years later. Sometimes a song finds us at exactly the right moment and this became my summer anthem in a year when my partner and I made big changes in our lives. We left London, went on an American road trip and I curated playlists filled with upbeat, electronic pop that came to define a personal era of hope, freedom and change.

That summer I put on my headphones and soundtracked our last few months in London and the travels that followed with chart-topping hits from Sia, Calvin Harris and Rihanna, Sigala, Major Lazer, DJ Snake, Jonas Blue, MØ, Zara Larsson and countless others. Listening to those tunes will always immerse me in a city that still holds a piece of my heart, bringing back memories of London's East End and its buzzing markets, the quiet, residential streets of Chelsea and the energy and colour of the West End. I can feel the sun on my face and taste coffee from Square Mile cafés, chilled pints of cider from Soho pubs and crisp glasses of wine from bars tucked away in courtyards and on rooftops.