I try not to be judgmental, but I have a thing for correct nomenclature and proper pronunciations. I’ll let slide anyone who pronounces the “L” in “calm,” and I’ll give a little bit of slack to anyone who initially struggles with “quinoa.” But if you insist that “Uber” (as in “You’ve had too much to drink. Let me call you an Uber”) is pronounced “Yuber,” that’s when the red mist descends.
I also get a little crazy when someone pronounces David Bowie’s last name like it’s the front of a boat. Despite being spelled “Gahan,” the name of the lead singer of Depeche Mode wants you to know that it’s “Dave GAHN.” And the guy out front of Queens of the Stone Age? Contrary to anything you’ve heard, it’s Josh HOMmy. (Trust me. I’ve talked to the man.)
I get even more exorcised when someone insists on using the word “vinyls” when it comes to music pressed onto plastic. This isn’t just a mispronunciation; it’s a modern perversion that’s crept into the English language over the last couple of decades.
English is very strange when it comes to how words are supposed to sound. It can only be learned, though, through tough thorough thought. In most cases, we’ll add an “S” to a word to communicate that there’s more than one of an object. Linguists say that mass nouns are subject to “countification.” But not always.
Vinyl is like deer. We don’t say “Hey, look at that herd of deers!” It’s just “deer.” Type either term into any word processing environment and you’ll immediately be greeted by a squiggly red line beneath it, telling you to smarten up. But too many people new to record collecting insist that if you have more than one vinyl record, you have vinyls. No, you don’t. You have two or more vinyl records.
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I understand how this can be confusing. A “record” is anything that was recorded, be it on vinyl, magnetized cellulose tape, or the amalgamation of plastic and aluminum that goes into the manufacture of a compact disc. When old-school records (read: vinyl) went out of fashion in the ’90s, we still went to a record store to buy our CDs. A CD is a subspecies of record. So is a cassette, just with a more specific name.
I was at a record show last weekend with tables and tables of LPs (long-playing 33 1/3 RPM records) and seven-inch singles (45 RPM records) in a hall that was filled with collectors of all ages. In that community, you will never hear “vinyl” used in its plural form. If anyone did, they’d immediately expose themselves as a hobbyist, a dabbler and a newbie. And if you’ve ever seen the movie High Fidelity, you’ll know how grumpy the vinyl community can be. “Shouldn’t you be shopping at Urban Outfitters for music to play on your portable Crosley turntable?”
To be fair, when the vinyl album was first introduced in 1948, “vinyls” was an acceptable term. After all, the linguistic rules of “countification” applied, right? In fact, if you go back to music magazines from the 1950 and 1960ss, you will occasionally run across a plural form of vinyl. I quote from a Time magazine article published in 1964: “While a few audio purists might quibble over the fidelity of some of the vintage vinyls …”
It’s unclear when the shift to “vinyl” as a plural term happened, but for decades, one had a “collection of vinyl” when it came to music, not a “collection of vinyls.” Even the Oxford English Dictionary defines vinyls only as it relates to the variety of different chemical formulations of polyvinyl chloride.
Why such pushback? Shouldn’t record collectors welcome members into their club in order to help the format continue its resurrection and viability? Well, yes, but we record collectors can be a stubborn and conservative lot — and frankly, a lot of us have been around a long time. One of the many reasons people are attracted to vinyl records has to do with their permanence, the tradition, and the history behind the format. “Vinyls” is a giant peeve amongst those who kept the format alive during those dark years. Despite pleas from sources such as Variety, we will not bend. We are not OK with your new slang.
There’s also been fierce resistance to what’s seen as a hipster influence on our world. Are you trying to be ironic and cool by insisting on saying “vinyls?” Is this your revenge on Boomers and gen X? Ain’t gonna work, fella. We will shout you down. Young people who want to be part of the herd need to know the language if they want to be taken seriously. Imagine going into a haute couture boutique and asking for the latest from VerSASE instead of Ver-SA-chee.
Look, we all make mistakes and there’s a learning curve when it comes to being accepted by a social tribe. So please, going forward, use the following plural options when referring to multiple grooved plastic music storage media: Records, LPs, albums and vinyl records. Heck, I’ll even take “wax” over “vinyls.”
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to pick up a case of beer to go along with a nice variety of cheese and a kilo of shrimp that I plan to feed to my sheep. See what I did there?
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