My memories of listening to Philly soul music on a transistor radio under my pillow after I went to bed, starting when I was seven or eight are very clear and I still love the music from that period, which has been a source of joy and, more recently, sweet feelings of melancholy ever since. As I write this, “Oh Girl” by the Chi-Lites is playing via a Spotify playlist that the service created ‘just for me’ based on my listening habits. There’s something transcendent about that genre of music that opened the floodgates for my love of soul music and all of the other pop music genres that I later came to love and which still hold so much sway over my life.