Is it 'vinyl' or 'vinyls'? This Record Store Day debate is about much more than LPs

A debate that’s been spinning in the hipster music community has scratched its way onto the pop charts: What’s the proper term for a stack of music purchased from a record store? Is it “vinyl” or “vinyls”?

The discussion goes beyond grammar or music, putting a needle on how we talk to one another, and it takes new significance as MRC Data, in collaboration with Billboard, showed in its most recent annual report that for the first time since tracking began in 1991, vinyl LP sales passed CDs as the most-sold physical music format, 41.7 million for records to 40.6 million for CDs.

The report also showed that the ongoing “Vinyl Revival” has seen LP sales soar from 27.5 million units in 2020 to 41.7 million units in 2021. The same report showed that Record Store Day, celebrated this year on April 23, has grown from 165,000 units sold in 2011 to about 2.4 million in 2021.

So, if you go buy some for yourself, do you ask for “vinyl” or “vinyls”?

'You just say 'records'; you don't say 'vinyls' '

Phoenix-based DJ MyGodComPlex, Kenneth Williams, suggests neither.

“To me,” Williams said, “you have a (new) generation of record collectors, and I’m happy they’re collecting, don’t get me wrong, but you have this (new) generation of record collectors who have taken it upon themselves to make a choice to not say the thing that everyone has said forever, which is, if you’re talking about plural records, you just say ‘records’; you don’t say ‘vinyls.’”

The 47-year-old Williams is a former record store owner who has been collecting music since his teens.

“The word ‘vinyls’ … I don’t remember it from my record store days,” he said. “I just remember starting to hear it over the last 10 years. It irks me, primarily, because this form of media has always been referred to as ‘vinyl’ if it’s singular, but no one who collects or spins … has ever said ‘vinyls.’ ”

Think of it as a grammar problem, which I’ll summarize from a Washington Post blog from 2014. If you buy at cassette tape, you add it to your collection of tapes. If you buy a CD, you add it to your collection of CDs. So if you buy a vinyl LP, why not add it to your collection of vinyls?

The answer, as the Post’s pop music critic Chris Richards wrote, depends on your interpretation of the noun “vinyl.”

Is it a mass noun? A noun that can’t be counted? Like, say, “wine”? And if so, is it cool to say “wines,” if for example, you’re talking about the wide varieties of reds or whites or regions of the world where they’re produced?

Or is “vinyl” one of those nouns that’s the same in singular or plural form, like “mud” or “homework”?

Others argue it can be 'vinyl' or 'vinyls'

Cecelia Watson, author of “Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark,” has experience in solving this kind of English entrapment.

“I think the truth is both things,” she said. “The plural of ‘vinyl’ can be ‘vinyl’; and it can be ‘vinyls,’ as well.”

Miriam-Webster would disagree. The dictionary says the plural of “vinyl” is “vinyl.”

But Watson’s powerful and thought-provoking 2019 exploration of semicolon use, which started with a disagreement with an editor, shows it’s not that simple.

“Novelists from George Orwell to Donald Barthelme have discoursed on its ugliness, or irrelevance, or both,” she wrote in the introduction to “Semicolon.” “Kurt Vonnegut was unequivocal in his last book, advising writers, ‘Do not use semicolons … all they do is show you’ve been to college.’ ”

In her research into whether she or her editor was correct about semicolon use, Watson realized that English grammar rule and guidebooks are far younger than the language, itself. And the standards shifted, depending on who wrote the rules and when.

She explained, “This, kind of, very natural, living, evolving, constantly different thing, which is English, got compressed into these rules that were meant to keep it static, immobile; and if we think of it in good terms, it was meant to make English learnable and understandable and a good way to communicate.

“But that has not been the effect that rules have had, for the most part … They’ve typically been agents of confusion, sometimes means by which we judge other people for the wrong reasons.”

Set newcomers straight or evolve with them?

In other words, Northerners judge Southerners for saying “y’all.” English teachers judge everybody for saying “ain’t.” And the record store cognoscenti judge the newbies for saying “vinyls.”

“With vinyls,” Watson said, “I honestly cannot see a reason, other than habit and nostalgia that we can’t just say ‘vinyls.’

“I do think that there’s an interesting conversation to be had with people who feel so passionate about the word ‘vinyl.’ What’s their logic for wanting to retain it? And I wonder if we thought about that, would we hear some incredibly interesting and compelling stories about their first time in a record store? Or what it means to them to have a collection of records?”

Williams notes that the evolution of the word “vinyls” shows that older record collectors such as himself probably haven’t done the best job of embracing new collectors, who are essential for keeping their hobby alive.

“If they want to call it ‘vinyls’ and change it, I get it,” he said. “Where I get angry is that the people that sell the media, the record stores or even the record companies or producers or artists, they latch onto it.”

He said the veterans should be telling the newcomers “we’re happy that you’re interested in this, but they’re actually called ‘records,’ bro.”

'Why did you say that?' It's OK to ask

Watson, for her part, raised the point that in the Twitter-influenced, Age of the Internet, “definitive soundbites are what everybody seems to be shooting for.”

It could be instructive to dance away from that type thinking as we try to answer the question of “vinyl” vs. “vinyls.”

“There’s so much pressure to say everything right and perfectly the first time,” Watson said. “It’s almost never the case that I see people coming into a controversial statement or something that offended them and saying, ‘Hey, why did you say that?’ or ‘What did you mean? Because when you say that this is what I hear; and I’m not so sure about that.’

“I think the world would be a lot less stressful place if we could all make it our habit to have that be our first reaction” … Instead of “trying to one-up each other with poster phrases that we’re trying to slap each other with.”

Considering all this, the answer to “vinyl” vs. “vinyls” is simple: Let the debate spin on.

The discussion puts a needle on themes that are far bigger than grammar or music.

It turns up the volume on intergenerational connections and civil discourse.

Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @SayingMoore.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Record Store Day 2022 debate: Do you say 'vinyl' or 'vinyls'?