
For the last 15/20 years, I thought Cats in the Cradle was a Cat Stevens song. Not because his first name was Cat (he’s since changed it to Yusuf), but it was because Kazaa told me so.
You see, a long time ago before the days of Spotify, my only way of downloading music was through Kazaa. It wasn’t exactly legal, but then again neither was the Iraq war.
Kazaa was a godsend at a time when highstreet stores such as HMV would sell albums for £15, which is an awful lot of money for a CD that you might not actually enjoy, and Napster was destroyed by the likes of Metallica. And so, Kazaa became my go-to for any music I craved.
However, whilst Spotify has a polished layout with endless numbers of perfectly organised albums, the songs on Kazaa could be uploaded by any old idiot on the Internet, including those who thought Cats in the Cradle was a Cat Stevens song.
There were other inaccuracies as well. I could never find a decent version of Nirvana’s Lithium, and so every download I ever found was a a dodgy live recording. And Weezer’s This Is Such A Pity was a karaoke version sung by an enthuastic Asian man.
But they of course seem trivial compared to Kazaa’s biggest crime – that Cats in the Cradle should have been credited to Harry Chapin.
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