It’s a list of all the songs I’ve listened to at fifty or more times on my computer or an iDevice, since I started keeping track a little over four years ago:
- “David,” The Radio Dept.
- “The Police And The Private,” Metric
- “Too Young,” Phoenix
- “Good Morning, Hypocrite,” Electric President
- “Daylight Savings Time,” Josh Rouse
- “Dance Anthem of the 80’s,” Regina Spektor
- “Adventures In Solitude,” The New Pornographers
- “Lisztomania,” Phoenix
- “Citrus,” The Hold Steady
- “If I Ever Feel Better,” Phoenix
- “Like She’ll Always Be,” Jimmy Eat World
- “Hold On, Hold On,” Neko Case
- “This Tornado Loves You,” Neko Case
- “La Costa Brava,” Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
- “Powerstripe,” Tigercity
- “My Love Has Gone,” Josh Rouse
- “Alone in Kyoto ,” Air
- “You Stopped Making Sense,” The Radio Dept.
- “Cars And History,” Strays Don’t Sleep
- “Summer,” General Fuzz
- “June,” RJD2 ft. Copywrite
A lot of these actually date back to 2007, when my music collection was constrained by hard drive size and I did a lot more walking around with my iPod. On the whole, though, it’s a pretty accurate list of every song that has obsessed me in recent memory, for better or worse. (It doesn’t include soundtrack songs, which I often loop without really hearing when I’m working or writing.)
I find it interesting that there’s a pretty standard distribution evident in the playcounts: the top three songs have been played as many times as the next six put together, etc. If you want to get a sense of how easily I succumb to certain musical tricks, I made a Grooveshark playlist called The Fifty Club.