{"id":8496,"date":"2008-10-16T11:47:40","date_gmt":"2008-10-16T15:47:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=8496"},"modified":"2022-10-12T22:59:46","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T02:59:46","slug":"top-25-most-played-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=8496","title":{"rendered":"“Top 25 Most Played Songs”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best thing about the iPod playlist “Top 25 Most Played” is that you can’t hide who you are when you look at it. All is revealed. You may wish <\/em>you were the kind of person who listened to Igor Stravinsky enough that he would show up on your Top 25 Most Played – but unless you are, organically, the kind of person who listens to Stravinsky on a daily basis – he will not be in your Top 25 Most Played. If you want your music to give off some kind of specific impression meant to impress others – if you want someone to think you’re cool, or eclectic, or deep, or if you scoff at music made by ‘the man’ – if any of these things are an issue for you, then don’t let anyone look at your Top 25 Most Played. Just keep it under wraps. If you’re not comfortable with people knowing that you listen to “Day Dream Believah” so often that it makes it into your Top 25, then I suggest just not mentioning it. The Top 25 Most Played playlist never lies. It shows you to yourself. It can surprise you.<\/p>\n

In the interest of full disclosure – here is my utterly bizarre (and quite revealing) Top 25 Most Played.<\/p>\n

I’m kind of amazed that there isn’t more Foo Fighters or Eminem on there … but I guess not. The Top 25 Most Played DOES NOT LIE.<\/p>\n

So here it is, here I am, in my unvarnished glory:<\/p>\n

(Also, in your iTunes Library you can see how many times each song has been played in your library … and I will go even further with my revelations today and say that: my #1 song – in terms of times-played – is so far beyond every other song numerically that I don’t know if other music could ever catch up. Maybe someday I’ll try to figure out why I listened to that song on an endless loop for a good month and a half, but not right now. I will say that it was NOT because it was Christmastime, and it had to something to do with Michael – but I am honestly not sure what, exactly.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, here is my list:<\/p>\n

SHEILA’S TOP 25 MOST PLAYED SONGS ON IPOD IN DESCENDING NUMERICAL ORDER:<\/strong><\/p>\n

25. “Dead!” – My Chemical Romance
\n24. “Son of Sam” – Elliot Smith
\n23. “A Woman Wouldn’t Be A Woman” – Eartha Kitt
\n22. “Rock Me” – Liz Phair
\n21. “Keep The Customer Satisfied” – Simon & Garfunkel
\n20. “I Don’t Know What It Is” – Rufus Wainright
\n19. “Big Wheel” – Tori Amos
\n18. “Too Much Love Will Kill You” – Queen
\n17. “Heaven on Earth” – Britney Spears
\n16. “SexyBack” – Justin Timberlake
\n15. “It is Love” – Hellogoodbye
\n14. “21 Things I Want In a Lover” – Alanis Morissette
\n13. “Christmas Is the Time to Say I love You” – SR-71
\n12. “My Prerogative” – Britney Spears’ cover of the Bobby Brown classic
\n11. “Cream” – Prince
\n10. “Aint That a Kick In the Head” – Dean Martin (speaking of which <\/a>…)
\n9. “Stars and Planets” – Liz Phair
\n8. “Gimme More” – Britney Spears
\n7. “Mr. Blue Sky” – ELO
\n6. “Les Champs-Elysees” – Joe Dassin
\n5. “Beale St. Blues” – Eartha Kitt
\n4. “A Little More Love” – Olivia Newton-John
\n3. “Kashmir” – Led Zeppelin
\n2. “Enter Sandman” – Metallica
\n1. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” – Mariah Carey<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/b>: It occurs to me that songs can be grouped into constants and time-and-place songs.<\/p>\n

For example, “Enter Sandman” and “Cream” are constants and have been ever since I first heard them in the dark dawn age of time.<\/p>\n

But other songs on the list signify to me a specific time and place and for whatever reason – my mood dictated me to that song and that song alone.<\/p>\n

A couple of observations:<\/p>\n

“It is Love” and “Beale St. Blues” will always remind me of going to Taos to stalk and meet Dean Stockwell. Those songs were in constant rotation. Happy sexy songs, I think.<\/p>\n

“Les Champs-Elysees” is the song that plays over the final credits in Darjeeling Limited<\/i> and it pulled my heart up out of my chest the first time I heard it – so powerfully – that I couldn’t even wait to get home and go to iTunes to find it. I had to stop off at a music store and buy the entire soundtrack IMMEDIATELY upon exiting the theatre. The song still transports me … but there was a time there when i was so into it that I made an entire playlist of just that song so that I wouldn’t have to keep pressing “Rewind”.<\/p>\n

“Mr. Blue Sky” is what I turn on when I need to escape the world a little bit and enter my favorite fantasy which no, I will not share. But “Mr. Blue Sky” is a big part of it. I don’t even need to work to get into the mood, when I hear the song, I “go there”. My entire fantasy pops up around me, three-dimensional. Which is a little bit scary because a commercial is using “Mr. Blue Sky” right now, so if I hear it out in public I have a Pavlovian response.<\/p>\n

And like I mentioned: Mariah Carey’s modern Christmas classic was the song I turned to a couple of autumns ago, after Michael left and I was all worked up. Sometimes I listened to the song and wept. Sometimes I listened to it and laughed. In the month after his visit – it was all Mariah all the time. To such a degree that she has been #1 in the Top 25 Most Played ever since. No one will ever be able to catch up. I think Michael would guffaw, knowing that I turned to THAT song after his departure. He’d be like, Sheila … WHAT???<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The best thing about the iPod playlist “Top 25 Most Played” is that you can’t hide who you are when you look at it. All is revealed. You may wish you were the kind of person who listened to Igor … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[2453],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8496"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180927,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8496\/revisions\/180927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}