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.