Played-Out

How closely does your play-frequency (i.e., how often you play a song in its entirety on iTunes) correlate to your actual favorite tunes? Unless you’re either a musical masochist or don’t really have control over your iTunes account, there’s got to be a connection here. But does that simply mean the most frequently played tracks are likely to be your favorites? I don’t think so.

When I look at iTunes for my top five most played tracks, I get a very narrow window of what I actually listen to. Partly, this aberration is due to how I listen to music. Not always satisfied with the never-ending shuffle of the iPod (a device that – let’s face it – paradoxically promises and then annihilates personal choice from music-listening), I often prefer a record or a cd. When the iPod is on, I might be playing an album, but more likely there’s a playlist going. These playlists are seldom just tailored for M and me, but for larger audiences like family gatherings or friends over for dinner. The top five (with number of plays in parentheses) are as follows:

5. “Steppin’ Out” by Joe Jackson (51)

4. “England” by The National (52)

3. “I Can’t Tell You Why” by Chromeo (54)

2. “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)” by Peter Sarstedt (55)

1. “Hey” by Elvis Perkins (57)

Are these my favorite songs of all-time? Are they even representative of my favorite bands or genres? They are not. Rather, they’re indicative of how I listen to music on the iPod. I make playlists that go well with dinner or enjoying a cocktail. Certainly, I love all of these tunes. They’re all part of my “Smooth” playlist, where I’ve tried to generate a mix of songs that I would play if had the unlikely job as a deejay for the notoriously soporific (and dentist’s waiting-room staple) Magic 106.7. This kind of stuff is versatile. It’s easy to ignore if you have no interest in pop music or find it grating (I’m convinced that this description fairly pegs many of the listeners who willfully tune into Magic 106.7 and other such smooth format stations), but it’s also sonically, lyrically, and trivially compelling enough for those who do enjoy a good tune.

     Of the five, Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out” is the big hit. In fact, it’s a bona fide staple of smooth radio. In the tongue-in-cheek liner notes to their DJKicks set, Hot Chip describe the song as a “fun pop workout with sequenced bass line and catchy, melodic male vocal.” That “sequenced bass line” is entrancing and so is “England” by The National. The stately, heavy-lidded composition builds to a percussive crescendo with a minute left and almost always makes me want to play it all over again. Okay, I guess that’s a favorite.

Chromeo’s cover of The Eagles’ “I Can’t Tell You Why” ups the ante on the kitschiness of the original by adding swirling 10CC synths and – most ingeniously – a vocoder for the falsetto chorus. It’s pure fun, while Peter Sarstedt’s rag-to-riches-to-repulsion story of “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)” is stolen taste from Wes Anderson’s Hotel Chevalier. That leaves Elvis Perkins’s “Hey.” This one’s actually another favorite. Somehow both old and new, jaunty and nonchalant, the song’s tone is perhaps best summed up in its chorus: “If it were up to me / I would leave it up to you.”

That makes forty percent of the top-five faves. It might seem like a crummy showing, but if extrapolated for my whole collection the numbers aren’t paltry at all. Statistically speaking, however, I guess there’s a weak to moderate correlation for play-frequency predicting favorites. What are your top five most played tunes?

Sacred Profanity

I was recently compiling a playlist for a friend’s pre-Thanksgiving party. I love making playlists for other people’s parties. It’s a hobby that many may (rightly) consider not only a colossal waste of time and effort, but also a presumptuous and ultimately self-serving favor. No matter, I was doing my best to cater to the audience of mostly thirty-something couples, the majority of whom have kids in tow, without offending anyone’s delicate sensibilities. Last year, that meant scratching Cee Lo’s big hit, whereas this year I was facing the unwelcome charge of avoiding anything from the great Jay-Z/Kanye West collaboration Watch the Throne. All of the album’s dozen tracks are playlist-worthy (a good indicator of classic status). Limiting my options, however, was the not-so-kid-friendly language that is just as consistent as the record’s topicality, brilliant wordplay, sly humor, and undeniable hooks.

Referencing tear-spattered “mausoleum floors” and fallen empires, the album begins ominously and seldom relents from this tainted atmosphere. Forty-five minutes later, the final track “Why I Love You” drops out abruptly after Jay-Z and Kanye quote JC from the Gospel of Luke. In between, the listener travels through musings on fame, success, power, decadence, racism, media, America, faith, and duty. All this heaviness is leavened with the music – at turns urgent and joyful – and the messengers, who acknowledge that though there’s “nothin’ on the news but the blues” (“Murder to Excellence”) they’re here to “bring you out of the darkness” (“Made in America”).

This mix of resignation and inspiration is a delicate balancing act that largely succeeds because of the two artists’ willingness to not only cast a critical eye on the world, but also on themselves. On “That’s My Bitch,” they evoke (and maybe somewhat perpetuate) the stereotype that hip-hop is misogynistic, but deftly turn the cliché on its head by exposing how venerable institutions perpetuate racism; Jay-Z demands, “put some colored girls in the MOMA!”

Nowhere is the dynamic more touchingly demonstrated than in “New Day,” which finds Jay-Z and Kanye offering apologies and advice to their future sons. While the track largely lampoons the media’s tendencies to generalize and amplify negativity, it does not shy away from self-deprecation. Family also figures into "Made in America" where Jay-Z declares, "I pledge allegiance / to my grandma" before later echoing the line with the autobiographical note, "I got my liberty / choppin' grams up." In these moments of sincere vulnerability, the album makes good of its second track’s promise to “Lift Off.”

Ultimately, I decided to include “New Day” on the playlist. There would be plenty of fathers and sons at the party who could hypothetically appreciate its exploration of that relationship. Also, my concerns about offensiveness struck me as a bit narrow-minded. Realistically, no one would pay much attention to what was playing at the party; it's unlikely that those explicit lyrics would penetrate the din of conversation. My deeming the album as potentially offensive suggested a far more disagreeable notion that unjustly plagues hip-hop (and so many movements in the arts): the idea that as a genre it is merely capable of crudely shocking audiences, rather than challenging assumptions and provoking thought. In the effort to not offend one group, I was temporarily blind to how unintentionally offensive I was being to another. 

As for the pre-Thanksgiving party, the playlist never made it on to the stereo. I was not offended. 

Music, Memory, Destroyer

Whenever I hear the Clash's first album, I'm transported back to the summer of 1995 and the passenger seat of a 1983 Volvo sedan. My brother Chris, my friend Paul and I are aimlessly tearing down Route 6 and are suddenly stunned to realize that the police sirens just barely audible over "I'm So Bored With the U.S.A." are screaming for us; we fought the law, the law won. 

Everyone knows music is a potent trigger of memory, but do we ever consider how imprecise its aim is? I’m listening to a guitar fill in “Savage Night at the Opera” from the latest Destroyer album and wondering for the umpteenth time from which New Order song it’s borrowed. Memory tells me it’s from one of the hits on the Substance compilation, so I decide to put it on and get the connection once and for all.

Unfortunately, those high school and college days when I could offer up my attention in sacrifice to the uninterrupted immersion in an album are gone. These days, it is so easy to ignore the music I put on. While I keep an ear perked for that matching sound, the computer or other thoughts distract me. Not surprisingly, that past era of devotion is what forged the strongest bonds to my favorite bands, albums, or songs. So does its passing signal the end of favorites? Is there no more room for a classic to come along and establish itself?

Fortunately, the answer is no on both counts. Since its early 2011 release, Destroyer's Kaputt has become a favorite. It sounds old and new (for me, that’s one of the key criteria when bestowing classic status), and the collection of songs coheres like the chapters of a breezy novella dealing with eavesdropping and being that outsider looking in, passing or withholding detached judgments. An admittedly nonsensical description, but it’s what comes to mind when I hear this elegantly sleazy album.

Kaputt has the sort of smooth sound I reach for to ease into a weekend morning or to send me off to sleep. The album – any album with Dan Bejar, the brains behind Destroyer – is decidedly strange (another good criteria when identifying classics). For one thing, there’s Bejar’s high, expressive voice. It’s a voice that whispers, judges, concedes, and cajoles, while conjuring the distinct tones of Katherine Hepburn (I view the connection as a compliment to both of them). Then there’s the music, which shimmers like an impressionist late-night taxi drive through some beautifully seedy cityscape. It’s a lush combination of Miles Davis’s You’re Under Arrest and the Style Council’s  Café Bleu.

I've searched for that elusive guitar bit for a while now – it's been great to recline on the floor by the speakers and listen to New Order – but I've not found what I'm listening for. My memory got the band right, but the part of the song I so vividly recalled never existed. I can’t help thinking of a favorite Philip Roth line: “Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.” At the risk of romanticizing this unreliability too much, I will say that memory's inaccuracy - imaginative or not - is a great part of what makes everyone's listening experiences so varied and unique. You might hate Kaputt for some of the very reasons I like it. That's fine with me. 


Check out "Savage Night at the Opera" here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_z9vwQLX90&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL (Listen for the New Order guitar part at 3:04-3:30)