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?