Songz
HELLO YOU BUGGERS
It’s time for another music-related post! Are you ready?
So as you’re all probably painfully aware of (since I talk about it quite a bit), my “Five Star” songs are the songs that I find to be the very best of the best of all my music. Ever since I started rating my songs in iTunes, I’ve limited my number of five-star songs to 50. No more, no less.
But I think I’m going to change that.
I’m finding that if I shuffle through my five-star playlist, there are a fair number of songs that I am no longer super excited to hear. I’m excited to hear them, but not super excited.
A five-star should be something I’m always super excited to hear.
So because of that, I think I’m going to reduce my five-star limit. Thirty songs? Twenty songs? I think anything less than that would cut out some of the true five-star songs, but I guess we’ll see.
The main issue I’m having is if I should do this cutting now or wait until my Decade of Music project is done so that the probability of a given song getting to be on the five-star list is the same for all the years in the decade.
That’s probably what I’ll do. I’ll wait.
But it’ll happen.
And I’m sure I’ll blog about it when it does.
END!
What Makes a 5-Star a 5-Star?
So because I MURDERED MY LEG APPARENTLY, I’m taking a few days off from walking.
Which blows. I hate it.
BUT it’s given me a chance to try to organize my music in a bit more of a coherent manner in preparation for the big end of my “Decade of Music” project in a few years. Doing so got me thinking about my 5-star songs and what, exactly, makes a song qualified to be a 5-star.
For y’all that aren’t aware, I use iTunes for my music. iTunes gives you the option of rating your songs as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 stars. In my ranking system, the “5-star club” is very exclusive; I’ve made it a rule that I can only have 50 songs rated 5 stars at a time. And considering I’ve got like 4,000 songs total, that’s not very many.
But how do I choose what gets 5 stars versus 4 stars? For example, what makes WALK THE MOON’s Avalanche only get 4 stars but the same group’s Tightrope get an enthusiastic 5 stars?
It’s hard to define the distinction, but there is one. 5-star songs are an experience. They make me instantly feel excited when I hear them. Quite often, if I’m out walking in the winter and a 5-star song comes on over my headphones, I will say something like “I love this song!” out loud. 4-star songs don’t give that reaction. 4-star songs are those that I can listen to on repeat, but do so “mindlessly”—that is, without really paying attention to the songs themselves and just liking them for the background noise. With 5-stars, I will deliberately re-start them if I don’t feel like I’m listening to them closely enough.
The 5-stars do change; every once and a while a song will just naturally be dropped from the list because it no longer provides that visceral “OH HELL YES I LOVE THIS FREAKING SONG” reaction. Other times I’ll find a new song that is amazing and 5-star-worthy and will have to reconsider my current 5-star list in order to kick an older song down to 4 stars.
Anyway. There is a distinction, but it’s very feelings-based and weird. Which I guess is everyone’s reaction to music and the reasoning behind their favorite songs.
Eigenblogger 