Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Today's Ten Shuffled Songs

I LOVE music! I'm literally obsessed with music! I'm pretty good at knowing songs, artists, etc. I'm good at coming up with good songs for specific moments--you know, like coming up with a song to go with a wedding moment, or a montage of pictures, etc. This might be because I listen to so many different kinds of music and songs. I'm not sure.

Recently I was talking with a friend of mine and he was saying how he loves movies. He owns more than 900 movies on VHS and DVD. He mentioned how movies impact him because he can often times find himself watching a movie and he can see himself in the movie, or as aspect of his life, or just relate in one way or another with the film. I told him I could understand that, but for me it wasn't movies, rather it was music that did that for me. I love how songs can really get to me in ways that either drive me to want to do something, or to want to sing them at the top of my lungs, or to want to cry, etc. I like to take songs and pick out how they can seem to be talking about parts of my life even though the song was written about something totally else [i.e. a song about a romantic relationship (which I’m most likely NOT in at the time) and relating it to something else in my life]. Though the artist might be singing about the power of his/her love for someone they long to marry, I can sing the songs and think of how they relate to someTHING I love in life, or someone I love in life (even though they are someone I love in a way other than a romantic type of love), or even just about how I can love life in general.

Music is just a powerful force in my life. It's funny because one of the most natural highs I get in life comes from singing at the top of my lungs. I love just getting into some good music and belting it out! HA! Something I've really noticed in my life over the past year is how much I miss my 20-25 minute drives commuting to school. It was during those times that I got some good "music time." Time would I could crank my music as loud as I wanted in my car and sing as loud as I felt like that day. Living in a house with so many people limits my chances for being alone and feeling comfortable in just belting out some songs.

My life currently consists of a travel time of less than 1 minute (well, depending on how I hit the one stop-light) to get to work; therefore, my daily commutes are restricted for singing time. With this being the case, I've found that about the only GOOD thing about my best friend living over 30 miles from me is that I do get my alone-time in the car once again (especially when I am traveling in rush hour traffic to get to her house, so it takes me about an hour to get there). I mean how do you beat the high one feels from getting to sing at the top of their lungs AND knowing they are going to be hanging out with their best friend real soon. =)

The amazing gadget of the iPod has helped bring all my music in my life together into one portable place. [Thank you, Steve Jobs]. Anyways, that little gadget goes basically EVERYwhere with me. In the car (especially on any trip longer than my trip to work), to work, to friends houses, and even to the shower with me. It's almost always playing when I'm in my room if I'm not watching television. If I'm reading I have it on classical music playing in the background. If I'm working on the computer I usually have it playing in the background. Back when I was in school I used it for studying or writing papers, because I love classical music playing when I'm doing that sort of stuff. Back when I was working out regularly I used it then. It helped me through my studying for my licensing exam (which I studied 95% of the time while walking on a treadmill and listening to my iPod all at once...and yes, I passed it the first time...HA!). At work I have it playing constantly at my desk (even when I'm having to walk away from my desk to go do something in another part of the building for our staff), so who knows what it could have playing when people come to my desk looking for me and I'm not there (this is yet another reason why I like clean edited versions of music...HA!). All this to say, my iPod gets a LOT of use. The top Most Played Song on it has been played 472 times!

Besides when I'm at work, the only other time I will for sure ALWAYS have it on daily is when I take my nightly showers. I LOVE listening to music while I shower. Heck, without much driving time nowadays, this is about my only other time to get in some halfway private singing time. [Note: I call it "halfway private" not because I let people in the bathroom while I'm showering, but rather that there is an office connected to my bathroom by a single door and MANY times when I'm my shower in the evenings there is someone in the office only a door away and so if I were to sing very loud at all it would no longer be just me hearing myself...HA!]

Anyways, by the time shower-time comes in the evenings, I'm typically tired of my current iPod playlists from listening to them usually during the day at work, so I'm wanting something different. With this being the case, I'll often times just put it on "shuffle play" to see which of my 1697 songs on my iPod will pop up and play for me...HA! Since I do have SUCH an array of music on it, I typically try to find something up-beat and shower-worthy for when I'm wanting to just "sing-out" in the shower. So what I'll normally do when I put it on shuffle is I'll skip forward until I find one that grabs my fancy as a "good shower song" and I'll take the risk from there and hope the next two or three that are going to play through while I'm in the shower end up being "good" ones.

So tonight this blog entry has been inspired by my shower "playlist" that randomly occurred tonight while I listened to my iPod on shuffle as I showered. I skipped through to find what I wanted to start with and ended up starting it with "Glory Days." When that song popped up in the shuffle choices I realized I was just feeling it and thought it would be a great one for in the shower and so it began. Below I'm going to share with you ten songs that ran through my random shuffled list starting with The Boss. I was really pleased with this list. Just some random fun stuff. I'm even considering doing this sort of a blog entry every now-and-then because I think it's fun and interesting to see the types of music on people's iPods. Feel free to share a list of ten songs in a row that come up on your iPod when it's put on shuffle. I think you can learn about a person by seeing their music tastes. Plus I just love hearing about songs I don't know.

Here is my list from tonight. The number in parentheses after the song artist is how many times that particular song has been played on my iPod. In order to not bring about incorrect assumptions by the numbers, if a song is rather new to being added to my iPod, it's number will be displayed in red.
  1. "Glory Days" by Bruce Springsteen [15]
  2. "Music of the Night" by Paul Potts [7]
  3. "Be Still" by Kelly Clarkson [9]
  4. "Like a Prayer" by Madonna [22]
  5. "When the Sun Goes Down" by Kenny Chesney [37]
  6. "Break Away" by Rascal Flatts [38]
  7. "This is Me" by Dream [16]
  8. "The Ballad of John and Yoko" by The Beatles [22]
  9. "Everlasting Love" by Gloria Estefan [23]
  10. "Head Over Feet" by Alanis Morissette [20]

3 comments:

Jennifer said...

Love seeing that "The Boys" as my mom calls them have been played the most times. I love me some Rascal Flatts. My favorite one is Fast Cars and Freedom. The "Feels Like Today" album is definitely my favorite of all of them.

PS- Can you get me a job at your office? :) I'm halfway serious. Okay, maybe more than halfway. I need to try something different before I've been teaching so long that I can't get out of it!

FeedingYourMind said...

Yes, I love me "The Boys!" My favorite is "Feels Like Today" (the song). I agree...that is probably their best album! I've listened to "Feels Like Today" so many times! It's my number one played Rascal Flatts song on my iPod, and it's the 11th most played song ON my iPod (I'm not at home so I can't get the actual number of plays off my iTunes right now or I would...HA!). I used to listen to that song EVERY day I headed to Fort Worth in the mornings bright and early for my internship for an entire semester a couple years back. What a fun wake-you-up song to start your day with! "I woke up this morning...with this feeling inside me that I can't explain..."

As for "a job"...I'll get back to you on that in another venue. ;)

Kim said...

What a unique and fun list!

Sadly, I am not into music as much as I used to be, because I don't drive, like you mentioned. I have an MP3 player, but I don't spend time buying new music. Sometimes we play music in the office, but we can't have individual headhphones.

When I do hear certain songs though, they bring me back to specific memories in my life! How crazy is that?