Tri-via

Past, Present, Future

Last night I synced my phone to my computer for oh gosh, the first time in a while, and due to some quirk of technology, the “Plays” for all my songs were irreparably screwed — listing songs I’d listened to in just unbelievable amounts. Not even the kind of amount where you could look at it and crack a joke about how many times I’d listened to “Whatever You Like,” but the kind where you just knew it was a computer problem (I literally cannot have listened to the new M83 album 1,107 times, though I probably could if you gave me more than three weeks). I reset all my songs, because I’m a bit too obsessive to leave the wrong ones in there, mucking up the iTunes Top 25. I was weirdly sad about this, knowing I was leaving behind my “actual” Top 25, and the potential Top 25 of the new songs I’d been listening to in the last 6 months or so.

I remember a couple of the Top Songs very distinctly — #1 with a bullet was a Spoon song I heard at a concert at the Pearl months before it was released on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga with my best friend from college who I went on a road trip to Northampton with to see them. (I was so excited by that song that I obsessively tried to ferret it out on the internet, but couldn’t find a demo of it.) I went to Whole Foods in my big ugly car and bought us snacks, something that delighted her but that she mocks me for to this date (lovingly). One was “Magic Spells,” which I listened to obsessively when I was first starting my job and had a major-league crush on someone at my trivia night. It seemed to be a song that summed up how machine-like, but filled with optimism my heart was at the time. Two were songs I listened to almost exclusively while running; I didn’t know how to feel seeing them pop up, I didn’t think I ran that much, it certainly doesn’t show.

There was nothing pre-about 2010, which was surprising, as I’ve had this computer a lot longer. That means there was no Sloan at all, which is a shock, because I remember that being a 2008 staple of my Top 25. Obviously it had nothing from my old crap-pile of a computer, which throughout college was dominated by three songs, that never left the top three. Do I need to tell you anything about being ages 18-22 and listening to that last song obsessively? Nah, only to tell you that it’s still part of my heart, but only part of it, and that in writing down this list, I realized that the only thing that changed was my cataloging of these feelings, because I realize now that they have a half-life. Longer than I want or realize, but a real one. I’m gonna go listen to that sad song again.