Artist	Song
Neutral Milk Hotel	The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. One (play count: 41 times)
Bloc Party	I Still Remember (37 times)
Bruce Springsteen	Jacob's Ladder (26 times)
Jens Lekman	Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death (25)
The Broken West	Down in the Valley (24)
Tilly and the Wall	In Bed All Day (23)
Howard Jones	Life in One Day (23)
The Decemberists	The Mariner's Revenge Song (22)
I'm from Barcelona	Collection of Stamps (22)
Apples in Stereo	Can You Feel it? (22)
The Grates	Science is Golden (21)
The Hollies	Teach Your Children (live) (21)
The Blow	True Affection (20)
The Boy Least Likely to	I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon to Your Star (20)
The Shins	A Comet Appears (20)
The Unicorns	Sea Ghost (20)
Apples in Stereo	Energy (19)
I'm from Barcelona	The Painter (19)
Los Campesinos!	You! Me! Dancing! (19)
Dressy Bessy	The Things That You Say That You Do (18)
Ladybug Transistor	A Burial at Sea (18)
New Order	Blue Monday (18)
The Raveonettes	That Great Love Sound (18)

Comment:

In honor of owning my beloved iPod for one whole year (technically a little longer, but I waited until today because this marks the first time I ever played a song on it, 4/30/2006, The Clash's "Safe European Home"), I decided to make a gratuitous mix featuring all the heavy rollers, the top players in my canon who have gotten the most playtime. Y'know, like that Top 25 Most Played list. Not very original, but I wanted to see how my list had developed. Out of 6,618 songs, these are the 23 I have listened to most since my iPod's inception. For the most part, there are few surprises. The Neutral Milk Hotel song has been in the lead ever since last year, if I recall, although Bloc Party crept up just in the last two months. I wasn't even a fan of them prior to "I Still Remember" - for all the hype back in 2004 and 2005, I just couldn't arouse any interest. They were too much like The Bravery, Interpol, The Killers, et al. But then this new song came along and wow! It had this wistful rush that I always long to hear in music, and this perfect '80s guitar sound, oh man...over half of those 37 listens all took place in one afternoon back in March, when I just looped the song repeatedly and played it at full volume. Good times...

The statistics here might be misleading, though. They only take into account iPod and iTunes, yet I'm also constantly making and enjoying mix CDs featuring these songs, which, if applied, would increase the play counts quite a bit. Not to mention time I spend listening to records, and the fact that I often enjoy my iPod on shuffle rather than choosing individual songs...but I guess there's no need to be THAT specific.

If anything, I thought there would be more rock or punk material on here. Those have been my bread and butter for so long, after all, yet the majority style is clearly twee indie pop. Guess that's just where I'm headed (or currently am stationed).

I was hoping to fit more songs on the mix, but thanks to New Order and The Decemberists, there wasn't enough room. Which is why I'm being even more self-indulgent by posting a second mix in a few minutes, of the follow-up stats. I couldn't help make more mixes, what can I say. These must be my favorite songs if I play them so much, or at least seriously en vogue at the moment (i.e. the excitement of hearing new Apples in Stereo songs, or discovering The Broken West, as opposed to the lifelong love I have already developed for Tilly, NMH, Springsteen's "Seeger Sessions", Ladybug, Raveonettes, that seriously greatest song ever by Jens Lekman, etc.), so putting them together on CDs to listen to in the car and various other locations makes more sense than anything, I rationalized to myself. Meanwhile, I look forward to how this list will change over the next year. I'll have to post it again come 4/30/2008. Until then, I'm eternally grateful for this wonderful little music device :)

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