you would think that someone who has a new short story due on Thursday and a dentist appointment tomorrow morning would have better things to do than play with iTunes. and if you did would think that, you’d be totally wrong. because instead of worrying about the dentist or full-on-freaking out about the story, i thought it’d be a really good idea to make sure that all the mp3s in iTunes were properly labeled. really, how could i possibly get any writing done if there was a chance that rod stewart’s “reason to believe” was showing up as rod stewart-reason to believe instead of reason to believe, rod stewart.
i mean really, i do have priorities.
so as i was going about this very serious labeling business, i scrolled a little further to the right than i normally do and what did i find? what you ask?
i found a column labled “Play Count” which allegedly counts all the songs. and since you can sort by these columns i just had to see what was on my top 10. i was surprised by the results.
so i present to you from our home office in Prior Lake The Supergenius’ Top 10 Most Played iTunes:
10. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, Bob Dylan
09. Whatever Makes You Happy, Paul Westerberg
08. Trains of Winnepeg, The Weakerthans
07. Halleluijah, Rufus Wainwright
06. Lonelily, Damien Rice
05. If Only You Were Lonely, The Replacements
04. Lost Horizons, The Gin Blossoms
03. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, Bob Dylan
02. Dear Chicago, Ryan Adams
01. As Far As I Know, Paul Westerberg.
I was just talkin’ up the Play Count column in iTunes to a coworker today. Just like an automatic rating system, I’ve got smart playlists setup which let me catch things which fell through the cracks, so to speak, such as “Playcount > 2 and My Rating = 0” which allows me to catch songs I neglected to rate. Or to hear songs which I love but havent heard in a while, “Least Recently Played with Playcount > 5”
I fell in love with Rufus’s Hallelujah when I first heard it. But a recent favorite is Jeff Buckley’s version of the same song from his Grace album. A bit more raw, everytime I listen to it is as if I can actually hear the tears falling down his face.
i actually like the Buckley version about 403 times better than the Rufus version, because Buckley breaks my heart in all the right ways, ways that rufus can’t quite manage. but i don’t have any buckley mp3s and i’ve never really gotten around to converting my CD collection.
It took me a while to convert most of mine over, too. The trick I finally came up with was to do it at work. I took ’em out of their cases, brought in 20 CDs a day for a few weeks. When one would pop out I’d slide the next one in. Viola!