So, I found an awesome rendition of a traditional devotional track on Youtube yesterday, and have been listening to this track ever since. I can listen to a track I like many dozens of times before moving on to something else. The familiarity of a track’s music / lyrics actually makes it more enjoyable for me. For a time. Later, it does not sound so awesome anymore, and I am a bit surprised that I listened to this like a 100 times a week ago.
I knew a guy who liked a much wider variety of music than I do, but would ‘tire’ quickly and move on to explore new sounds. Me, I am the exact opposite.
I just don’t know how “normal” this is. I used to suffer OCD, which persists (mildly) to this day, and I am beginning to think the ability to derive pleasure out of any repetitive habit might be a manifestation of the symptoms of OCD. Of course, listening to a soulful piece of music is so different from plucking your hair out until you are bald. But it might fall in the same spectrum, so to speak.
So, how many times do/would you listen to a piece of music that appeals to you, before getting tired of it and moving to something else?
I need a variety of music to listen to and I am constantly looking for new music to listen to. Even if I find a song I like I rarely will listen to it over and over. I might listen to it two or three times, but then I move on, otherwise I get sick of it very quickly.
I once got into a rut (groove!) of listening to Prokofiev’s “Classical Symphony.” I played it, once a day, for over a month. I still adore it. It’s one of the most intricate, clever, witty, lively, and endearing pieces of symphonic music…ever. I have approximately a dozen different recordings of it.
Not only can I listen to a song I like over and over again into the hundreds of times, I can also watch a T.V. show episode that I like hundreds of times, or re-read a book I like hundreds of times. The first time I read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, as soon as I finished, I started from the beginning again. Over the course of a weekend, I read through the book six times.
I don’t have any OCD symptoms (unless you count the above). I think it’s just about whether you crave familiarity or variety.
I’ve had this computer for about two and a half years. Except for the K-Pop stuff I played for my students in Korea (and a handful of American songs they liked from Jason Mraz and Taylor Swift), I don’t have one song on here I’ve listened to more than 20 times. Weird.
As I related in another thread, I bought the new Suicidal Tendencies album, 13 the day it was released (26 March 2013) and it has been in my car’s CD player ever since. I listen to the entire thing at least once a day, sometimes as many as 6 or 8 times a day if I’m doing a lot of driving (it’s a little under and hour long, total). I also have the album ripped, so the songs are in my phone and in my computer, and they will occasionally come up for play there. Anyway, I have yet to get sick of the album or any of the songs.
And I couldn’t even count how many times I’ve heard Louie Louie (Kingsmen version) or Motörhead’s Ace Of Spades.
There are certain songs I can listen to over and over and never get sick of them. For example, seeing this thread convinced me to listen to “TiK ToK” for the 2,378th and 2,379th times (just a crude estimate) since 2010.
When I first listen to a song I really like I’ll listen to it maybe a dozen times in the first month, then my interest rapidly dies off. After that first month my favorite songs get played maybe 3-4 times a year.
During my college days, I was very much into the British synth-pop duo Erasure. Their new single at the time “Love to Hate You” was released and it was in my Discman for at least a month. That’s all I heard during that time.
I have a number of favorite short classical pieces that move me deeply. When I do listen to one, I often listen to it 3 or 4 times in a row. I rediscovered Joan Sutherland’s recording of “Let the bright Seraphim” a few years ago and found a new appreciation for it. I listened to it repeatedly most of that day. Even when I wasn’t listening to it, it was running through my head continuously. It became an earworm for me, but a glorious one!
Depends on the length. If it’s a symphony or opera, maybe 2 or 3 times at first. But something shorter, maybe 10 times. And if I can sing along with it, there’s no limit.
As far as pop songs are concerned, I think the song I’ve played most is the Beatles’ *Lady Madonna. *Even after all these years, I’m incapable of listening to it just once. And I’m also incapable of listening to it without singing (either melody or bass).
There’s no limit to how many times I can listen to and enjoy a good song in my lifetime, as long as it hasn’t been “worn out,” temporarily or permanently, from being heard too frequently within a short span of time. I wouldn’t want to listen to the same song more than once or twice in a row, and depending on the song and my familiarity with it, the ideal frequency might be anywhere from a dozen times in a week to once every couple of years. (Plus, there’s so much other good music out there to discover that I don’t want to spend too much time on any one song or album and miss out on all the rest.)
Decades ago I was stuck in a car for a couple of hours. The owner had an 8-track tape (decades ago remember) with nothing but Ray Stevens hit novelty song “The Streak” on it. I was nearly homicidal by the end of that trip.
One the flip side I have a playlist on my MP3 player of the original and covers of Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower”. I have over 40 versions of it and have been known to play the whole thing on long car trips. HOWEVER I only do this when I’m in the car alone.
There are many songs, dozens at least, that I never tire of hearing, but the latest such piece is a piano solo I keep hearing even when it’s not playing. The occasional earworms of the good variety will have like a loop of over-and-over playing until I eventually move on.
The best case of an entire album that I’ll never tire of is the Miles Davis Kind of Blue from the late '50’s that I have loved since it came out. But even it is one I listen to only now and then.
I guess the best single song of that variety is Frank Sinatra- I’ve got you under my skin which would appear to have 4,715,364 others who agreed with me at the time of this post.
That’s my problem, I can listen to my favorite song until I’m sick of it (my iTunes tell me that I’ve listened to Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” for 442 times!). After that, I need at least 6 months to be able to listen to it again))
I remember actually wearing out the grooves on a song or two. You could actually do that if you had a cheap-ass enough turntable/needle cartridge and played the heck out of the record. One I remember clearly was Sign o’ The Times by Prince - a couple of the sides of the double album…