An Old iTunes Meme Dug Up

Perhaps because I just finished writing a post about a book on corpses (Mary Roach's very entertaining Stiff) and perhaps because I saw that someone chose today to land on the version of this meme I did three years ago, I decided to revisit it, and see how different my answers are now from September of 2006:

Total number of tracks: 18,731 -- it was 14,262, which means I've added nearly 4500 songs in less than three years. I have been on a music-buying tear, I guess.

Sort by song title:

• First Song: "A-Hunting We Will Go" by Hem (Eveningland)
• Last Song: "( )" by They Might Be Giants (Then: The Earlier Years, Disc 1) -- this is the conversation between Gloria and her friend about the Kiss Clinic and intellectuals meeting with other intellectuals.

iTunes seems to have changed its alphabetization algorithm in the last three years, because the old version had numbers at the beginning and foreign characters at the end, and it''s quite different now.

Sort by time:

• Shortest Song: "Kangaroo -- SFX" by Carl Stalling & the Warner Brothers Orchestra -- 4 seconds (the same -- though iTunes said it was three seconds long in 2006)
  
• Longest Song: "Pelleas und Melisande" by Arnold Schoenberg and/or Pierre Boulez directing the Chicago Symphony Orchestra -- 40 minutes, 20 seconds (also the same, and it hasn't changed length)
  

Sort by album:

• First Song: "Commonplace Feathers" by Gangi (from A)
• Last Song: "Lawyers in Love" by Jackson Browne (no album listed)
• Last Song That Actually Has an Album: "Hearts" by Yes (90125)

Top 10 Most Played Songs:
(It's not quite as bad as it was a year ago, when the boys were on a huge Fountains of Wayne kick, but that band currently has seven of the top ten slots, which would make thus list very boring. So I'm going to elide additional songs by the same artist -- any repeat artist -- in the interests of having a more interesting list.)

• "Maureen" by Fountains of Wayne -- 66 plays (plus six more Fountains of Wayne songs in the actual top 10)
• "To the Dogs or Whoever" by Josh Ritter -- 62 plays
• "My Rights Versus Yours" by The New Pornographers -- 57 plays
• "Nothing Burns Like Bridges" by Penny Century -- 55 plays
• "We're All in This Alone" by The Mendoza Line -- 54 plays
• "Easy" by The Arrogants -- 50 plays
• "Sinking Ships" by The Archibalds -- 48 plays
• "Wall of Death" by R.E.M. -- 48 plays
• "Wishing Well" by The Airborne Toxic Event -- 46 plays
• "Satin in a Coffin" by Modest Mouse -- 45 plays (Actually #24, after the above songs and an additional 14 Fountains of Wayne tunes)

This is entirely different from 2006, though there were 2 FoW songs on that list.

Search:

• "sex" -- 147 songs
• "love" -- 717 songs
• "you" -- 1701 songs
• "death" -- 137 songs
• "hate" -- 56 songs
• "wish" -- 47 songs
• "monkey" -- 54 songs

I am officially a Boring Old Married Guy, if I can't find anything better to do with my time on a Saturday evening than this....

Update: Added links to as many of the songs as I could find, to make this slightly more interesting to those of you who don't already know these bands.

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Listening to: The Police - On Any Other Day
via FoxyTunes