bookmark_borderiTunes Meme

Meme alert. Yes, always a sure sign that I’m too busy to be bothered actually putting some effort into posting here, it’s meme time. This one was stolen from Neil and has scared me a little, particularly the first set of stats. Who the hell needs that many tracks?*

How many total songs?
11,937 songs, equal to 35.3 days or 59.38 GB. And I’ve still got a few CDs left to rip, need a new hard drive first!

Sort by song title – first and last?
   First: ’39 by Queen (album track from A Night at the Opera) – a lovely banjo lead ditty about space travel.
   Last: Zuton Fever by The Zutons (album track from Who killed the Zutons?) – slightly narcissistic, no?

Sort by time – shortest and longest?
   Shortest: Reprise by Queen at 4 secs. However shortest actually track is probably Passive Manipulation by the White Stripes at 34 secs long (short).
   Longest: Beethoven’s 9th performed by BBC Philharmonic, 1 hr, 7 mins and 24 secs. Bizarrely the longest non-classical track (excluding mixes) is Reprise by Queen which runs to 22 mins and 33 secs. I’m thinking that’l

Sort by Album – first and last?
   First: ’64-’95 by Lemon Jelly
   Last: Zooropa by U2

Sort by Artist – first and last?
   First: !!! – or 10,000 Maniacs if yer fussy about your alphabetised lists
   Last: ZZ Top – of course!!!

Top five played songs?
   1. Future Proof by Massive Attack, from the album 100th Window
   2. She Will Have Her Way by Neil Finn, from the album Try Whistling This
   3. All I Need by Air, from the album Moon Safari
   4. Think Twice by Carl Craig, from the album Detroit Experiment
   5. Train by Goldfrapp, from the album Black Cherry

Find the following words. How many songs show up?
Figures in brackets are song titles only
   Sex: 66 (32)
   Death: 30 (14)
   Love: 657 (512)
   You: 1344 (997)
   Home: 102 (63)
   Boy: 319 (88)
   Girl: 178 (124)

Interesting. And I can highly recommend all the linked albums, blimey I’ve got great taste! Go on, show me yours.

~

* Ok, this has actually made me stop and think. I’ve slowly been ripping all my CDs to the PC, entire CDs, whether I like every track or not they are all there. I don’t delete tracks just because I don’t like them. I wonder, am I thinking of this the wrong way? Surely iTunes should only hold music that I will listen to and not be used to store hundreds of tracks that will never get played? And don’t even get me started on the perplexing issue that is duplicated tracks.

An example: The version of Fat Bottomed Girls on the album Queen Rocks! has been remastered from an old recording and sounds much better than either the original version from the album (Jazz) or the version from the Greatest Hits album. What I SHOULD do, is delete the two other versions I don’t listen to, but then I wouldn’t have the complete albums…

Is it just me? Is it an age thing where an ‘album’ is still a definitive piece of work that should be kept in it’s entirety or should I be switching to a new digital model where I can create my OWN albums, featuring versions of songs I like and ditching the rest? Ohh this could keep me up all night. What do YOU do?