bookmark_borderSoundtracks

Prompted by the little fluffy kitten (as she is currently known), I’ve been pondering my musical habits of late and realised that, unlike the aforementioned little fluffy kitten, I currently lack a soundtrack for my life.

I bought a few albums over the past couple of weeks, some that I missed through 2008 (Kanye West, Q-Tip, Emiliana Torrini) but none have stuck yet. In fact I think there were only two albums that really ‘stuck’ last year. The Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow, and Like Drawing Blood by Gotye.

That’s partly down to the fact that most of my listening time is at work, and I recently wiped out my iTunes library to start over, losing the date the tracks were added and, thus, the ability to wheedle out only the last X weeks of new stuff. This leaves newer albums lost in the mahoosive library of music that I have accumulated over the past ten years or so and, frankly, it’s something I need to tackle.

I have plenty of hard drive space so I think I’ll be ‘archiving’ some music to a separate folder, where it can sit until such times as I remember that it’s there and at that point it’ll be a decision on PLAY or DELETE.

Anyway, I have no soundtrack at the moment as I’ve been dipping into old favourites as it’s easier to remember those than recall the last 10 albums I bought.

According to Last.fm, the artists I listened to most in the past 3 months were:

  1. Aimee Mann
  2. Queen
  3. Pearl Jam
  4. Kings of Leon
  5. Sigur Rós
  6. Puddle of Mudd
  7. Radiohead
  8. AC/DC
  9. Elbow
  10. Foo Fighters

Which, given that only half of these artists released an album in 2008, and none of them are ‘new’ acts, might explain why I have no soundtrack other than the same half dozen songs that auto-repeat when I can’t think of any others.

Ohh well.

Just by Radiohead it is then…

bookmark_borderEclectic Less

You are what they eat, they say, in which case I’m mostly caffeine and potatoes.

As for what you listen to, that too has an influence on who you are and, naturally, vice versa. With this in mind it is with some disdain that I find myself plumped among the masses when it comes to my music taste. Yes, I’m a snob. No, it’s YOUR problem.

Whilst I have a fairly wide taste of music, and I continue to try and steer myself away from the mainstream (something that is easier to do these days), I only have to look back at the statistics gathered for me by Last.fm which, based on the 83,000 odd tracks I’ve listened to in the past 4 years or so, suggests that my top 20 most frequently played artists are:

  1. Foo Fighters
  2. Radiohead
  3. Kings of Leon
  4. R.E.M.
  5. The White Stripes
  6. Massive Attack
  7. Muse
  8. Pearl Jam
  9. Elbow
  10. PJ Harvey
  11. Eagles of Death Metal
  12. U2
  13. Faithless
  14. Bjork
  15. Kanye West
  16. Aimee Mann
  17. Goldfrapp
  18. Portishead
  19. Leftfield
  20. Neil Finn

Hardly stepping off the beaten track, am I?

But this doesn’t tell the whole story, if you only take my listening habits from the last 3 months then Fleet Foxes, Lemon Jelly and Sigur Ros all make it into the top 10 which certainly feels, to me, a bit more representative of my listening habits.

The real reason I’m listing this here, now, is that (if I remember) I’ll revisit this topic in 6 months or so and see if the Genius button in iTunes has had much of an impact. We’ll see.