The iPod Swap

About a week ago I told DL (in one of our letters) that I was getting tired of the music on my iPod and that it would be cool to swap iPods for a week or a weekend and DL responded that she had been thinking about doing the same thing, so we agreed to do the swap from today to next Monday and so we brought our iPods to school today, and now DL has my gray iPod Classic and I have her purple iPod Nano 5th Generation. (Shout out to MF for suggesting we blog about switching iPods. Everyone, meet MF, our new blog consultant.)

     Since about 5 o'clock I've been listening to DL's iPod on shuffle (I thought that was the least biased way to do it) and I haven't skipped any songs, because like people, each song deserves a fair chance. So far, I've listened to 45 out of 950 songs. What I have learned is that DL likes a lot more rap and hard rock music than I thought she did, that she likes Led Zeppelin, that she has an admirably wide taste in music, and that she very rarely buys whole albums (I kind of already knew the last one). You can learn so much about a person by the music they listen to. If I didn't already know DL really well, it would feel like an invasion of her privacy to listen to her iPod like it was mine. Like stalking, or reading her diary. Music shouldn't be as personal as it is; I mean, 99.9999% of the songs we buy are not meant specifically for us. Chris Martin didn't write "Yellow" for me. And yet as soon as that song goes on my iPod it becomes mine in some small way, and the fact that I "own" it makes it personal, and gives it meaning it might not have had before. It turns it into being a reflection of me, instead of Chris Martin. Kind of. It's still Chris Martin's song, still his work, still his words, still his mind, still his experience, but the fact that I listen to it and like it, means that it means something to me too. And that's what makes it mine in a minuscule way. 

     So far, I've heard three songs that I'm most probably going to buy:

• "Impossible" by the Shout Out Louds
• "Holocene" by Bon Iver 
• "Walk On By" by Noosa 

     That's not to say that I haven't heard plenty of songs that I like, but those were my favorites. I wonder what DL is thinking about my music... I feel like my music is a lot more monotonous and homogeneous than her music. She should honestly be the music blogger; her music taste is much more varied and unbiased than mine is. I have this broad set of genres that I like, and those are pretty much the only ones I listen to. "Indie rock" sums up 75% of the music on my iPod. Which is kind of sad, because there's so much more great music! So I'm glad we're doing this swap, because it's opening my eyes (cough, ears) to music I never would have listened to before.

Day 157 Song Recommendation: "Walk On By" by Noosa.
-SE Wagner