We’ve taken a lot of road trips lately, Rosebud and I. I’ve never been one to name an inanimate object such as a car or anything else, but iTunes makes you give your iPod a name when you register it. Anyway, mine’s Rosebud; I’ll just trust everyone knows the origin.
In the car I have been listening to Rosebud’s entire song list, more than 1,000 songs in all, in alphabetical order. No play lists, genre affinities or artist groupings. I am enjoying the way in which the random play renders no noticeable theme or pattern, except that multiple songs begin with the same word.
Yesterday, songs beginning with “Boogie” carried me a good long way down the New Jersey Turnpike. Which got me thinking. Now that I have overanalyzed my magazine rack, and enjoyed the comments on yesterday’s post, I will turn to search for meaning in my MP3.
Does the fact that 61 songs on my iPod begin with “I” or “my” but only 31 begin with “you” or “your” make me an egoist? Does the fact that I have as much Mormon Tabernacle Choir as I do heavy metal make me schizophrenic?
What other words dominate my song titles? Setting aside “how,” “what,” “when,” “where,” subordinating conjunctions and other minor words, I watched for a theme to emerge. “Love” popped most prominently but that’s no surprise. Except on the devices of a few evil souls, Love dominates everyone’s iPod. So let’s take Love out of the equation, just for balance.
What’s left in my top five? “Boogie” to be sure, along with “dance,” “rock,” “crazy” and “bad.”
In the absence of any logical conclusion, I leave it to Avril Lavigne, who sums it up aptly in “Anything but Ordinary,” as she observes, “Sometimes I get so weird, I even freak myself out.”
Note: After another brief look at song lyrics tomorrow, Word Nymph will turn to another topic. At least until she is On the Road Again.
Word Nymph 
I love it. I too have an ipod that is set up the same way and I will think of you everytime I get to I.