Several months ago, I was decluttering when I unearthed my old iPod, a black 3rd-generation nano, which has essentially become a tiny, dusty time capsule of all the songs I listened to starting in the late 2000s. I carried that thing all the way through high school and into college, until it eventually got replaced by the newest fad: Spotify. As many others have been doing lately, I often reminisce about owning my music in this age of streaming monopolies.
Now, the battery in my iPod won’t hold a charge anymore, but everything is still right where I left it. Even the really embarrassing songs. It took a while for me to find my music taste, okay, don’t judge (I was on the cutting edge of Marina and the Diamonds in 2010, there is that). While I’m not one for having guilty pleasures, this is more about recognizing when I’ve outgrown a previously enjoyed artist. So if you see me scrolling through my iPod library muttering, “What was I thinking?”, just mind your business.
“All the Right Moves” by OneRepublic
“All the Right Moves” was released in 2009 on OneRepublic’s album Waking Up. Frankly, I don’t recall listening to this song very much. But it was a staple on the radio, which is probably where I picked it up. Being mostly a radio listener, my iPod library reflected this. There are a lot of Top 40 hits on there that I most likely heard in the car, or snagged from iTunes when it had those freebie downloads. As such, there are many artists listed that only have one song in my library. OneRepublic is one of those, but at least I can confidently say there’s no Imagine Dragons.
“Beautiful Day” by Lee DeWyze
Another song I don’t remember loving that much, and another artist with only one entry in my iPod library. Lee DeWyze’s “Beautiful Day” is a U2 cover that he performed on American Idol, so apparently I was watching that at the time. DeWyze won season nine of American Idol and released his cover version in 2010. Prior to season nine, Idol winners would sometimes perform original songs at their coronation. Viewers found this cheesy, and so the 2010 finalists performed covers. When DeWyze won, his “Beautiful Day” version became his first single.
“Come On Get Higher” Matt Nathanson
Matt Nathanson released “Come On Get Higher” on his sixth album Some Mad Hope in 2008. This is another song that I don’t remember being super in love with, but, again, it was big on the radio. It also charted well on several Billboard Contemporary charts. There was a strange discrepancy I’ve found in my iPod library at the time. On one hand, I had bands like My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and Paramore on there. On the other, I had singles from the likes of Jack Johnson and Jason Mraz. Do I still listen to MCR? Literally played them in the car last week. Do I still listen to Matt Nathanson? I don’t even remember listening to him in 2008. That strange interest in contemporary adult acoustic pop was, thankfully, fleeting. But the evidence remains in my iPod library.
“Teardrops On My Guitar” by Taylor Swift
If there’s one artist in my iPod library that would make me want to burn the whole thing down, it’s Taylor Swift. Listen to me very carefully: I am not, nor have I ever been, a Taylor Swift fan. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say she’s my personal public enemy number one. Still, I had a handful of her early songs downloaded and, yeah, I listened to them occasionally. But that’s because everyone else was doing it too, and as a high schooler with ADHD and not a lot of friends, I was desperate to fit in somehow. Was that misguided? Sure, but didn’t most of us go through something like that? The good thing that came out of it was that I realized very quickly that Taylor Swift is not for me, and my listening didn’t go any further than her debut album.
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