In case you haven’t noticed, this website is teeming with hardcore music lovers.
It’s what brought us together.
Sure, we talk about other things here too. But in the end, it always comes back to music. For most of us, it probably started at an early age and seemed perfectly normal.
At some point, it may have dawned on us that while most people like music, they don’t tend to take it to same level of intensity, and perhaps some of our behaviors centered around our passion for music may be considered by others to be, well, a bit over the top.
Because not everyone is built the same, it may manifest itself in different ways.
I’ve come to see that it can be hard for me to even admit to myself just how deep it goes, but I’m just going to say it:
My name is rollerboogie.
And I am a music obsessive.
Here are what I believe to be some of my qualifying behaviors. We’ll start with the obvious one:
Putting an inordinate amount of time into making playlists
Yep, I got a bunch of ‘em, with more being added all the time, but it may not be the amount that qualifies me. Lots of folks on Spotify have way more public playlists than I do. It’s the time put into assembling any given playlist and the self-imposed standards. I generally limit appearances by an artist, with some exceptions. Sometimes, I will keep it to one song per artist and try to make it look like a radio DJ set.
I’ve gone down the rabbit hole and spent a plethora of hours on all sorts of genres and eras, and I sometimes do themed sets, such as colors, numbers, four letters or less, or spotlighting a particular instrument.
I’ve also got tons of playlists of covers of popular songs, done in the style of bluegrass, or reggae, or in Spanish, etc, etc, etc.
And then there’s the flow. It has to be just right. When I listen back, if the ending of one song doesn’t feel right flowing into the next song, I can spend copious amounts of time rearranging and making sure it’s like the perfect wave.
I never play a list on shuffle. I wouldn’t do it to someone else’s playlist either. That’s just disrespectful. Any additions need to be carefully considered, so as not to disrupt the pre-existing feel of the list.
I do listen to the playlists myself, and it matters to me that everything hits just right. I don’t always know if anyone else cares, but every now and then, I get someone telling me they listen and appreciate them (thank you @lovethisconcept ) I will always have a desire to share what I love, and it always feels good when it’s connecting with someone. So what if I can’t seem to stop? It’s a good thing, right?
Hopefully?
Overanalyzing Movie Soundtracks
It doesn’t happen all the time, but I sometimes find myself being critical of the songs featured in a movie, particularly if they are from a period or genre that matters deeply to me. In the case of The Martian, I started getting angry at many of the disco songs they chose to have Mark Watley hear repeatedly in space. Overall, it felt lazy and too obvious.
I know the joke was that he hated Commander Melissa Lewis’ taste in music and he was stuck with it, but I still couldn’t help but think that better selections could have been made.
I came up with an entire alternate soundtrack, replacing all but a couple of the songs with ones I felt were superior and less cliché, while still cheesy enough to provoke his ire.
Let me be clear that I’m not always a total snob about this. The soundtrack for a 1986 film I consider required viewing, Maximum Overdrive, basically sounds like somebody got stoned, put on an AC/DC album and just let it play, and in my mind, it will always be perfect.
Yelling At The Radio In The Car
I don’t listen to music on the radio very often anymore (see item #1 for the answer as to what replaced it), but the other day, I had on a garden variety rock station. “Dream On” by Aerosmith was playing, and the deejay came in and started blabbering toward the end before the song was finished.
“AT LEAST WAIT FOR THE GONG, YOU JACKASS,” I shouted into the void.
Sadly, it didn’t even make me feel better. I can go back to the safety of my Bluetooth, but it is still unsettling to me that someone out there is getting paid to show utter disrespect and disregard for the very music they’re hired to play, and that it’s been happening for years at radio stations everywhere. I just can’t let it go.
Taking Karaoke Night To Intense Levels Of Seriousness
In 2017, I started frequenting a local dive bar with my wife’s nephews, initially to watch hockey, eat bang bang shrimp, and down a few Coronaritas. (The name tells you exactly what it is.) Then I was told there was karaoke. I had never sung karaoke publicly before and wasn’t really interested in doing it. One night, I decided to give it a try. I got hooked and started doing it practically every week.
In less than three years, I sang a total of over 130 different songs, and kept a list, rating each song on a scale of 1-10, based on how well I thought I did.
I also regularly journaled about my experience, the cast of characters I met, how I felt, my insecurities, and the wacky stuff that would happen on any given night. I would practice at home, and once I arrived, if I didn’t feel sufficiently ready, I would sometimes head out to the car and run through a song while waiting for my name to come back up in the queue.
Yeah, it was just karaoke, but if I was going to do it, I was going to do it right. To be fair, I would say about 72.3% of the other people getting up to sing were really good and knew what they were doing, so that may have contributed to my wanting to be at my best. It wasn’t the old cliché of a bunch of drunk people singing off key and winging it, although we had our fair share of those too.
More friends and family began to join us, many of whom would get up and sing themselves, and the colorful stories and epic experiences began piling up on a nightly basis. My brother Greg, in particular got just as hooked as me. Then suddenly the ownership changed, the deejay was replaced, and the vibe quickly changed. I stopped going shortly before Covid hit.
I still do it occasionally, but I am no longer a karaoke regular. Those days appear to be over, but for a brief window of time, I had been all in. Obsessive? Absolutely, but I wouldn’t have known how to do it any other way.
Reading Someone Else’s Opinion On An Artist, A Song, Or Genre Of Music And Getting Into Arguments With Them In My Head, Sometimes On And Off For Weeks
Yeah, let’s not delve into this one any further.
Hearing A Random Song Playing In The Background Somewhere And Having An urgent Need To Quiz Whoever I’m With On The Name Of The Song And Artist
If it happened to go to #1, I may throw that in there too, as well as expound on other fascinating facts I happen to know about the song.
I’m a sheer delight in any social situation and not at all an overbearing bore.
Walking Out Of A Friend’s Wedding Reception Because Of The Deejay’s Distressingly Pedestrian Selection Of Music
Okay, it only happened once (I think), and my wife was totally on-board with me. Everything he played was paint by numbers, generic wedding reception fare without one single creative choice, and at times he seemed to have no idea what he was doing. The man was a hack, and the situation could not be tolerated for one minute longer.
Lovely couple, but I stand by the decision.
Cranking A Great Song
Sure, everyone’s probably done this every now and then, but some of us don’t just visit; we live there. You got your two volumes- loud and off. Both my wife and daughter tell me all the time I’m going deaf. I pretend I can’t hear them.
Have you ever started up your car, and the radio was still on from the last time you were driving, and it sounds like a jet landed on top of the vehicle? That’s me on a regular basis.
Even if it starts at a somewhat reasonable level, by the time I’ve arrived at my destination, it’s like a live concert in there, baby. It’s not just the obvious stuff like “I’m Eighteen” by Alice Cooper. I mean, listening to something like that at a low volume is just psychotic. I’m talking everything.
The Lettermen’s elevator cover of “Hurt So Bad”? Oh, turn that up, right now. These guys are on fire.
Music-Related Dreams
Even when I’m asleep, music often comes into play, or sometimes is literally playing, such as a recent night when the 1979 pop-metal hit “Since You’ve Been Gone” by Rainbow was playing on a loop in my dreams. Then suddenly, I was with a group of people, brainstorming on who should record a cover of “Islands in the Stream”.
The lead singer from “Since You’ve Been Gone” was briefly considered, but we ended up going with Miley Cyrus and Luke Bryan.
When I woke up, I consulted @cstolliver (Chuck Small) in the comment section of his article, to get his opinion on my dream’s choice.
He approved.
Waking Up In The Middle Of The Night And Heading To The Computer Because You Suddenly Know Exactly How To End The Article You’re Writing… About Music.
Yes.
That’s happening right now.
Ok, I’ve shared quite enough.
Fellow music obsessives, what are your qualifying behaviors? I know some of them because they are on full display here, but by all means, do elaborate.
It really does feel great to just let it all out.
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I’m guilty of the radio station one, especially screaming when I hear the horrific 45 edit of a song whose album version is much better and easily accessible (yes, Billy Joel’s “My Life” comes right to mind).
I’m also grateful for a community that would not only let me yammer on about the alternate verse of Naked Eyes’ “Promises, Promises” that I was sure I had dreamed up, but respond when I excitedly explained using the Internet to track down the version I heard. (I’m sure my students would laugh at that.)
And you didn’t even mention sneaking in pop references before or after Mass, which you have mentioned before, and our director of music has also done. (His “Prince Rain” memorial after Prince’s death being my favorite and most appreciated.)
Thanks for the fun, rb. I’m right there with you.
All of those examples you gave make you seem perfectly normal to me, so great, we have two people and can have a meeting. I will get the coffee started.
Oh, the church stuff is real. I forgot about that. That’s a whole article all by itself.
Ugh. “Purple Rain” memorial … Blame the time of posting.
Got it. I thought maybe the name was changed to avoid copyright infringement.
RB, we might be siblings separated at birth. All but one of the behaviors you describe fit me to a T.
The only exception was walking out of a wedding due to its musical choices. Never did that. However, I did just attend my 25 year high school reunion, and loudly complained about the DJ’s selections.
Yes, I too am obsessed with creating mixes. The flow of songs is one of the most important parts of most of my mixes, especially for those autobiography “phono albums” I made for each year of my life. Those are near diamond quality, and came from many tweaks and redrafts.
I do have some exceptions where flow is not the priority. Like when I make a “history and evolution” playlist, trying to document a genre and its mutations and offshoots over time. I go chronological for those. Though if I arrange them in blocks by year, then there is some wiggle room for enhancing flow.
I think I’ve talked about my persnickety attitude toward soundtracks before. I even made my own alternative soundtrack for The Deuce. Not that the original was bad, I just thought I could dig more authentically into the setting.
While I don’t usually quiz people on the random songs that play in the environment, I can’t help naming the song (if it’s not an obvious hit), often interrupting our conversations to do so. It’s a lovable trait, I swear.
Happy Belated Thanksgiving!
I feel seen by this post, Phylum. I love all of this. I remember going to a class reunion and the dj was playing music from the year we graduated. I said to someome as Who Can It Be Now was playing, “we hated this music back then. Why does anyone think we want to hear it now”, not realizing that I likely did not represent the majority.
This guy wasn’t even playing radio hits from our era…it was just generic wallpaper dance/lounge music. And jeez, if you’re gonna do that, at very least choose generic rave tracks from the 90s!
{A related tale about live DJ programming is coming soon to a website near you…}
Bring on the hate!
I’ll take Generic Rave Tracks from the 90s for $1000, whoever is hosting Jeopardy.
I may be a music obsessive but you might want to look away at my attitude to playlists. I don’t do them by theme or any well thought out and considered format. I keep a phone note which has separate sections for books, films, podcasts, tv shows that I’ve heard about and intend to get round to. Obviously there’s a music section too. Anything that’s caught my attention that I haven’t heard before gets noted. If there’s a TV show or film with a good soundtrack I’ll mark that down to go onto tunefind later and dig into what the songs were.
I’m always switched on to the potential for hearing something new. There’s been times in a store when a song has been playing that I don’t recognise and without a way of finding out what it is I’ve had to remember a couple of lines of lyrics to Google later and find the song.
Every so often I collect all the songs I’ve listed and put them into a playlist, titles with whatever the date is. Here’s the bit you’ll want to look away from. I put no thought whatsoever into the order. It’s literally whatever order they are in my phone note. I enjoy the randomness factor of skipping from genre to genre and across eras with no coherent theme. Feels like my own personal radio station. It gets worse though, on occasion I will use shuffle. It freshens things up if I’ve listened to that playlist a number of times. I like the anticipation of not knowing what’s coming next.
I have no issues with this approach to playlists. It sounds like it is coming from a place of love and probably keeps it from getting old.
Back in the mixtape days, I did fret over the order of songs on side A and Side B, and I still to this day remember some of my more inspired choises. I can appreciate the level of care that goes into those, rollerboogie. But now with playlists I have a very similar attitude as JJ. Load up the cache of songs (in a playlist) and hit random for my very own radio station!
Playlists: hardcore believer in the power of shuffle. Load it up with a bunch of songs you like, maybe have a theme (currently listening to my raggedly-curated fifty favorite songs of 2020 and wondering what comes next; ah, Annie, ‘Streets Where I Belong’), and let it rip.
Soundtracks: fan of a good needle drop, but unless it’s an egregious clunker, my thoughts often drift toward subjects like ‘what did they have to pay to get this song’ or ‘does the artist have the rights to this song and did they know it would be used like this?’
Yelling at radio: been doing this for half a century. Now it’s at the Shlabotniks on Sirus/FM.
Karaoke: a newbie to this burgeoning art form. Dabbled (badly) in The Phantom of Opera soundtrack and the ’70s singer/songwriter genre. Gonna try some Sam and Dave next. Prepared for disaster.
Arguing: Not much. Always have the most pedestrian tastes in the room anyway, and no defense for it.
Quizzing: Do this with everything, including music. The original know-it-all bore.
Wedding walkout: Never done it. They provided a meal, after all. Related note: Mrs. Stob and I (mostly I) plotted out the whole soundtrack of our reception. Heavily ’70s and ’80s dance. He only deviated once, throwing out Chaka Khan’s ‘I’m Every Woman’ during the bouquet toss.
Cranking songs: Big fan. Good music should pour out of the car like smoke when the upholstery’s on fire. With nobody inside of course.
Dreams: not really. Have enough trouble keeping clothes on while speaking in front of crowds during those self-flagellating nocturnal sojourns.
Waking up: No. At this age, need all the rest that can be had.
Big ups, rollerboogie!
I immensely love your standards for cranking music, as well as your karaoke set list. Have fun with that!!!
That is the first time I’ve heard the term Shlabotnik used outside of Peanuts, and I am happy about it.
I had a friend in high school that knew Joe Shlabotnik’s minor league stats by heart.
Earlier this year, I hosted a bunch of leaders in my organization at my office here in California. Before I started my presentation, I did a quiz / musical tour of California. Just really obvious ones like Lodi, Streets of Bakersfield and San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair), but it was fun. The fun twist was the 60+ year old guy who was a Tupac fan and nailed the California Love reference.
Love that!
I love this list, rollerboogie, and I can relate to so many of your experiences, especially the quizzing of those around me about the music. I thought of a few others…
Being obsessed with music statistics. Wanting to know how high a song got, how a song fits into the chronology of the artists releases, when it was released, etc. But also, I just always wonder how popular a song is. How much do people want to hear any given song in any given setting. Those kinds of questions are easier to answer in our digital/internet age, but I want more! Some of this stuff is difficult to quantify.
Shazam-ing songs all the time. This is a great way to discover new music for me. I’ll hear songs in the wild that I wouldn’t normally hear, because Claires in the mall doesn’t play my personal playlist. I found my most listened to song of 2023 while shopping.
And here’s one you can probably relate to as well, being a much more accomplished musician than I am…picking apart the musical choices in a song. Whether it’s a weird arrangement (wow, this tempo should be slower or I love the lush strings here or that key change was pretty cheesy) or chord progression choices or an especially expert performance on an instrument…I love thinking about those things. In the process I end up mentally re-arranging songs. (That song is probably one verse too long…or that melodic hook in the song is so good, I wish they would have featured it a few more times).
That last one I have done before for sure, Link, more times than I can count.
I don’t do Shazam but if I did I’m sure I’d use it all of the time.
Wondering what you were doing in Claire’s, but I won’t pry.
The music stats thing seems to be a common theme amongst the commentariat both here and at the Gum. I’ve not gotten into it, but I certainly get the appeal to our breed.
I am the diligent husband following my wife around while she shops for herself or gifts for others. 🙂
I just counted (I’m a retired math teacher, I count things), and I have 36 rollerboogie playlists on my Spotify. Keep them coming.
I also quiz people on songs. I had a bizarre points system for my nieces when they were teenagers, and they were fiercely competitive.
On my tombstone it will say, “I know a song about that.” I love coming up with obscure lyrics that mirror something in conversation, on TV, or in a movie.
Wow, I didn’t realize it was that many playlists you had saved. That is awesome to hear. I definitely plan to keep going!
I love that the teen nieces were game to play your music game! What a cool idea.
When I was on Facebook and my daughter was at the very tactile stage at around 1 or so, I posted the Depeche Mode lyric “the grabbing hands grab all they can…” and someone commented that I should write a song with that lyric. I stopped posting lyrics after that.
The nieces are both closer to 50 than 40 now, but they will still occasionally come up with an obscure fact of their own, and ask. “Do I get points for that?”
I love having playlists for Labor Day and MLK Day. I celebrate virtually every holiday with your playlists. And I have a bunch of others as well!