Only the devil would play the same five songs over and over

My old roommate was a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan. When Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness came out, he would program the CD to repeat Bullet With Butterfly Wings over and over again.

For three hours at a time.

He did the same thing with Oasis' Champagne Supernova and Spacehog's In The Meantime, too. In order to fight back, I borrowed my friend's Deep Blue Something album and played Breakfast At Tiffany's over and over again, not because I liked the song, but because I knew he hated it. After a couple of days of playing it over and over again, he comes in and says, "You know, I never really liked this song, but now I think it's pretty cool."

I couldn't win. But at least that was better than hearing Santana's Smooth every time I turn the radio on.

I'm one of those people. Granted I don't subject everyone around me to it, but I am one of those people that will listen to the same set of songs perpetually until I've memorized ever lyric, every last note. I'll listen to the same song for hours on end if it fits my mood, and I really don't think there's anything wrong with it so long as you use headphones and spare the ears of others.

The reason I do this is because sometimes I want one song and only one song floating in my subconcious, sometimes I forget I'm even listening to it.. sometimes I just need the stability it seems to create. I especially do this "listening to the same songs over and over" thing when I'm feeling any one emotion intensely. If I'm confused, hurt, sad, depressed, ecstatic, or feeling really dreamy I might listen to a set of songs repeatedly until they bore me or no longer fit my mood.

I guess some people are just freakish in this way, but it's not reason to be hostile or resentful.. just ask them to use headphones. If they won't, that's when you get to beat them over the head with a wet noodle.

So my whole dorm floor last year got pretty sick of hearing our suitemates down the hall playing BSB and Britney Spears, et. al over and over and over again. It got to the point that somebody suggested that somebody else should take an axe to their stereo. One day when the music was both particularly loud and particularly irritating, my roommate looked over at me and said: I've got something that's tonic to dance music. He then pulled out a Merzbow CD.

Now, for those of you that have never heard of them, Merzbow produce albums of randomly generated white noise. White noise that is not always soothing to listen to. White noise sounds not unlike a fax machine going down the garbage disposal. White noise that can drown out Nsync from about fifty feet away if your stereo gets loud enough...

Needless to say, we never heard the girls play teen-pop ever again.

Much worse than being in a room with someone who plays the same song over and over, is being trapped in the backseat of a small car with one.

While riding along on a trip from Ithaca to Boston (5-6 hours or so), I was subjected to 5 hours straight of the Macarena...in Spanish.

Now I know what hell is like.

So as not to make this a total GTKY writeup (although I guess this whole node is...), some songs are just catchy to people and courtesy isn't that common nowadays. People don't realize (or care) that they're potentially driving their roommate/hallmates/entire section of the city insane. It's similar to people who don't flush public toilets or don't wear deodorant. Personal space isn't respected much anymore.
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But anyways, if I get stuck in a car with you, and you play the Macarena, you die...

This must mean the devil runs radio stations in Britain because once they find a song they like here, they lock onto it and play it to death. If I hear Kylie start singing "Keyn't geyt yew ewtta mey heyd" one more time...

They call it the top 40, but it's more of the top 5, because it's usually the same five songs that get the heaviest airplay. This is great if you like the song, but you'll always be sick of it long before the radio station thinks you should be.

Worst of all, this rubs off the the populace. Obsessive mad girls phone in requesting it be played over and over EVEN IF THEY OWN THE SINGLE.

I had a housemate who'd play Flyby by Blue on a constant loop. Really loudly as well, with "system up with the top down, got the city on lockdown" constantly echoing around the house. And in my first year of uni the evil bastard next door left his minidisc system playing "Why does my heart" by Moby on a continuous loop. I was asleep and had that freaky hearing stuff while you're asleep situation where this music was drifting about and I was hearing it and couldn't block it out but couldn't wake up to turn it off either. Eeeek.