It’s one thing to hand your iPod over to someone else and let them rummage and discover all your deep dark secrets but this can be mitigated with a nervous laugh and a ‘hey! er heh heh! how did the Spice Girls get in there??’

It’s quite another to face the challenge of letting your iPod play one of its default playlists: Top 25 Most Played, in front of others. Chappo didst challenge me so, and the playlist went thusly. Now I should preface this by saying that I usually just let my iPod scamper through my collection on full random so while I have many tracks, this list likely reflects tracks I have really focussed on. Call this an inverse-excuse, if you will...

25. Drive / Bic Runga. Excuse me but, dear Gods this woman has quite a voice. This is the watered down single version, have a listen to the original on Drive if you can.

Rain fall from concrete coloured sky.

24. Take On Me / A-Ha. Were you really surprised by this?

Bonus points if you can make it through this version:

23. Everything I’m Not / the Veronicas. A tad 90210, and aimed at a demographic half my age, but their sound rawks. And they’re local girls, so, go them!

and a pretty cool unplugged version:

22. Don’t Believe Anymore (Remixed by Ivan Gough and Colin Snape) / Icehouse. This has many resonances for me, especially the original. But we’ve been over that before. Suffices to say if iPods were around in 1985/6 the play count on this one would be a few hundred higher.

...and here’s the version that hit the iPod top 25:

21. Just a Word / Icehouse. I actually have a bone to pick with ID on this one. The remix on the remastered CD is overcooked! What were you thinking, Iva!? Were you aiming for the US market and thought the original was too barren? The version on vinyl is far, far better than this one. Whitespace, Iva, whitespace!

No vid available, exercise for student, etc.

20. Specialty / Howard Jones. Mingli, thank you for introducing me to this.

19. Jeunesse Dorée / De Phazz

18. Sabbatical / De Phazz

17. Heartfixer / De Phazz

16. As The Days Go By (remix) / Daryl Braithwaite. Hunt down the remix if you can - the vid that follows is the single version. Look out for the brilliant bridge, and of course the one and only John Farnham lending a vote of confidence on backing vocals.

15. You Can’t Hold On Too Long / The Cars

14. Night Spots / The Cars.

13. Rush / Big Audio Dynamite

12. Spaceman (remix) / Babylon Zoo

11. Here to Stay / New Order

10. Icehouse / Icehouse

9. Something Special / De Phazz

8. Human Behaiour (Close to Human mix) / Bjork

Sorry, can’t seem to find any freely available video of this one, the iTMS preview is here.

7. Don’t You Want Me (Extended) / Human League

Haven’t been able to find this version on iTMS or youtube so here’s the original.

6. Maybe San José / De Pazz

Love how these guys step right up to the line then mischeviously poke their tongue out and turn away. “Do you know the way to San-”

5. Streams / Baily

How the hell did this one get in here!?

4. Numb/Encore / Linkin Park & Jay-Z

This is a remix of one of two Linkin Park’s tracks I’m addicted to. This is a really good collab with the two. The clip you see here has the song, but I think I probably associate this track more to that questionable remake of Miami Vice.

3. Things Can Only Get Better / Howard Jones. Again, Mingli, thank you.

2. Untouched / The Veronicas.

1. Unforgotten / Halo 2 Original Soundtrack

If you’re not a Halo/Marathon fan then this one’s probably a little lost on you. For me it brought out goosebumps. I’m just in awe of Microsoft (yes, I just typed those six words!) for going the whole nine yards and engaging a whole fracking orchestra to do the soundtrack for a game. It’s times like this that I smile in realising that there are just as many well-meaning, devoted-to-making-the-world-just-a-little-better geeks there as anywhere. They just don’t let them see daylight is all.

Excuse me, I’ll just go watch Antitrust a few more times to get my head straight; I feel a little - um - wrong about declaring an M$ product number one in anything. Seriously though, hats off to you, Microsoft for briefly owning the soul of and collaborating with Bungie and making a really decent go of it.

So there you have it. You know what surprised me? No Thomas Dolby or Blue Nile made that list. Ah well, I get a little fickle with the ol’ track skip button. So what’s on your top 25 these days?

Tags: iPod, Top 25

It's not a huge stretch to come to the conclusion that iPods and other DAPs have well and truly changed the way we listen to music. Having as much as your entire CD collection in your pocket will do that.

I think Chappo nailed it one day when we were rabbitting on about... whatever it was we were rabbitting on about at the time. He said he likes listening to albums all the way through and thought that the "mp3 generation" was missing out. After thinking about it and experimenting I think he's right.

All of a sudden the concept of an album as a coherent piece of work in its own right is diminished and shuffle play or album/artist/genre traversing playlists, and single track digital purchases reign. Tracks live or die by themselves, and if you listen on full shuffle, transitions can be at best amusing but more likely downright jarring. I'm not saying that Enya and Rammstein couldn't eventually get along having a few bevvies at the local, but musically it's a bit of a jump.

Sure, you could just turn shuffle off but that makes picking music a completely manual process (sayeth he in his best blonde 'Maths is hard!' voice...) iPods these days - and I'm sure other DAPs worth their salt - have a nice compromise called Album Shuffle, that (funnily enough) picks an album at random, then plays it from start to finish before moving on. It's not rocket science but I think it's significant in that it can help you re-appreciate each album.

I've been listening this way for the last month or so and it really makes a nice difference. My work commute is anything up to 45 mins so that fits in up to an album each way. It's like you're no longer listening to some radio station programmed by a musical version of a dyslexic, but you're listening to your CD collection again. I'm not describing it here well but give it a go, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the difference.

Tags: iPod