We all like the odd “odd” song. Sometimes they’re guilty pleasures, the rest of the time they probably should be. My wife and I had a discussion about this the last time we saw Malcom in the Middle. The theme is a perfect fit for the show and done by They Might be Giants. I personally feel like the majority of the work done by this band is novelty music, yet I have a friend who can listen to all of their albums marathon style. It’s not fair to fault someone for having different taste, I went through a huge Weird Al phase in grade 8, but my tastes have matured… Haven’t they?!

Time is always the greatest test. I am ready to accept that 10 years from now I will look back on bands like The Knife, Man Man and Of Montreal and call them novelty acts… we’ll see.

So how about you? Any novelty music in your life?

I have been using Last.fm for just over a year now. I installed a ‘scrobbler’ on my winamp which tells last.fm what I’m listening to at any given moment on my computer. From this list Last.fm fine tunes my own radiostation (http://arleym.com/start.asp) and they make some good recommendations of other music I might like.

Anyways, today I was looking over my profile page (http://www.last.fm/user/arleym) and I saw that I’ve listened to just over 28,000 songs in the last year! I was amazed. Bear in mind this doesn’t include CDs, vinyl, iPod, imeem, last.fm radio or music I listen to in the car. I will also make the concession, that I’m not always at my computer when it’s playing music. Still, this is a TON of music.

Looking at my top 15 most-listened to bands was also an eye-openner. This list is by no means reflective on the order that I like bands in (granted Beatles and Radiohead are in the right places), but is more in keeping with the volume of work the artist(s) have produced. For instance, I have probably five Pink Floyd albums on my computer in mp3 form, but only two Spoon albums. To me this feels like I’ve listened to Spoon more, they got more repeat listens whereas Pink Floyd would have to have less plays to reach that number… (in theory, since the majority of PF played was likely Dark Side of the Moon, ha).

All in all I find this very interesting and informative. I wish they could show how much time all these songs added up to. If you’re on last.fm friend me up. Below is a list of my top 15 bands. No idea how Hives made it onto there, I don’t feel like I listen to them more than 5 times a year.

# rank Bandname # songs played

1 The Beatles 1,690
2 Radiohead 1,675
3 Beck 1,194
4 Pink Floyd 1,021
5 Neil Young 962
6 Spoon 914
7 The White Stripes 781
8 Feist 760
9 Led Zeppelin 716
10 The Rolling Stones 712
11 Salty Pirates 695
12 Menomena 648
13 David Bowie 591
14 The Arcade Fire 570
15 The Hives 482