As much as I love this band, I don’t find myself listening to them as much as I used to. I’ve owned DUTG and the earlier albums for ten years or more, and the others, I bought the day they came out, and I’ve had many, many, many years to listen to the albums compulsively, and I don’t feel the need to do that anymore.
It’s not that my feelings about the band have changed. It’s just that it’s been a decade, and you can’t listen to the exact same thing for a decade without becoming a little numb to it. It’s just part of how the body copes with stressors in the environment. And the thing is, I don’t want to be numb to this music. I don’t want it to bleed so far into the background that I don’t even realize it’s there. So I limit my exposure, so I never become too comfortable, too complacent. And then when I do listen to the band, I get that feeling of, Holy shit, this is even better than I remember it being.
I was due for a dosing, so over the past few days, I’ve been dipping into the catalog and seeing what sticks. I started with GHV2 and had a few go-rounds with LLI, but today was all about EOAC. I specifically chose that album because I wanted to hear “Bullet Proof,” which is weird, because that’s on the list of what I refer to as “always-skips.”
I define an always-skip as a song that you always skip over, in almost all normal circumstances. It’s not quite the same as a song you dislike, a song that offends you just by virtue of its existence. An always-skip is a song that you just aren’t in the mood to hear. Ever.
The opposite of an always-skip is, of course, a never-skip, one of those songs you spend the whole album waiting to hear. Again, this is not quite the same thing as a favorite song. There are songs I love that I don’t want to listen to all the time, because they make me too emotional, or because they are too slow-paced, or because they suck to drive to. These are favorites, but they are not never-skips, because I will skip them like a fucking jumprope if they come on when I’m speeding down the highway.
The thing is, even though these categories are opposites, they can overlap at different times throughout your experience with music. “What Do You Need” was an always-skip for me from the first time I heard GF; over the past year, it’s become a never-skip. The reverse is true for “On The Lie.” Just as overplaying a band can make it sound less special, and underplaying a band can make your heart grow fond, the same is true for individual songs.
Anyway, here are some of mine:
Always-Skip
all instrumentals
“Messed Up”
“Up Yours”
“James Dean”
“You Know What I Mean” (shut up, Nicole, no one cares about your opinions)
“Don’t Worry”
“We Are The Normal”
“Naked”
“So Long”
“Broadway”
“January Friend”
“All Eyes On Me”
“Up, Up, Up”
“Smash”
“Give A Little Bit”
“SILENT NIGHT” TIMES INFINITY
Never-Skip
“I’m Addicted”
“Road To Salinas”
“Gimme Shelter”
“On Your Side”
“Fallin’ Down”
“So Far Away”
“Long Way Down”
“Only One”
“Dizzy”
“Full Forever”
“Hate This Place”
“Big Machine”
“Tucked Away”
“Truth is a Whisper”
“Stay With You”
“Better Days”
“Real”