Sunday Shuffle

I thought I would try something new on here, and do something I saw someone else do a long time ago. My first MP3 player was an iPod Shuffle. You know, the small device that was the size of a pack of gum, had no screen, and held probably about 300 songs at most. When I first got it, I was ecstatic. I mean, up until that point I had been using audiotapes that held only 45 minutes worth of music on each side. A device that held nearly 300 songs was like heaven at the time.

The glory of the Shuffle was that it allowed me to — go figure — actually shuffle the songs, so they would play in random order, making it a surprise every single time. I even took to guessing what would be coming up next, and every once in a while I would actually be right. It was such a fun time, discovering that Shuffle and its amazing capabilities, until I realized that 300 songs wasn’t nearly enough. You see, at the time I had an iTunes library of over 40,000 songs (it has since grown to nearly 250,000 songs) and there was no way I could get every single song I wanted on that Shuffle.

So, I got an iPod Classic, with 80GB of space, or room for nearly my entire iTunes library at the time. That way, when I put it on shuffle there was a chance I would hear nearly every song I owned, eventually. But of course, being the music fanatic that I am, my iTunes library continued to grow, and I was forced to pick and choose what I would have on my iPod at any given time. But the shuffle function remained my favorite one on that iPod, and is still my favorite one today. A friend of mine liked to play this game where she would put her iPod on shuffle and list the first 18 songs that came up. They were always 18 of the wildest songs you could imagine, and usually crossed genres as well. So, I decided I would play along using my blog to list them. Here goes. Putting my Classic on shuffle…

1. Murder Ink (Instrumental) – Dr. Dre

See, he makes more than those beats by dre headphones.

2. Dark Matter – Bjork

She is so strange, but her music is so interesting perhaps because of it.

3. Blah Blah Blah – Ke$ha

Who else has a dollar sign in their name?

4. Can We Still Be Friends? – Todd Rundgren

This is off one of the most underrated soundtrack albums of all time — Vanilla Sky.

5. Hold Me – Brian McKnight

His voice is as smooth as ever.

6. Run, Baby, Run – Sheryl Crow

7. Best Thing – Usher

8. Words Get in the Way – Gloria Estefan

Who else knew that she just released a new album?

9. How Long? – Matchbox Twenty

10. Half of Me – Rihanna

11. Give It 2 U – Robin Thicke

12. Take Me Over – Michael W. Smith

Showing my contemporary Christian radio roots with this one.

13. Viva La Vida – Coldplay

“I used to rule the world. Seas would rise when I gave the word…”

14. Bedrock Anthem – “Weird Al” Yankovic

15. Where the Story Ends – The Sundays

This is one of my favorite songs of all time. I first heard it when someone put it on a mixed tape they made for me and forgot to label. Ages later I found out who sang it, and I bought the album right away.

16. Arise – Flyleaf

17. Sunday Bloody Sunday (Live from PopMart Tour) – U2

18. BBC – Jay-Z

I should have known something from Jigga would make it into this shuffle somehow, some way. I actually find Magna Carta Holy Grail to be largely a disappointment based on what I expected from the king of rap, but it’s still better than most other rap albums out there. This is probably the album’s second-best song, in my opinion.

You should try this Sunday Shuffle too sometime, and see what your music says about you.

Sam