Song Overkill

You think a song is amazing.  You dance to it, sing to it, and do other things to it.  You play the song over and over again, and it never gets old.  You tell all your friends about the song.  You post a link to the song on your Facebook page, which gets "liked" 12 times.  You crank the volume whenever you hear the song on the radio, and you go crazy when you hear it at dances (unless you are a girl, in which case you go crazy at every song that comes on at dances). You might blog about the song, or maybe even write an essay about it.  And if you really, really, like the song, you will even make your own music video for it.  And then all of a sudden, you experience...

Song overkill is natural occurrence that takes place after a song has been played over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, until you never want to hear it again.  Because you play the song so much and listen to it so much, you eventually get sick of hearing it.

You no longer dance to it (unless under peer pressure).  When the song comes on the radio, you switch the radio to NPR.  When the song comes on your iPod playlist, you throw your iPod on the ground, breaking it.  When you hear the song but can't control it (such as over loud speakers at a baseball game), you go to the control room, find the person responsible for the playing of that song, and beat them to death with a baseball bat.

Why does this happen? Why do songs come and go? Why can't we simply listen to the same songs that we once thought were amazing?  Why?

Its because of.....

Boredom

Yes, we humans get bored quite easily.  We always want new things, new ideas, new people, and new songs.  If you wore the same clothes everyday to school, you would eventually get bored of them (and other people would get bored of the smell, assuming you didn't wash the clothes ever (which is a bad idea, make sure you wash clothes on a regular basis)).

But why, then, are some of the old songs from the 80's and 90's still amazing today? Why do the Beatles still rock?

Because they are real good songs.  Music just isn't the same anymore...anyway, I mustn't digress.

Another reason these songs are still good is due to spontaneous recovery.  After not hearing these old songs for a while, we suddenly hear them and realize they are really good.  But these songs aren't so familiar and overplayed that we pull our hair out.  We spontaneously recover our like for these songs, and enjoy listening to them again.

Which is why after not hearing an overplayed song on the radio for a long time, and then hearing it, you will enjoy it.  A perfect example of this is "Gold Digger" by Kayne West. This song used to played nonstop, and I was pretty much sick of it. Now, after a year or so of not hearing it, it is still a good song and I will listen to it.

And there are some of you who love a song so much and think it can't ever go bad.  Well, try listening to it for 12 hours straight.  Let me know how it goes.

You still like the song? I know I wouldn't....


Where'd you get the coconut? "We found them" Found them? In Mercea? The coconut's tropical! "What do you mean?" Well, this is a temperate zone. "The swallow may fly south with the sun or the plumber may seek warmer climates in winter, yet these are not strangers to our lands." Are you suggesting that coconuts migrate? "Not at all, they could be carried."

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