Musical obsessions: a retrospective

I have had a last.fm for nearly twenty years now (under a username any eleven year-old would have been proud of). I went inactive on the platform for a long time, but I was fortunately able to log back into it last year and start scrobbling once more.

One feature of the website is the ability to set a song as an Obsession, something that was new to me but which I immediately seized on once I started using last.fm again. Obsessions are temporary, and I only tend to set them when I’ve found a song that so perfectly scratches a particular itch that I’ve taken to looping it dozens of times in succession.

So far, I’ve gone through seven “obsession” cycles:

Screenshot of my seven past “Obsessions” on last.fm. In chronological order: Time Comes in Roses by Bess Atwell; Andromeda by Weyes Blood; Thirstier by TORRES; CUNTISSIMO by Marina; Buckle by Florence + the Machine; Blood in the Cut by K.Flay; and I Can’t Decide by Scissor Sisters.

When you set an obsession on last.fm, you’re also given the opportunity to write a very brief note as to why you are suddenly so obsessed with the track. I’ve tried to remember to do that for each of my obsessed tracks:

• Time Comes in Roses: “i turn 30 in 3 weeks and i’m not well” (I may not have felt well, but I did seem to turn out well — I’ll tell the story of my thirtieth birthday some other time. That song was a great comfort to me at the time under the weight of that milestone.)
• **Andromeda: **“earth-shaking love & a reminder to pay attention to what’s actually important for once” (I can no longer recall just what I thought was so important at that time. It is a beautiful song, though, and spawned a whole new playlist on my Spotify.)
• Thirstier by TORRES didn’t have a note attached — but that doesn’t mean that it was a thoughtless addition. Far from it. That album is one of two albums on a list I’ve kept titled “albums I need to write about” (and here I am!) I suspect I was so emotionally overwhelmed by the track at the time that I couldn’t put it into words.
• CUNTISSIMO: “you do actually deserve pleasure!” (Lesson of the year. Enough said. No, wait, one more thing to say: Princess of Power is the second of those two aforementioned albums.)
• Buckle: “haunting yr city” (The album released while I was in Seattle visiting old friends and opening old wounds.)
• **Blood In The Cut: **“it’s too quiet in this room” (Not a sentiment frequently on my lips. But the song is the soundtrack of my stress, and I was feeling terribly stressed at the time.)
• **I Can’t Decide: **“🔪” (Eloquent.)

I’ve been enjoying using this feature, but I wish I had had it years ago, when I first began using last.fm. It’s very nice to have a record of my state of mind, a snapshot in time summed up in a song, and I’m sure that these obsessions will be helpful to revisit as those points in time become more distant memories. But I don’t have something comparable for my younger self, who already seems so distant. To call my memory Swiss cheese would perhaps be over-generous; I rely, and have always relied, on exterior mementos, on photos and chat logs and journal entries, to remind me of who I am, who I was, and (hopefully, hint-by-hint) who I am becoming.

Instead, I will have to mine and sift through the treasure trove of data that is my scrobble history from 2006–2010, hoping to piece together memories of the girl that was. I’ve taken some tentative steps towards this, and it’s enlightening to see what hasn’t changed (The Decemberists seem to be an eternal fixture of my life) as well as what has (somewhere along the line I developed a coherent sleep schedule.) I do look forward to continuing this exploration and sharing what I discover about myself … all the while making new memories and cataloguing them for my future present self.

(And perhaps a few more albums will be added to that list…)