The Great Music Cull of 2016

So... I have too much music. I have 18 433 songs in my itunes. At some point I'd stopped getting ridding of songs I didn't like cause I have plenty of memory in my computer; and I kept a lot of things in case I changed my mind about them, or newly got into them, etc etc bla bla I can't explain.

But now I want my library to be just wall to wall things I love, or like a lot. So it's Projet Cull time.

I've built myself a smart playlist that doesn't include genres I don't want to go through right now (musicals, opera, classical...) and then I'm listening through the rest as I do other things. (This is one of the reasons I don't like to watch videos or podcasts people recommend to me. I'm always listening to music... and trying to get some music-shit done, son.)

You can't delete songs from within playlists, so my method has always been to award a song 5 stars if I don't like it, and then delete all the 5 stars from the main Music window. So right now I'm 5-starring what I don't care for, and giving 1 star (or listening through the song) if I like it. Either actions makes the song disappear from my smart playlist, and on I go til there's nothing left.*

I decided to go by the year the song was uploaded--it seems the last time I rebuilt my library was in 2009, so that's where we began. It's and interesting biographical exercise cause I'm reminded of things that happened in my life that year, what I was writing, what I was into.

The hardest to cull are full albums that I either bought or got from the library. If I bought the album I don't like to delete too much from it, cause I still have an old school respect for the sanctity of the album. But I'm also 43 years old and haven't got time for songs I just don't like. So. I'm being tougher. But it's harder to decide what to take out, so sometimes I just classify the songs "albums to consider" and I'll come back to them later.

So without more ado... let us explore song of the songs dug out of 2009! Here's my first offering:



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* The most horrifying thing is that itunes added this function where ratings you apply to individual songs now get applied to a new column called "album rating." So when I go to delete the 5-stars, I have to be careful to skip the ones that are only ALBUM rated 5-stars, as chosen by the fucking computer. Everyone like me who uses the stars to organize their huge libraries are bitching about this, and there aren't any great work arounds.

You see this? The three Bruce Springsteen songs that I DO NOT want to delete? Fuckers.