A Song You Used To Love But Now Hate

There’s a reason I haven’t regularly listened to the radio since 2000:  it ruins music for me.  It overplays songs I like until I can’t stand them anymore.  It plays certain artists so often I never like them at all until I’m allowed a break for several years.  Commercial radio is the antichrist, I swear.

The last great song ruined for me by radio was this one.  At the time the album came out, I’d only just gotten into the artist.  I know:  Canadian who loves singer-songwriters and piano somehow misses the existence of a staple household name.  Attends Lilith Fair not knowing the creator’s work.  Anyway, I loved Surfacing from start to end.  This song, long before it was a radio single, became dear to me because it reminded me of a dear friend and later, my girlfriend of two years.  It was hers.  It was ours.

And then, radio happened.  Every goddamn hour, it played again.  It took something emotionally loaded and difficult to hear and made it so omnipresent, I wanted to run for my life.  Over a decade later, I can still barely hear the song.  After its ruin, I vowed to ditch the radio and instead make my own playlist – hence why I seldom play albums start to finish, choosing instead to constantly shuffle thousands of tunes or make playlists of my own.  I control my music.  I keep it safe from overkill.  And while some songs can never be played enough for me to grow weary of them, that’s the exception and not the rule.  Better safe than sorry.

Adia – Sarah Mclachlan