Evil Randomness

There's always that one song, isn't there?

The one that came on the CD full of songs you love. The CD is brilliant, and you bought it the moment it came out, and with just a hint of disturbing hunger in your eyes, you unwrapped the celophane and popped it in to rip it to your computer. (We are, after all, children of the modern era. This is what we do.)

And it was so great. It was everything you'd hoped.

Until a few days later, when you find the song. You've listened to it before, of course. You devoured the whole album and put it on repeat for fifteen hours straight until your eyes turned into hypno-swirls and you babbled of green fields with drum kits in the middle. But suddenly you realize that it just isn't as mind-bogglingly wonderful as the rest of them. In fact, when you really listen to the lyrics, you discover that it's a bit creepy, honestly.

It becomes, in your mind, the antithesis of all that is good and pure, and it sends shivers down your spine whenever it comes on. You start skipping over it, and you feel disloyal to the artist, because you love her, dammit, and how could she subject you to this, I mean, I'm sorry, I tried, I really did.

Soon enough, this existential crisis fades away, and you find a new album to love and cherish and drool over and place lovingly undr your pillow. It happens. Plenty of fish in the sea.

But that first album, it's still sitting on your hard drive. Some of its songs have made it into your daily play list. A girl's gotta have a soundtrack at work, you know? Not the song, of course, but you've forgotten about that one by now.

And then comes the day that you don't go directly to that hand-selected play list. You just throw the whole damn thing on random and wonder what will come up.

And what's the first damned song you hear? Tori Amos's '97 Bonnie & Clyde.

It's like it knows, somehow.