You’re reading Poets Wearing Headphones, a semi-regular feature at PopPoetry. In these posts, poets sound off (get it?) about songs they just can’t stop listening to and thinking about as writers, creatives, and people. If you enjoy this post and would like to see more or just want to support the writing that moves you, subscribe to get Poets Wearing Headphones and every weekly PopPoetry post delivered to your inbox.
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A few nights ago, I found my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter lying in the middle of the living room floor with a pillow and blanket, blasting music on our Alexa. It was Glass Animals’ “A Tear in Space (Airlock),” one of her favorites. She looked up at me and said, incredulously,
“I’ve listened to this song seven times!”
She’s just learning about the particular, somehow adolescent pleasure of mainlining a song over and over and over again until it becomes part of your cellular structure.
The repeat button, born on Discman CD players like the one I had as a kid, now exists in digital form on streaming services. Developers knew then and know now that people sometimes want to listen to an album or playlist on repeat or, in more urgent cases, the same song on repeat. The human hunger for repetition, seeded in infancy, never really goes away: just ask anyone who’s on their 27th rewatch of 30 Rock (couldn’t be me). Repetition provides comfort, but it also allows for meditation and study, for deepening and understanding.
The last time I used the “repeat one” button on Spotify was to overdose on Sufjan Stevens’ “John My Beloved” while I was traveling home from Baltimore last month.
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