A DEEP DIVE INTO A MYSTERIOUS IPOD

A JOHN’S MUSIC BLOG INVESTIGATION

Every Corny Millennial remembers their first iPod. I got mine, a Nano, in 2005, and I immediately put Born to Run and some Baltimore club mixes onto it. Then I started to use the Pod when performing live; before that point, I played all of my backing tracks through a portable CD player that would often skip. That Nano went through thick and thin, through brutal tours and mental breakdowns. It met its demise in the summer of 2007 when I left it on a Greyhound as I was travelling from Austin to Los Angeles. It wouldn’t be the last iPod I would lose on a bus. 

The artist Morry Kolman collects used iPods, many of which still contain their previous owner’s music library. On the occasion of a recent holiday market, Kolman scrubbed the data from the Pods and dumped each discrete device’s contents onto their own USB drive. I was able to get my hands on a drive—thank you, Molly—and I took a dive into the data in an attempt to figure out a listener.

Hillsong UNITED “Our Time Has Come” 

There is a fair amount of Christian rock on here. I wouldn’t say that Christian rock is the genre that defines this iPod, because there is no genre that defines this iPod. It is the snapshot of a fairly typical music fan in the 2000s, a newly liberated listener who, despite having newfound access to the history of recorded music, is more than content to listen to Green Day’s American Idiot and a single song by Destiny’s Child. You might think that because I am an Aging Millennial Hipster and Music Blogger, I have no respect for the casual listener. I have a lot of respect for the casual listener! I wouldn’t foist my stupid life onto anyone. “Our Time Has Come” doesn’t not sound like The Arcade Fire. Which brings us to… 

The Postal Service “Such Great Heights”

Do you know what goes well with Christian rock? Indie rock. There is a smattering of the stuff on the list—the kind of indie rock that, in a different, pre-Napster reality, might’ve sold a ton of copies. A good deal of the earnest, twee-adjacent indie music of the 2000s could’ve potentially been Christian music. It’s simply a matter of shifting a few signifiers around. I’ll never forget the first time I heard “Such Great Heights.” I was struck by the song’s combination of “skittering” IDM drums and emo electronic songwriting. I can’t type out the word “skittering” without using scare quotes. That’s my own baggage.

Damien Jurado “Working Titles”

Where does indie rock and Christian rock meet? In the music of former Sub Pop recording artist Damien Jurado; despite having a complicated relationship with the genre of Christian rock, he has been a self-proclaimed believer since he was a teeanger. The iPod contains a single song by the artist, and nothing off of Ghost of David, the only record by Jurado I am familiar with. Did I meet Damien Jurado once in the basement of a German squat? It’s possible.

CHVRCHES “The Mother We Share”

It seems as if this iPod stopped getting updated around 2013, which makes a lot of sense. That was the year Spotify really started coming in strong. That was also the first year I had an iPhone, so take my tech timeline with a grain of salt. My guess is that this person purchased their Pod in 2008 and gave it up five years later.

Limp Bizkit “Take a Look Around (Timbaland Remix Feat. E-40 & 8-Ball)”

Not so much rap here: a single Kanye song (“The New Workout Plan”), a Will Smith and Snoop Dogg collaboration I had never heard before (“Pump Ya Breaks,” taken from Will Smith’s somewhat forgotten 2005 album Lost and Found), and “Dead and Gone,” T.I.s song with Justin Timberlake. As confusing as that trilogy of tunes might be, it is nothing next to the iPod’s fourth and last rap entry. It’s a Timbaland remix of a Limp Bizkit song that features E-40 and 8-Ball. It’s a rap rocker’s dream come true. The track has that turn-of-the-century Timbaland bounce, rockified a bit, and it takes a long time for the guest rappers to come in. The quality of E-40’s verse is less important than the fact that it exists.

Wicked: Original Broadway Cast “No One Mourns The Wicked”

Along with a fairly wide slate of Christian music, the Pod also contains a decent amount of showtunes and Disney original songs. There is a single Coldplay album. There are two Jack Johnson albums. Did this person ever wear a fleece? How old do you think they were at the time? Please: Sound off in the comments.

Deep Blue Something "Breakfast at Tiffany's"

The inclusion of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is notable because of how it is labeled. The MP3 included here attributes the song not to Deep Blue Something but Matchbox 20. That’s just how things went down back in the hazy file-sharing days. Another common mistake was to credit the song “Stacey’s Mom” to Bowling for Soup instead of Fountains of Wayne. The same goes for the twin towers of ‘90s ska hits: “The Impression That I Get” was often attributed to Reel Big Fish and not The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. In both cases, the mislabeled bands eventually just started playing their “hit” live. DJ George Costanza and I witnessed this firsthand in 2017 when we caught a Bowling for Soup show at the Gramercy Theater in Manhattan. You think you understand what John’s Music Blog is all about? I might fuck around and take DJ George Costanza to a Bowling for Soup show. You just don’t know.

Jimmy Eat World “Futures”

I had to Shazam an unlisted Jimmy Eat World album—no album title; no track titles—to figure out that it was Futures, the band’s 2004 follow-up to their 2001 emo pop classic Bleed American. The song is alright, but it’s not as good as Bowling for Soup covering “Stacey’s Mom” live at the Gramercy Theater. 

Beyoncé “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”

What interests me about this particular Beyoncé MP3 is not the music but the file’s cover image: Instead of the standard label-issued art, it is a black-and-white illustration of a DJ holding up two records below large text advertising a website called djleak.com, which is now inactive. Another Beyoncé song on the Pod is a mash-up created by an artist who is only identified by their Myspace URL. I remember the wild west of audio watermarks, back when drops were used more for practical than aesthetic purposes, though that line is always blurry. “Atlantic Records for T.I. clearance.” You had to be there!

Ne-Yo “So Sick”

One thing that I can say about this user with some authority: Major Ne-Yo fan. Though most of the iPod is made up of loosies and single albums, it contains 62 Ne-Yo songs. One album was downloaded twice for the bonus tracks. This person might be the biggest Ne-Yo fan I’ve ever been exposed to. When I think of Ne-Yo, I think of a strong singles artist whose work played a major role in shaping the texture of pop radio in the mid-to-late 2000s, not an “album artist.” But clearly I was living in my own bubble, one far away from a different kind of listener, a listener with a love of Christian music, a minor taste for middlebrow indie rock, and a major taste for Ne-Yo.