Deliberately not listening to favourite records in case you spoil them.

Does anyone do this? I never did and would have thought it ridiculous frankly. Then sometime around my early 30s and the release of Want One by Rufus Wainwright I started doing it all the time. I’ve still probably only heard that album all the way through maybe twenty times. As a teen I’d have heard it twenty times in the first week of release. I do it more now too; Blue Weekend by Wolf Alice is still special enough that I won’t listen to it without playing it all the way through; invariably at night, only once every month or so but no more.

I’m sure this A Thing?

So you don't get bored with them? Yes

Yes! I was like this *especially* as a child, back when I could only afford maybe one new record per month. I quickly found that I was less tolerant of repetition and over-familiarity than some, and distinctly remember saying "you can borrow my copy as long as you play it out of earshot!" (Related: I also abandoned playlisted radio the moment I found the alternatives.)

The relative ease of access to music in the 21st century means that everything is crowding everything else out anyway, which is fine by me. eg. it's possible that I've heard even some of the LPs I voted for in the recent 2010s poll just a handful of times.

Used to have an agreement with friends at uni that we could only listen to Soft Machine 1 & 2 once per week for this reason, it would be about 3am on a Friday morning usually.

I remember that John Peel had a thing with new albums by The Fall, that he would only listen to one song per day until he had hit them all.

Soft Machine Volume 2 is possibly the best thing ever -- I think I shall permit myself to listen to it again in 2023 lol

Suburban Light - My turntable no longer works; it may be the amplifier. I may have ruined them and the record by leaving them close too the window during the winter several years ago when I was on vacation and it got really cold. I have copies on CD. I told myself I would listen to it before I die, but I may have outgrown it.

My other half does this with nostalgic things - music, films etc - so the authentic nostalgia doesn't wear off.

I think it's more about not listening to them without giving them my full attention. Hence saving them for special circumstances or ideal conditions. It's not so much that the songs will be burnt, rather that casual listening does not suit them.

I'm ready to admit though, that especially with time passing, there might an underlying fear of losing something special. Sometimes I hold off, as if I had put the music in a safe, and then this disagreeable sense of relief comes when you find out that the music is still great but that making sure is not the same as enjoying it, so you stop, you know ? (Not sure if anyone can relate) So yeah, bizarrely I come to the conclusion that I don't listen to my favorite music nearly enough.

Soft Machine is not a bad example of that, if not quite a favorite. I greatly admire them, but I haven't put in the work to get really familiar, intimately know them, and I have no explanation for it. Life and mediocre albums get in the way I guess.

I mostly do this with angsty teenage things that bring up too many feelings to indulge as frequently as I used to- I still think of zen arcade as one of my all time favourites even though I've probably listened to it about 5 times as an adult

I am rationing my Dry Cleaning listening. I’ve already blown out Big Star and the VU, have taken a long break in the hope of getting it back. Same with Missy and Joni really too.

I thought at first this might be about not wanting too much wear on your vinyl. I did try to ration out my listening to favourite albums when I was 12-14 or so. Now I'm thankful if I get to listen to anything enough times to know it well.

xps I recommend listening to Zen Arcade more, it holds up insanely well!

Oh wait I guess I didn't really grok your reasons for refraining. Carry on then

I don't really worry about this with music. I'm much more conscious of not wanting to rewatch a movie or reread a book again too soon. With my favourite music, I can usually listen over and over with no decrease in enjoyment (I'm on this with Ys right now.)

I also thought the thread was about vinyl. If about albums, then I agree with the general consensus that it would be about not testing familiarity. It generally takes me a long time to become familiar with music, but as I've gotten older pop music has gotten harder to listen to for that reason. I sometimes listen to the radio station associated with a university that I've discovered also has its greatest hits, but in general it takes me longer to recognize a piece and longer to discover the context for it. If one had the ability to hear and retain a piece and to realize context immediately, then one's appetite for music might be enormous.

Involuntary overexposure is the real killer.

^truth

Yeah, I listened to Cosmic Thing for the first time in ages recently and I still love the whole thing, but "Love Shack" obviously has been overexposed. I purposely don't play the B-52s debut often, one of my favorite albums of all time, for fear of wearing out its charms. Same goes for Remain In Light, Young Marble Giants, and a number of others.

Wore out a bunch of classic rock and punk albums of my youth - so it was a delight to get a copy of Please Please Me many years later - I'd skipped the pre-65 stuff mostly, and I got to PPM well after immersion in rockabilly and 50s R'n'B and pop. I love how that record is really more of that old world than the world they subsequently created. Likewise, Super Black Market Clash, clogged with all those b-side and remixes, and Rat Patrol are the Clash records I still can enjoy. Had a good run with Village Green Preservation Society, but not sure if I wore it out or I changed. Not sure if I wore out the Pixies, or the idea of the Pixies wore out.

So yes, I ration my listening to my favorite discoveries of the last 20 years or so, which includes Young Marble Giants.

Can watch YouTubes of my chestnuts more easily than listening to the original source. Somehow the visual dimension invigorates them.

But I also find I can "fully digest" a really enjoyable album with about seven or eight listens over a few weeks, and feel fine putting it a way for a while after that. Definitely notice when revisiting a record feels "too soon".

when i was a young'un i definitely did this with my Madness albums.
would buy on day of release, and hold back from binge listening, which was never easy as i didn't have that many albums to listen to.
now, due to having thousands of albums, it's not something i do so much.

If I hear a compilation or greatest hits record by a band I'm unfamiliar with, and I like the songs I'm hearing, I won't listen to them too much so I can hear the excerpted songs in the context of their original albums. When I do hear those original albums, at first I'll frequently skip the songs I already know so that eventually I've got all the songs on an "even level" in my memory.

Eh, not too worried about this. I've tired of albums before. Give it a few months or a year and the magic comes back.

I'm honestly more worried about dying without having listened to my favourites enough. Especially EVOL, even though I must have listened to it well over a hundred times since my teens.

If I hear a compilation or greatest hits record by a band I'm unfamiliar with, and I like the songs I'm hearing, I won't listen to them too much so I can hear the excerpted songs in the context of their original albums. When I do hear those original albums, at first I'll frequently skip the songs I already know so that eventually I've got all the songs on an "even level" in my memory.

omg yes

Yeah I do that too. When I listened to the Top 100 Tracks of the 2010s playlist, I skipped the songs I loved, to give the other songs more attention. I feel like it's a sickness, kind of

Not the nomination playlist, mind you, where that might make sense. The results playlist

If I hear a compilation or greatest hits record by a band I'm unfamiliar with, and I like the songs I'm hearing, I won't listen to them too much so I can hear the excerpted songs in the context of their original albums. When I do hear those original albums, at first I'll frequently skip the songs I already know so that eventually I've got all the songs on an "even level" in my memory.

― Halfway there but for you, Thursday, September 1, 2022

omg yes

― kinder, Friday, September 2, 2022

co-sign.
the skipping is so I don't wear out the singles before I fully appreciate the deep cuts.

i sometimes apply this same principal across the entire discography (or least the part that i've decided that i care about)

I think it's more about not listening to them without giving them my full attention. Hence saving them for special circumstances or ideal conditions. It's not so much that the songs will be burnt, rather that casual listening does not suit them.

This is the case for me with some newer favorites, like I could listen to Aviary now, *or* wait til I have time to play it in bed with headphones. So I'll wait.

Then with older favorites I avoid, it's usually more about the fear of dealing with how much time has passed since it first meant something to me, like the music's cosmos can't be reclaimed no matter how much I still enjoy it. Which usually ends up being an unfounded fear.

I usually try to play the side without the hits.

I used to TOTALLY do this – but now, when I get into a record, I just listen to it as much as I want (sometimes every day!), and "let nature take its course" w/r/t cycling around to something new.

And guess what? All those old favorites, which I was so afraid of "wearing out" in the past, still sound great when I play them from time to time.