"When you're forced to listen to something that much eventually you have to develop a relationship with it a little more complicated that pure antipathy."

My Life as a Wedding DJ.

First time you hear a song: "Huh? Whats up with this? I don't 'get' it."
Second time you hear the same song: "Hey...thats kinda catchy."
10th time you hear the same song: "Hey! I could worship this."
100th time you hear the same song: Idly hums along with it, without noticing until halfway through the song. Begins noticing flaws in the song.
200th time you hear the same song: Catches himself idly humming along and feels strangely annoyed and cheated by that.
300th time you hear the same song: Changes the station when the song comes on. Deletes the mp3 from his hard drive.
500th time you hear the same song: Open Hostility.

flash forward 20 years.

501st time you hear the same song: "Oh, wow! I LOVE this song. I grew UP on it!"

in this relationship curve:
song = significant other (?)

Um...no. To me it just applies to music.
if song == significant other in your cosmology, I suggest a marriage counselor.

i know. i just wanted to suggest the dippy parallel theory once it popped into my head.

also, one of the reasons I tend to give space to my favorite albums and not listen to them often is exactly because I want to avoid/delay that moment where listening to it becomes a mechanical exercise. it's one thing to know the words and intricacies of each song and be able to sing along and anticipate favorite moments...but i think at some point it crosses a line and ceases to be fun or exciting.

I worked in a maternity shop for a long time...business was painfully slow and it left me little to do but reclean and listen to the muzak tapes. Not muzak instrumentals, but a little cassette player that played only four-hour tapes from the corporate headquarters. We had two of these four hour tapes, and most of the songs were the most terrible music of all time. Largely guitar based, whiny "soulful" singers who in spite of their irritating vocal style were also very bland. All tracks like a watered down Sherly Crow. Lots of Everclear, Barenaked Ladies stuff, too. I had to listen to these songs several times a day and in this isolated envrionment I developed a peculiar relationship with these songs, a poor attempt at tolerance with these putrid things. I knew them all by heart, how each note would go. I dreaded what would come next, but I also came to anticipate and even yearn for it. Soon it came to the point that I had dissected these songs from every angle possible and could gain nor make anything more from them. After this, I didn't hate or like them, but my relationship was one of rapt attention nonetheless. I had ingested them so thoroughly, weighed them so carefully that I bonded myself to them. They were my horrible obsession. When someone did enter the store (once a day at best) I became angry with them for interrupting my song. Of course I wasn't allowed to be rude or tell them to leave, so due to my warped relationship with these songs I developed a deeply passive-aggressive relationship with my customers. That is the deepest example of this phenomenon in my life.

(I think a better analogy is something like "song" = "family member.")

I do have a strangle little relationship with it
What a great slip!

I'm so flattered. Carry on.

upon the 500th or so time i was forced to hear Allstar by smashmouth..i kinda dug it.

My friend worked the Speed Racer booth on the midway at an amusement park for a summer. Basically for six hours every day he was stuck in a four-by-six-foot space in which the "Speed Racer" theme song played nonstop, loud enough to draw passersby. He said that while he was in the booth he was almost totally unaware of the song, but even years later he has a great fondness for it and listens to it at home. It helps him concentrate.