What's on your iPod Top 25 Most Played list? - San Francisco Chronicle (blog)

Ask anyone who knows me really well, starting with my wife. My two worst qualities by far are a competitive streak when playing board games, and a severe case of music snobbery.

Really?

When we moved in together pre-marriage and merged music collections, I exiled about half of my wife’s CDs into a shoebox and asked her to take them to her workplace, because I didn’t want a Norah Jones album in my house. If we had played Trivial Pursuit that night, I have absolutely no doubt that there would have been no wedding.

So bask a little extra in the humiliation of my iPod Top 25 Most Played list. I didn’t even know this feature existed until Jane McGonigal mentioned it on Twitter a few weeks ago. I immediately rushed to see the Top 25 songs that I’ve played, and was shocked and humbled to find that I’m nowhere near as cool as I think I am.

I expected the list to reflect awesome musical taste: A mix of underappreciated rock and punk bands, local rap, alt-rock gods that will stand the test of time, 1980s heavy metal and some socially acceptable country. Of the seven bands I would currently count as my all-time favorites â€" Husker Du, Steve Earle, San Quinn, Willie Nelson, Radiohead, Van Halen and Rush â€" not a single track was represented. Apparently I’ve been spending too much of my spare time listening to “Watch the Throne.”

My list is below. Please let me know what’s on your Top 25 in the comments. In the meantime, I’m glad we can’t do this for movies that we’ve watched over a lifetime. I have no doubt I would be shocked in the Top 3 with something like “Sweet Home Alabama” …

1. “No Love” Eminem: I wasn’t surprised by this. I’ve been using this as sort of a palate cleanser for workouts for the past couple of years.

2. “I Like to Move It” will.i.am (Soundtrack to “Madagascar 2″): This is what happens when music snobs have small children: An earworm of an animated film theme song becomes the No. 2 most-played song in your house. My younger son asks me to play this over and over, mostly because he likes to look at the penguins when the album cover shows up on the iPod.

Birth control for music snobs.

3. “No Church in the Wild” Jay-Z and Kanye West: I gave Jay-Z and Kanye’s “Watch the Throne” about a B-minus when I bought it late last year. But apparently I’ve been listening to the album every hour since. Four tracks appeared on my Top 25 list.

4. “N***as in Paris” Jay-Z and Kanye: Yes, according to my iPod, this 41-year-old bald white guy rocks out to “N***as in Paris” about five times per day. Wrong on so many levels …

5. “Overnight Celebrity” Twista; 6. “Run This Town” Jay-Z; 7. “Who Gon Stop Me” Jay-Z and Kanye; 8. “Forget About Dre” Dr. Dre;

9. “The Boys of Summer” Don Henley: “The Boys of Summer” and the song “The Unforgettable Fire” bring me back to my high school happy place faster than any other audio. I think it’s because they both utilize whale sounds.

10. “Redemption Song” Bob Marley: I don’t own a second Bob Marley song and have never owned a single reggae album (unless UB40 counts). But for reasons I forget, I tried to learn this on the guitar last summer and played it about 100 times to get the timing right. I have since forgotten the chords, and never knew the lyrics.

11. “Major Tom (Voellig Losgeloest) Peter Schilling: Did we have a German exchange student living in our house and I forgot about it?

12. “Not Afraid” Eminem; 13. “Mama Said Knock You Out” LL Cool J; 14. “U Don’t Know” Jay-Z; 15. “Suburbia” Pet Shop Boys;

16. “Storms” Fleetwood Mac: You know who has the Stevie Nicks ballad “Storms” on their Top 25 most-played song list? Fourteen-year-old girls who just broke up with their boyfriends in the year 1979. This one baffled me, but I supposed I have to own it. Because I’ve never been a blue calm sea …

17. “My Love” Justin Timberlake: I have no apologies for this. JT rules.

No apologies ...

18. “Young Forever” Jay-Z; 19. “Since You’re Gone” The Cars; 20. “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss” PM Dawn; 21. “Big Dreams” The Game; 22. “What Is and What Should Never Be” Led Zeppelin; 23. “Otis” Jay-Z and Kanye;

24. “St. Elmo’s Fire” John Parr: Just once in his life. A man has his time. And my time is now. I’m coming alive. (Real explanation: I always play this when the light hits the disco ball in my living room.)

25. “Seventeen” Winger: I’ve always been a Winger defender, and started listening to the music even more after I wrote this story about Kip Winger and his second life as a classical music composer. But I’m still a little surprised this beat out “Mr. Brownstone.”

There were a few that I suspected. But overall, I feel like someone who has been confronted with video that proves he has multiple personalities. And that second personality is the subject of a restraining order by Jay-Z …

Looking forward to hearing your selections. (Top 3 or 5 or 10 is OK if you prefer to be brief.) And to recap, the three best excuses you can use include “I use it to work out,” “My kids listen to it” and “I was trying to learn it on the guitar.”

PETER HARTLAUB is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder/editor of The Big Event. He takes requests. Contact him at phartlaub@sfchronicle.com. Follow him on Twitter @peterhartlaub. Follow The Big Event on Facebook.