I recently read of a music writer who believes the perfect pop song lasts precisely two minutes and 42 seconds. Crazy though it sounds, he may be on to something. Try ordering your iTunes collection by duration and you may find as I did that songs of that length seem slightly better on average than any others.
For the record, mine include ‘Michelle’, Elvis’s ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’ and ‘Love me Tender’, Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, Josephine Baker’s ‘Si J’étais Blanche’, ‘California Dreamin’’ by The Mamas and the Papas, ‘The Wanderer’ by Dion and the Belmonts and ‘This Charming Man’ by The Smiths. So, just as you could build a decent music collection by buying music only by people who died in plane crashes, I suspect you could also survive with only a playlist called 2’42”.
(Incidentally, Dion — of Dion and the Belmonts — nearly ended up on both lists.
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