I got a bit of a shock the last time I decided to check out the 25 most played list on my ipod. In the two years that I’ve owned it, a number of key tracks have jostled for space there; every so often I’d download an album or a few songs, and from those, one or two tracks might make it.
There were the stalwart inheritance tracks; the music that I work to; the music I go to sleep to when my brain’s still working. Let’s just say the churn rate was very low.
Imagine my surprise when one artist and his one and only album managed to supercede every other track on my ipod after just three months, taking not just the no.1 and no.2 and no.3 spot in the most listened to list, but every other spot until the album runs out.
If you know Bon Iver, and his 2008 solo debut, For Emma, Forever Ago, you may understand. It’s an incredibly beautiful album. 
It’s not brash or pushy. The first time you hear it, it doesn’t get you in a stranglehold; it’s more of a gradual, stealthy bewitching. By the third and fourth times you don’t really want to hear anything else. I didn’t consciously listen to the whole entire album on repeat hundreds of times, but that’s what must have happened.
The ‘Iver’ in Bon Iver is pronounced like the French ‘hiver’ for winter. His real name is Justin Vernon, and the story of For Emma – how it came about, from what pain and solitude it sprung – is beautiful and worthy of myth-making in its own right.
You can learn about it here, in a short, sweet video interview Vernon did with the Guardian, that includes an acoustic performance of one of the album’s best tracks.
You can also listen to track 3 on the album, Skinny Love, here.
