#365songs (116 / 365)

It's interesting to see a song get its hooks into someone else: it's kind of an intimate thing that we usually don't get to see as it happens. My view on the process by which my partner went from being unaware of Bartees Strange to listening to "Flagey God" on repeat for a half hour or more was a spotty, incomplete one. But all my previous exposures to "I love this song so much I'm going to play it on repeat" started when the other party was already in the full flower of their obsession.

As evidenced by this entire thing I'm 116 songs into doing, I'm no stranger to getting obsessed with a song. But I'm a die-hard album listener so when someone starts listening to a single song on repeat, I notice. As memory serves, my partner listened to Live Forever a few times in its entirety before latching on to "Flagey God," and she was never able to explain what about it grabbed her so hard. Thinking about it now, I have some theories about what in the brief lyric — one verse, one chorus, repeated twice — might have resonated with her, consciously or not. But it's also possible that it's just that "Flagey God" is an incredibly groovy and cool-sounding song. It's unassuming and spacey and chill enough to work as background music, but it's absolutely full of interesting sonic touches that make it a joy to listen to even for the tenth time in a row. It says a lot that I didn't mind that I ended up incidentally doing that several time.