The Solipsism of Songwriting

If you're still wondering if the average musician is an egomaniac, in my iTunes library I have 198 songs whose titles begin with the words “I’m,” “I’ve,” “I’ll” and “I.” Most of them are pretty straightforward -- "I Can't Make You Love Me," "I Don't Want to Get Over You," "I Have My Reasons" -- but then there's "I Love That Party with the Monkey Kitty." Oooo-kay.

Granted, I currently have 5,372 songs on there, so maybe 198 doesn't seem so much, but those are just the song titles that start with those words. Granted, also, that there are over 100 songs that start with some variation of "you," but a closer look reveals titles like "You Belong to Me," "You Don't Know Me," "You Know Where to Find Me," and "You Will Miss Me When I Burn," all of which seem to lean back toward the "I" category, no?

The reason I know this is not because I've become an obsessive shut-in with absolutely nothing better to do (though that stage isn't far off, I think), but because in order to approach my music selection with a fresh eye, I've reordered the alphabetical listing from artists to individual songs.

Hmm, I thought that would make it sound less geeky somehow. Oh well.