My Top Fives

A friend recently asked me to give him a list of my 5 favorite songs. He told me he was making a playlist of all of his closest friends’ favorite songs, like a Friendship Playlist. I loved this idea. It was honestly really touching. So I gave him my list—after deliberating about it for a few days.

I was really struck by this exercise, by how strangely and enjoyably difficult it was to complete. And when he shared the final playlist with all of us, and we each got to see each other’s choices, I was slightly surprised that nobody had picked the same song as someone else.  I know there are a lot of songs out there, but since we were such a close group of friends, I was still a little bemused that our tastes were so different.

A little more recently, a different friend asked me about my top 5 movies. As he asked, he mentioned that he thought my favorite movie was still RENT, as it had been when I was in junior high. I told him that my list had changed, and we talked about favorite movies for a while, and again, I was quite surprised. I realized that your taste in music or taste in films can really say a lot about you, and that I hadn’t necessarily shared my tastes with people I consider some of my closest friends, and that this fact might say a lot about how close I perceived us to be versus how close we really were.

From all of this I’ve decided to compile a list of my Top Fives for every artistic medium I can think of. It’s been an enjoyably difficult exercise on all fronts. Your taste says a lot about you, and it’s been fun getting to know myself a little better.

SONGS

Cosmic Love – Florence and the Machine

Eyes Wide Open – Gotye

The Fear – Lily Allen

Let Go – Frou Frou

Hide and Seek – Imogen Heap

(What I find most interesting is that some of my favorite artists didn’t make it on my list. MIKA, for example, has to be my favorite music artist of all time. He’s never written a song I didn’t like. But I didn’t put anything by him on this list. I was fascinated by my own decisions here.)

FILMS

The Prestige

Memento

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

V for Vendetta

Cabin in the Woods

(I find myself particularly attached to this list. To put it simply, I feel that each of these movies transcends the limits of film as a form of media. They’re not just movies; they’re works of art.)

VIDEO GAMES

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

Legend of Dragoon

Super Mario 64

Left 4 Dead 2

League of Legends

BOARD/CARD GAMES

Magic: the Gathering

Betrayal at House on the Hill

Battlestar Gallactica: The Board Game

GO

Cards Against Humanity

TELEVISION SHOWS*

Sherlock

Psych

Friends

Scrubs

Pokemon

(*I don’t watch much TV anymore. Specifically I’ve been told to watch Game of Thrones, Orange is the New Black, Doctor Who, and Breaking Bad, among several others. I’m sure many of them would make it on this list if/when I watch them, I just haven’t yet. Sorry L)

BOOKS

Harry Potter and the [insert title here] – J.K. Rowling

The Fault in Our Stars – John Green

Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins

(Seriously, huge Potter fan right here. That series was my generation’s Star Wars)

MUSICALS

Into the Woods

Wicked

The Book of Mormon

Company

Avenue Q

POEMS/SHORT STORIES

Good Country People – Flannery O’Connor

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died – Emily Dickenson

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas – Ursula K. Le Guin

The Negro Speaks of Rivers – Langston Hughes

Mirror – Sylvia Plath

MAGAZINES/RADIO/NEWSPAPER

No.

So, those are the top fives. 

I chose not to include paintings and photography for this exercise because their names are frequently ambiguous, not widely known, or often just untitled, and accessing the images themselves is actually quite difficult. 

I may do a blog post later on that includes my favorite photographers and painters, as well as my favorite authors, directors, actors, music artists, YouTubers, etc. It’ll be interesting to see how those lists compare with all of these, and especially interesting to see how (and how frequently) these lists change over time.