Wednesday, October 1, 2008

What's In A Ringtone?

I've always taken my cell phone's ringtone a little bit more seriously than I should. Not that I think it has to be deep and meaningful, but I tend to try a little bit too hard at finding one that I think "fits" me. These are the ringtones I've had over time:

"Bizarre Love Triangle" by New Order - This one lasted a looong time. Since this is arguably in my top ten songs ever, I had a strong attachment to this, but I found that hearing it play every time my phone rang actually lessened my actual enjoyment of the song. Also, the quality of my clip in particular kind of sucked. Hence, I have jettisoned it, although I still use it for one person.

"Hey Mami" by Fannypack - This one was fun, but it got annoying fairly quickly. Again, one very special person gets this ringtone, but that's it.

"Breakin' Dishes" by Rihanna - I kept this one almost as long as I kept BLT, and I'm not particularly sure why. It came around during my resurgence of love for pop music, so I guess that's why I felt it worked, but mostly, I just got used to it.

"No no no! Not God bless America - GOD DAMN AMERICA!" by Rev. Jeremiah Wright - Okay, so I never actually used this one. I got it from Slate's political ringtones. It's fun to play for people every once in a while. It is my ringtone for one person who specifically requested it, so every call from her is actually rather startling.

"Sinnerman" by Nina Simone - My newest selection, and it just may be my best choice yet. It's urgent, it builds in intensity as I continue to not answer the phone, it's obscure without being overly so... I'm pretty pleased. Of course, give me a few months and I'm sure my whims will change again.

Feedback Time: What about you? What's your ringtone? WHY?

1 comment:

Mike Wright said...

"Emerge" and "Seventeen". I think I've had them for like a year now and I'm still not sick of them. I chose them because of their replayability.

I forget most of my others. I know I had "Fixed Income" by DJ Shadow, which is a great song but makes for kind of a depressing ringtone.