I Know What I Like (Probably Too Well)

According to Spotify, my most played song ever is When I'm In Your Arms by Cleo Sol. This came as a surprise to absolutely nobody, least of all me.

The song has become so embedded in my daily life that I rarely make a conscious decision to play it. My hand just seems to find it. The same way it finds the same pair of indigo jeans hanging in my wardrobe despite the fact I own other trousers.

This isn't a defence of routine. I like discovering new things. Few feelings are better than stumbling across a song and immediately texting it to someone with an excessive number of exclamation marks.

Still, I've always been fascinated by the things that survive our phases.

Every few months I become convinced I'm entering a new era. I'll save references. I'll build a playlist. I'll briefly consider becoming the sort of person who only wears cream linen. Then, somehow, I end up exactly where I started.

Back in the jeans.

Back with Cleo Sol.

Psychologists have suggested that familiarity can strengthen our attachment to things over time, citing this as the Mere Exposure Effect. The more we're exposed to something, the more positively we tend to feel about it. That probably explains part of why favourite songs become favourite songs in the first place.

But I don't think repetition tells the whole story.

There are plenty of songs I've listened to hundreds of times that no longer mean much to me. Then there are others that seem to settle somewhere deeper. They become woven into the background of your life. You stop hearing them as separate from yourself.

The same goes for clothes. Certain pieces somehow absorb a version of you. Mine happen to be indigo denim.

I think we're encouraged to see identity as something we're constantly building. Something just beyond reach. Something waiting to be discovered if we buy the right thing, read the right thing, become interested in the right thing.

Maybe part of knowing yourself is noticing what keeps returning. Not because it's trendy. Not because it's aspirational. Just because, for whatever reason, it still feels right. I don't know exactly what my attachment to that song says about me. I don't know why those jeans have outlasted almost everything else in my wardrobe.I just know that tomorrow I'll probably reach for both of them again.

Written by Vanessa Twerefou