A favorite song deserves occasional listening without another task competing for it.

Music has mostly become an accompaniment, playing behind the commute, the dishes, the inbox. Under those conditions you hear it without listening, and a piece you once loved slowly becomes furniture. What made it matter needed your attention, and attention is the one thing background listening never gives it.

Play one song this week with nothing else happening. Sit down, let it run to the end, and notice what you had stopped hearing in something you thought you knew completely.