What does your music library say about you?

It's a question I pondered after a recent radio program in which people took someone else's IPod and were asked to talk about the personality of the owner based on the playlist.

This sent me scurrying for my own MP3 player, wondering what one might conclude if I lost my device and someone started into my playlist.

I shuddered at the thought. It's almost like an invasion of one's diary.

But I have reached several conclusions. If you find my MP3 player, you, too, will conclude that a) I have no musical taste and b) I'm scatterbrained and generationally confused.

This isn't really a new phenomenon. I recall arriving at university residence and lugging milk cartons of fellow students' albums. On those treks up the multiple flights, we usually got a glimpse of one another's musical choices: Devo, Pat Benetar, Blondie, Elvis Costello, Depeche Mode - sometimes, tucked way in the back, Donna Summer or Van McCoy.

So, when I glanced down my playlist this week I confess to a bit of pruning. If someone's going to check in to my MP3, I want a laundered version of my past and present.

The first thing you do with a download card and a new MP3 player is relive your past, then you slowly start to bring it into the current decade. Give me time. There's still hope for me.

By way of confession, here's a part of a gigabyte of my life until said pruning:
-Nessum Dorma from Turandot by Britain's Got Talent winner Paul Potts. I don't have a great interest in opera, but the story of a cellphone salesman singing his way to fame has a nice ring tone to it.
-Trooper's Raise a little H-E-double-hockey-sticks is one of them.

In the end it comes down to your thinking
And there's really nobody to blame
When it feels like your ship is sinking
And you're too tired to play the game

-The Rankin's Rise Again because the high note - I think that's Cookie Rankin - can make the hair on the back of your neck stand.

-Earl Klugh's Calypso Getaway because you have to find a curvy road and a sunny day to go with it.

-Amazing Grace by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir because big songs ought to be sung by big choirs.

-Great Big Sea's It's the End of the World as We Know It because they can take any song and make it sound like it was written in a kitchen in Newfoundland.

-Britney Spears' Oops, I did it Again. Just kidding. Never been downloaded.

-Canadian Idol runner-up Theresa Sokryka's Turned My Back because there hasn't been a Canadian voice this recognizable since k.d. lang.

-Gordon Lightfoot's Canadian Railroad Trilogy because you should get a Canadian history credit just for listening to it.

-Jars of Clay's It is Well with my Soul. A 137-year-old hymn, with a gut-wrenching story, timeless message, updated so that you don't have to have it played on the organ although that's not really such a bad thing. That's as cutting-edge as I get!

-Pink Martini's Lilly because the heroine has the name and the flirtacious personality of my little girl.

The rest of the album, Hang on Little Tomato, is there too because it's international and so-o-o-o good.

-Abba. Look, the late 70s was a vulnerable time. Enough said. I erased it yesterday but I'll still catch myself whistling Waterloo. Uh-huh.

-Chuck Mangione's Feels So Good because, before it became over-commercialized, it was the best flugelhorn piece on the planet.

-Diana Krall's Cry Me a River because no one sings like that.

-Colm Wilkinson's rendition of All I Ask of You from Phantom of the Opera because it was the music that I first danced to with my new bride. And what kind of husband would you be if you didn't have that on your MP3?

-Harry Chapin's I Wonder What Would Happen to this World.

Oh if a man tried
To take his time on Earth
And prove before he died
What one man's life could be worth
I wonder what would happen to this world

Okay, now go clean off your MP3 player before somebody discovers what you're listening to.

Larry Culham is managing editor of The Sun. Your comments and feedback are welcome at sunnews@simcoe.com.