You can learn a lot about someone by examining his or her music collection. I do it all the time.

It’s a little different now, since very few people have tangible tunes. But fifteen years ago, it was a constant thing. Whenever I went to someone’s house I’d take a few minutes to look through his or her CD rack. If a person had enough CDs to actually display them, they’d almost assuredly be the kind of person I’d get along with, even if I didn’t like all of the music they had.

A more specific personality analysis, especially when I first met someone, was to look through their CD book. It usually lived on the passenger side floor of their car. Going through someone’s music was an important test and an interesting one, because within a few minutes you’d be able to know everything you needed to know about a person.

Right off the bat, obviously, you’d see what kind of albums they owned. Almost immediately you’d be able to group the albums into a genre or two. The more exciting part was combing through to find the deeper cuts. This is the stuff that would really define someone’s personality.

For example, someone who had mostly contemporary pop music but then had a few 80s superstars mixed in was usually someone who had a bit of a fun streak and who wasn’t afraid to make fun of themselves.

An errant hip-hop or metal CD usually meant the person easily adopted the personalities of the people around them. For example, they probably dated someone who was really into a band, or their friends were very into something at a specific time, and they kind of co-opted it.

The list goes on and on. Then, if you weren’t getting any obvious clues from the artists, you could always infer something from how the discs were organized. I always kept mine alphabetically, which says a lot about me. None of it’s good.

It was always fun when a friend was driving their parent’s car. Moms and dads had CD sleeves worth cringing over. At least we cringed over them when we were fifteen. I’m sure I own many of those same songs, non-ironically, today.

Nowadays, sure, you can look through someone’s MP3 player. But it’s not quite the snapshot the CD book was. iPods and hard drives can contain hundreds and hundreds of albums. With a CD book, only the most listened-to stuff was making the cut. If it made it into your car, it earned it.

It also feels a little creepier to grab someone’s iPod and just start thumbing through it. CD books were meant to be examined. iPods can have pictures on them which make investigating one seem like an invasion of privacy.

Trust me, I wasn’t looking for the photo of you sharing ice cream from the same spoon with your hamster. But truth be told, I don’t find that nearly as offensive as the four Insane Clown Posse albums.

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