Every once in a while, a song finds me, grabs me, and shakes me till my teeth rattle. I will play said song back to back to back to … well, you get the idea. I basically put it on my iTunes and play it endlessly until the mood passes. I’ve been known to play a song nonstop for five weeks in a row. Scary. I call it musical OCD, and my daughter has it too. If she plays ♫ Shorty is like a melody ♫ in my head ♫ one more time, I’m going to scream.

Meanwhile, my song for the season is Battlefield by Jordin Sparks. According to iTunes, I’ve played it 113 times since I discovered it a few days ago.

I’ve had this song for a while. I recently downloaded about 20 gigs of music from my brother’s hard drive, then largely ignored it. So on Wednesday night, I was looking through my files to empty space for more torrents when I bumped into some Jordin. I’ve always liked Jordin, and Tattoo has previously featured on my OCD list. She has this wholesome thing going, and she has pretty hair and a Janet Jackson smile. No air was cool, and I’ll even forgive One step at a time for being annoyingly peppy. That song is like a cheerleader on a sugar high, and I can’t stop singing it.

I didn’t immediately realise why I liked Battlefield song so much. I gave it some thought after fifty plays, and decided it must be the strings. I LOVE rock, and I’ve noticed that any non-rock song that I like secretly has some subtle stone influence. Apparently, I have in-built affection for steel guitars.

A few minutes ago, I decided to shut my ears and listen to the song, to really listen to it. I thought maybe I could figure out the draw. I was surprised that after 100 listens, I still noticed new bits of music – and I guess that’s why I like it so much. It’s layered. Each playback has more gold to discover.

The song starts with drums, a nice catchy beat that makes you sit up and pay attention. For some reason, it made me think of neon-coloured Spandex, punk haircuts, and MC Hammer.

Next comes some cute piano [yes, piano can be cute] and vocals. I didn’t notice the piano until my eyes were shut. Weird. At the bridge, some deep strings are introduced, and that distracted me for a bit. They have this awesome sliding effect, and after 16 years of academic music studies, I really should know what that effect is called.

Suddenly there’s a chorus and everything just explodes in a rainbow of sound. It feels a bit like that advert where a kid puts some candy in his mouth, and suddenly his head bursts and hair flies everywhere and it’s all animated melodies and things.

The chorus ebbs into the verse two and everything disappears except Jordan, the drums, and the piano. The cycle is repeated, but it’s no less awesome the second time around. Turns out there are background vocals somewhere, and like the piano, I didn’t notice them until my eyes were closed. Now that’s what I call background vocal. They do a nice humming thing, and I like nice humming things.

I don’t know the lyrics of this song. There are few words that slipped into my consciousness, words like ♫ I guess you better go and get your armour ♫. But those only snuck in because I’m a total control freak, so I like armour. Also, when she sings it, it sounds more like gecheraama, and that sets off endless fits of giggles.

My brother came by a while ago, and as I was walking him out, I started humming. It was totally subconscious and I didn’t even know I was doing it until he said, ‘You’ve been singing that song for the last five days.’ Oopsie.

So now that I’m done analysing, I’m going to close my eyes for a bit and listen to the words. I suspect it’s a sad song, but I can’t help smiling when I sing the few words that I know, and I’m not really sure why. Depressing songs seem to touch me way deeper than happy ones, and for some reasons, sad songs often make me smile. Yoohoo? Where are you Freud?