{"id":22732,"date":"2025-07-07T05:20:45","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T11:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/?p=22732"},"modified":"2025-04-26T15:34:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T21:34:12","slug":"itunes-top-200-4-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/itunes-top-200-4-2\/","title":{"rendered":"iTunes Top 200: #4"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Music.\u00a0 It is a powerful thing that brings people together, creates memories, and evokes emotions.\u00a0 It is the universal language that speaks to the soul.\u00a0 It forms the soundtrack of our lives.<\/p>\n

It has now been five years since we last counted down the Top 200 songs in my iTunes library, featuring he songs I have listened to the most since 2007.\u00a0 It is time to do so again, seeing which older songs still resonate and if any newer ones have joined the fray.\u00a0 So, without further ado, here are my most listened to songs, based on number of plays as of January 1, 2025.<\/p>\n

We continue this week with the fourth highest ranked song, a sing-a-long classic and the oldest composition on this list which has notched 242 plays since my stats began in late 2007.<\/p>\n

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#3: Harry Caray \u2013 Take Me Out To The Ballgame<\/em>
\niTunes stats: 242 plays, most recently on 9\/27\/2024
\nPrevious ranking:\u00a0#5<\/a><\/p>\n

First written in 1908, Take Me Out to the Ball Game<\/em> was popularized through many vaudeville acts and is considered one of the three-most recognizable songs in the country, although most people today have only heard the chorus.\u00a0 It is thought to have first been played at a ballpark in 1934 and made an appearance later that year in Game 4 of the World Series.<\/p>\n

Harry Caray joined the White Sox broadcast booth in 1971, becoming popular with the South Side faithful and enjoying a reputation for joviality and public carousing.\u00a0 Returning owner Bill Veeck, knowing that Caray would sing along to Take Me Out To The Ballgame<\/em>\u00a0in the broadcast booth during the Seventh Inning Stretch, wanted Caray to lead the crowd in stadium-wide event.\u00a0 Early in the 1976 season, Veeck secretly installed a public address microphone into the broadcast booth and turned it on once organist Nancy Faust started playing the song.\u00a0 Caray initially did not want to do it, but, as Veeck explained, \u201cAnybody in the ballpark hearing you sing\u00a0Take Me Out to the Ball Game<\/em>\u00a0knows that he can sing as well as you can. Probably better than you can. So he or she sings along. Hell, if you had a good singing voice, you\u2019d intimidate them, and nobody would join in.\u201d \u00a0Caray finally agreed to sing it live, accompanied by Faust on the organ, and went on to become famous for singing the tune.<\/p>\n

This version features Caray and Faust and comes from a YouTube video compilation of Caray\u2019s performances from the late 1970s.\u00a0 While Caray left the White Sox following the 1981 season and passed away in 1998, I still include the song on my White Sox victory playlists, attributing to its high play total.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Music.\u00a0 It is a powerful thing that brings people together, creates memories, and evokes emotions.\u00a0 It is the universal language that speaks to the soul.\u00a0 It forms the soundtrack of our lives. It has now been five years since we last counted down the Top 200 songs in my iTunes library, featuring he songs I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[11983,3292,1055,328,85,49,5124],"class_list":["post-22732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-1934-world-series","tag-bill-veeck","tag-harry-caray","tag-itunes","tag-nancy-faust","tag-white-sox","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22733,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22732\/revisions\/22733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}