Saving a song

I've never done this, though it has occurred to me sometimes that I am ruining a particular song or album for myself. I don't really care though, if I enjoy it now I should listen to it, I don't know what I'll like in the future.

Once you've ruined a song, is it ruined forever? or does an adequate rest period bring it back to life?
― enochroot, Thursday, October 11, 2018 7:17 AM (one hour ago)

I can say absolutely for sure that you can get go back with fresh ears. It takes a lot of time and immersing yourself into something completely different. But you can do it.

The reason why this works is that the most important feature of the brain is that it can forget. A brain which cannot forget is soon full and won't memorise anything anymore.

Very annoying when you're saving a song and then it comes on in a cafe or – worse – in the background in some TV show. Just a waste of an already depleted resource.

My experience of listening to "dead" songs after long periods without (nowadays I have gaps of 25 years for some songs) is that the first listen is interesting (from "I thought I had stored every detail but the tone here is something I might not have appreciated on my early 90s stereo" to "I've almost forgotten what happens next") but then the music immediately reverts to its dead state, to be perhaps revived briefly again in the early 2040s and then no more.