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Ratliff has a really good quote about Frank Sinatra: "Frank Sinatra was a literal singer: when he wanted to express happiness, he sang like a confident man. When he wanted to express sadness, he sang like a defeated one". He used this song as his example when discussing "the perfect moment" in chapter 20, and I really enjoyed this analysis.
Source: Spotify

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Ratliff had this song listed as an example for wasteful authority and I found it to be very profound.
Source: Youtube

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The Velvet Underground - Heroin (song only)

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Cover of the book that we analyzed in class.
Source: https://thedurham.com/event/ben-ratliff-with-mac-mccaughan-every-song-ever/

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The man himself.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/books/review-in-every-song-ever-ben-ratliff-helps-the-listener-discern.html

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"Music doesn't have to do anything, enlightened listeners like to say. Well yes it does. It has to begin, and it has to end. And for a lot of people it has to be recognizable as music, at least in some context"

- Ben Ratliff
Every Song Ever

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“We think of pieces of music from a distance as blocks of time, but can we hold more than a second or two in our minds? And are we—with all music, to some extent—waiting around for some pinpointed extraordinariness to happen? Not”

- Ben Ratliff
Every Song Ever

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After reading Ben Ratliff's, Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty. I have come to overall say that I enjoyed this book. It had a lot of unique ways at viewing music and some heavy weighted opinions, some of which I do not think I would agree with. However Ratliff has clearly demonstrated that he looks at music critically and has solid examples and reasoning behind the statements he makes. I particularly enjoyed his chapters over wasteful authority, because it was something that I had not necessarily thought about, but that I do see in certain artists, and I appreciated that sentiment. I also really liked his earlier chapters over transmission, and repetition. Because these are elements that i have previously thought about myself or experienced as a musician. However, some of his chapters such as chapter 6 over the single note, or chapter 12 over density were just in a sense unnecessary or over analyzed to the point where the meaning became obsolete to me. His ideas and the way he sees music has allowed me to be more critical if what I'm hearing and not be so accepting or rejecting of music when I first listen to it. However overall the examples that Ratliff picked were both enjoyable and appropriate for the most part and I appreciated this book as a resource for class material. I would say that I did learn an advantageous amount of material in the class and with this book.