While my second concern is always how to sell my music on iTunes, my first concern is somewhat irrational: if my band ever writes a hit, what if it is so overplayed by radio DJs that eventually our fans will grow hatefully spiteful and my dilapidated song will collapse in on itself like a dying star?

What? That’s totally a thing.

A great song’s death by overplay is a tragic loss for any band, and radio – the maker of tastes and the gateway to worldwide audiences – is the lead assassin.

Okay, sure, we can’t blame it all on the radio. As an iPod generation we have the ability to pick, schedule and overplay our own music. The poor saps before us had to get their butts down to the record store and pay for the whole album if they wanted to listen to a specific groovy tune, or wait for the radio DJs to get around to it. We, however, know how to sell music on iTunes, where our fans can greedily consume it like mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving: until they’re bursting from overindulgence and never want to look at it again.

Radio is, however, the primary culprit of musical overplay. Radio DJs take perfectly fine songs and turn them into Pavlovian triggers for homicidal rage (or road rage, at the very least). The overplay assassination is tragic. But, if you force me to look on the bright side, it is indicative that you’re on the path to stardom.

Try to grieve for the following five most overplayed songs of the last few years. (We’re pretty sure, however, that you won’t be able to shed a single tear – you’ll be way too busy trying to rip your ears off after the thousandth time these songs are stuck in your head. We’re sorry in advance. We’ll show you how to sell music on iTunes if that makes it any better.)

1. “Somebody That I Used to Know” – Gotye
   How to sell my music on iTunes is no longer my secondary concern. Now, it’s how to stop myself from bursting into frustrated tears if I ever walk past any elementary school music class in which a child is playing a xylophone. Like most people, I loved this song at first. But now it’s just some song that I used to know but now I wish I could forget.
2. “Grenade” – Bruno Mars
   Yeah, yeah, he has a great voice. But these hyperbolic, shallow lyrics are just way too easy to make fun of. Catch the grenade, already, and stop it. Next.
3. “Party Rock Anthem” – LMFAO
   Unless you’re in Las Vegas partying with celebrities and drinking Krug Brut Vintage, it’s not likely you ever want to hear “Party Rock Anthem” ever again. It’s fun, sure, and these boys are sexy (and they know it), but after the thirtieth time hearing it while stuck in traffic on your evening commute, I think we can all agree this song has been headed and gutted.
4. “Rolling in the Deep” – Adele
   Love and respect you to pieces, Adele, but the earth may give up and forcibly pitch itself into the sun if this song comes on the radio even one more time. This song could have had it all, Adele, but the radio played it with a beating.
5. “Die Young” – Ke$ha
   Once the radio got ahold of “Die Young,” there was no letting go. Radio killed it, revived it, and killed it again. Believe it or not, this song came out at the tail end of 2012, and was already worn out by March 2013. Sorry, Ke$ha, but this song did, in fact, die young. And we’re okay with that.