Even though I wasn't passed the baton , I've decided to take it up before it gets dropped. Memes and polls are usually for fifteen-year-old girls, but since this is a music blog, my responses to this particular chain-letter meme-poll-thing are all fairly relevant. Trrill loves opera, yes; but it's high time we bring light to the full picture of our musical obsessions. Here goes…

Total volume of music on your computer? At home, where I have all my music, iTunes says I have 19.85 GB, which is the work of 3511 songs. And I have only a tiny portion of classical music collection ripped to mp3, so… there.

Last CD you bought? Actually, the last time I bought CDs was Monday, and I picked up three in one trip:

• Ezio Pinza: The Golden Years of Ezio Pinza. Of course I can't get enough of the voice and the musicality, but I have confirmed my suspicion that you don't actually have to be able to sing French properly to have a career.
• Birgit Nilsson: Nilsson Sings Verdi I was thrilled to find this and a number of other albums Decca's new "Classic Recitals" series. Some brilliant mind at the label has reissued a number of operatic LPs and opera recordings that had either been dropped from the catalogue or broken up onto other recital discs. Decca has restored the original tracklistings and given the CDs a vintage feel by employing the original cover art and reprinting the notes from the back of the LP on the inside of the [digipack!] jewel case. As for Nilsson herself, whoa.
• Renée Fleming: Haunted Heart Shut up. It's really good. I love Joni Mitchell. I love Paladilhe's "Psyché." And I love it when rich white girls play Cultural Appropriation Dress-up! Really though, the singing is exquisite and the arrangements are delicious and textured. Everyone on this album feels at home. And I take a certain joy in knowing that the most famous soprano in the world is one degree away from the psychotic experimental vocalist Mike Patton [thanks, Sr. Menses!].

Song currently playing? "Lufuala Ndonga" from the album Congotronics by Konono N?1. Sometimes I close the blinds and do a little tribal arms-control dance. I have no loincloth or lip plate, but something about this song makes me feel like I've arrived home in a land that I haven't visited since many lives ago. Oh. nevermind; it's the thumb-piano.

Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me? I consulted my iTunes "Top 25 Most Played" list at home and work and found that most recently, I've not been able to get enough of:

• 2A. Glory In Itself 2B. Egyptian, from the album God's Money by Gang Gang Dance. It's one track on the CD, but it's actually a straight mix from one movement to the next. Pyschedelic island prison dreaming of whirling dervishes and honey wine interwoven with noise and the atopical warblings and incantations of Liz Bougatsos. A voodoo musiquilt straight outta Brooklyn. Whatthefuckisthis?
• Din Da Da, George Kranz. An Old Way Vogue and ballroom classic and a breakdancing hit? Well deserved, I say. A rhythm track composed of tooth hissing, shouting, and gogo toms; a bassline of thoom-thoom-thoom tongueing; and an unbearably glamorous synth-and-string line riding it all. The only lyrics: "din daa daa" and "ra-ta-ta." Something must be up if it's been remade and remixed several times since 1983, most recently by The Roots. God knows why.
• Cycle, by Montréal-via-Michigan artist Peninsula. Inspired by the cleanliness of Kompakt (and the chaos of an LOL-life), this little schaffel track is so ridiculously good that I listened to it three times in a row while walking to the grocery on a sunny day last week. Don't be fooled by its simplicity; it scales perfectly from an iPod to a speaker system, making it an excellent way to get the asses at a houseparty moving. And just listen to those high-and-tight Midwestern vowels! Snyaack attyack!
• By Your Side, from the album La Maison de Mon Rêves by CocoRosie. Don't you simply adore a song in which the vocalist fantasizes about and glorifies domestic abuse?
• Qual guerriero in campo armato, from the album Arias for Farinelli, with mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux. GOD. FUCKING. DAMN, you FUCKING GODDAMN tremolos straight from FUCKING GODDAMN GOD HIMSELF.

Five people to whom I'm passing the baton? Sieglinde, Mezzo Gregory, James Jorden, AC Douglas, and Monsieur C-. Work it out, boys and girls.