Some of the moments when music can be the most painful to listen to is when it is repetitive. Some pop songs that keep repeating the same chorus over and over again or more basically, a single note repeating gets tiring after a while. This seems both obvious and paradoxical because some of the greatest joys in music are from repetition. Wanting to replay a song is usually the greatest compliment you can give it. Lots of musical styles use repetition to great effect. German rock bands in the 70s, are a famous example for their long passages of a Motorik beat. But how can some pop songs be tiring after a 2nd chorus but other music like Microphones in 2020 can repeat the same 3 chords for 7 minutes and still be engaging?

As a drummer, the secret is very subtle yet essential to playing. What separates us from the machines (and very much so industrial, smoke, satanic mills) are the tiny little variations and imperfections that haunt our playing. If something is too clean it hurts to listen to. The reason a chorus can so quickly be tiring is if there is no change in the playing from one to another. When repetitive music is pleasing, it is always changing. Music is the ultimate replayable medium - it's very rare for people, just after having finished a book or movie, immediately start it again. Usually come back a year or more later but no where near the common practice of listening to an album multiple times a day for weeks. Even so the thing that eventually leads to losing taste for a song or album is overplaying it. All songs have mileage both short term and long term where you can't enjoy it anymore after it has repeated too many times. It feels very human, finding the comfortable balance between the staleness of repetition and the uneasiness of novelty & change in our lives.

...I still have no idea about the nuances of wanting to hear the same song again and again or not...