Listening to music a lot, one develops idiosyncratic tastes. Over enough years, this becomes a kind of alternate world in which obscure artists are quite popular, and odd tracks from famous bands become the ones you're most familiar with. The whole process works in cycles: a song rises up from obscurity, becomes overplayed, and then must be forcibly forgotten, left off of playlists and skipped in order to gain some relief.
Sonic Youth's "Chapel Hill" is one of the biggest of the big hits, second only to "She's Losing It," which has the virtue of being two and a half minutes shorter. Its appeal rose on the back of being the only song I know to mention my current hometown and a bunch of other references for the locals. Its appeal remains on the basis of its structure, which is directly out of Springsteen: pretty but slow opening that goes into a catchy riff, while the song builds tempo and intensity through to the end. It is, in other words, a perfect song to drive to.
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