I love breaking songs apart, see what sticks so good in a full mix, and adding what I've learnt to my own productions.
Stuff like Linked Horizon's seemingly “random” structures that are secretly genius,
or how Yuki Kaijura mixes trance beats with orchestral metal and makes it beautiful,
or how Yuyoyuppe uses glitchy dubstep synths over a kick-ass metalcore song.
I get way too into tone-perfect recreations, even down to using the same plugins as the original artists.
Hell, even my original stuff ends up sounding suspiciously close to my references... Oops.
I love being super nerdy when it comes to technical stuff like phase issues, oversampling, and weird plugin quirks.
That said, my Celeron likes to cry more often than I'd like, so I get a kick out of making stock plugins sound like film scores.
Music production for me is part creativity, part problem-solving... and honestly? I find that to be a lot of fun :D