Last year, for my friend Eden’s birthday, she requested that all her friends make her CDs in lieu of throwing parties, buying dinners, giving gift cards or scarves, etc. Since I love music and making fabulous playlists, I was very excited about this idea. In fact, in the future, if ever you want to give me a CD (for any occasion whatsoever), please do. This is quite possibly my love language.
So I made a playlist for Eden that ended up requiring THREE CDs to burn, but oh my was it ever worth it. And since then, I’ve added to it, making it into a 4-disc, 72-song, epic and fabulous playlist. I have mentioned it to Amaris many times, and she always asks for the list. I always say, “Yes of course you can have the list,” and then I always forget to type it up for her. But the time has come.
Y’all, this is a random, random assortment of music that pleases me so much, I think I may never need to get married. Here we go…
- Throw Down – The Whistlestop
- Meet Me by the Water – Rachael Yamagata
- LoveGame – Lady Gaga
- Bye Bye Bye – *NSYNC
- Yellow Ledbetter – Pearl Jam
- So Much Better – from Legally Blonde the Musical
- Africa – Toto
- F*** You – Lily Allen
- Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? – The Beatles
- Forget You – Cee Lo Green
- Piece of My Heart – Janis Joplin
- One More Road – Roman Candle
- Hometown Glory – Adele
- Against All Odds – Phil Collins
- Gravity – Sara Bareilles
- Fantastic Mr. Fox (aka Petey’s Song) – Jarvis Cocker
- Bust a Move – Young MC
- I Wanna Dance with Somebody – Whitney Houston
- Ora Basta – Giorgia
- Faithfully – Journey
- Born – Over the Rhine
- Float On – Modest Mouse
- When You Are Not Enough – Thad Cockrell/Matt Stevens
- Fango – Jovanotti
- Leave – Glen Hansard
- All You Need Is Love – The Beatles
- Sympathique – Pink Martini
- By Thy Mercy – High Street Hymns
- Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
- Bron-Y-Aur Stomp – Led Zeppelin
- I’ll Cover You (Reprise) – from RENT
- All I Want Is You – Barry Louis Polisar
- Cherry Cherry – Neil Diamond
- Jump (for My Love) – Pointer Sisters
- You Don’t Know Me – Ben Folds
- Live Again – Better Than Ezra
- A Whiter Shade of Pale – Procol Harum
- Rolling in the Deep – Adele
- Papers in Order – The Old Ceremony
- Staralfur – Sigur Ros
- Jesus and Gravity – Dolly Parton
- Little Wing – Jimi Hendrix
- Elenore – The Turtles
- I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues – Elton John
- Nice and Slow – Usher
- Vito’s Ordination Song (acoustic) – Sufjan Stevens
- Heaven Help Us All – Stevie Wonder
- Andar Conmigo – Julieta Venegas
- I Can’t Even Recall – Roman Candle
- Bad Romance – Lady Gaga
- Under Streetlights – Brooke Annibale
- Shelter – Ray LaMontagne
- Reason Why – Rachael Yamagata
- Soldier Girl – The Polyphonic Spree
- Call Me Al – Paul Simon
- Beat It – Michael Jackson
- SexyBack – Justin Timberlake
- Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash
- Someone Like You – Adele
- Black Water – The Doobie Brothers
- Nobody Does It Better – Carly Simon
- Rehab – Amy Winehouse
- Kyrie – Mr. Mister
- I and Love and You – The Avett Brothers
- Somebody Told Me – The Killers
- The Chain – Ingrid Michaelson
- Judy in Disguise – John Fred & His Playboy Band
- Just Dance – Lady Gaga
- Forca – Nelly Furtado
- Fade Into You – Mazzy Star
- Empire State of Mind – Jay-Z/Alicia Keys
- Your Love Is My Drug – Ke$ha
Yes, I realize there is a hymn right next to a Nirvana song. I also realize that there are at least three Lady Gaga songs on the list. What can I say? I want to be too cool to like her, but I think she’s ridiculously talented, and I just can’t help myself. And I realize that not everyone likes songs they can’t understand. If you want to copy my playlist, but take out the foreign language songs, feel free, but I will not be held responsible for the outcome. This list is perfect, I tell you. PERFECT! Good for parties and cleaning and reading the Interweb and organizing the boxes of crap in your front room. It picks you up right when you need it and brings you back down just at the right moments. It fluctuates between empirically good music and absolute guilty pleasure songs. It has many genres spanning many decades, and because there are so many songs, you can listen to it over and over and never get tired of it because by the time you start it over, it’s been almost five hours since you heard the first song, so you don’t even realize you’re back to the beginning! Once again, PERFECT!
Very nice. Nothing at all wrong with being an eclecticist. I am a bit of a mix tape lover myself, to the extent that a past roomate compared me to Rob in “High Fidelity.” The fact that I do take such joy in these things is why I was curious to see your list, so thanks for sharing it.
Oh, YAY!!!!! I am ever so glad. 🙂