Epic Playlist

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…

1. Throw Down – The Whistlestop
2. Meet Me by the Water – Rachael Yamagata
3. LoveGame – Lady Gaga
4. Bye Bye Bye – *NSYNC
5. Yellow Ledbetter – Pearl Jam
6. So Much Better – from Legally Blonde the Musical
7. Africa – Toto
8. F*** You – Lily Allen
9. Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? – The Beatles
10. Forget You – Cee Lo Green
11. Piece of My Heart – Janis Joplin
12. One More Road – Roman Candle
13. Hometown Glory – Adele
14. Against All Odds – Phil Collins
15. Gravity – Sara Bareilles
16. Fantastic Mr. Fox (aka Petey’s Song) – Jarvis Cocker
17. Bust a Move – Young MC
18. I Wanna Dance with Somebody – Whitney Houston
19. Ora Basta – Giorgia
20. Faithfully – Journey
21. Born – Over the Rhine
22. Float On – Modest Mouse
23. When You Are Not Enough – Thad Cockrell/Matt Stevens
24. Fango – Jovanotti
25. Leave – Glen Hansard
26. All You Need Is Love – The Beatles
27. Sympathique – Pink Martini
28. By Thy Mercy – High Street Hymns
29. Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
30. Bron-Y-Aur Stomp – Led Zeppelin
31. I’ll Cover You (Reprise) – from RENT
32. All I Want Is You – Barry Louis Polisar
33. Cherry Cherry – Neil Diamond
34. Jump (for My Love) – Pointer Sisters
35. You Don’t Know Me – Ben Folds
36. Live Again – Better Than Ezra
37. A Whiter Shade of Pale – Procol Harum
38. Rolling in the Deep – Adele
39. Papers in Order – The Old Ceremony
40. Staralfur – Sigur Ros
41. Jesus and Gravity – Dolly Parton
42. Little Wing – Jimi Hendrix
43. Elenore – The Turtles
44. I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues – Elton John
45. Nice and Slow – Usher
46. Vito’s Ordination Song (acoustic) – Sufjan Stevens
47. Heaven Help Us All – Stevie Wonder
48. Andar Conmigo – Julieta Venegas
49. I Can’t Even Recall – Roman Candle
50. Bad Romance – Lady Gaga
51. Under Streetlights – Brooke Annibale
52. Shelter – Ray LaMontagne
53. Reason Why – Rachael Yamagata
54. Soldier Girl – The Polyphonic Spree
55. Call Me Al – Paul Simon
56. Beat It – Michael Jackson
57. SexyBack – Justin Timberlake
58. Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash
59. Someone Like You – Adele
60. Black Water – The Doobie Brothers
61. Nobody Does It Better – Carly Simon
62. Rehab – Amy Winehouse
63. Kyrie – Mr. Mister
64. I and Love and You – The Avett Brothers
65. Somebody Told Me – The Killers
66. The Chain – Ingrid Michaelson
67. Judy in Disguise – John Fred & His Playboy Band
68. Just Dance – Lady Gaga
69. Forca – Nelly Furtado
70. Fade Into You – Mazzy Star
71. Empire State of Mind – Jay-Z/Alicia Keys
72. 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!