I never can understand people make playlists of their all time favourite songs, distilling the Best! from their time. Generally I go out of my way NOT to hear my favourite songs, so when I do feel like hearing them, or they pop up in a shop or a film, it’s a pleasant surprise. That’s why I make my mixclouds out of lesser known hits, b-sides and nuggets. That’s also why Bob Stanley is such a wonder, as he directs the ear to fabulous but more obscure gems. 60s Gold? I’d rather have Tin with a few bits of Gold leaf. Does anyone else feel this way or at least express this in a more articulate way than I can?
The Best
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I regard tracks as having only a limited amount of magic – no matter how good. Magic replenishes over time, but is depleted by each listen. Fairytale of New York or Hey Jude are two that have been completed emptied out of any magic they contained by virtue of hearing them too much. So yes, all Kate Bush for example, REM or Kraftwerk are carefully rationed to ensure that the magic remains for next time. Some artists of course (The Fall for example) this is less of an issue for.
Emptied out if any magic. Perfectly put.
Exactly right. I recently rediscovered New Order’s ‘Movement’ to ‘Technique’ imperial phase and made a playlist of NO bangers, which has been servicing dog walks for the last few weeks. But as ‘Everything’s Gone Green’ bleeped into life the other day, I thought, OK this is starting to pall. In other words – I’m seeing the flashing warning light ahead of the magic emptying out.
I don’t really make playlists all that often, but when I do it’s more about the mood than the artist. I have done artist best ofs but mainly for my kids when they express an interest in an artist – Radiohead, Jeff Buckly, Nick Drake and a punk primer.
I often listen to music in the car and will often ask Apple Music to play musci by a specific artist. It normally mixes up the old and the new and there is normally a couple of songs that I love but have probably listened to enough. Often, in the context of a varied playlist, the overplayed favourites sound pretty good to me. Driving back from Swansea this Saturday, I did this with The National. Of the 20 or so songs, about 3 were well played favouriutes and 2 or 3 were quite new ones that I haven’t developed the love for. This was a perfect balance for me.
That’s exactly it – I do mixclouds made up of lesser known stuff, but leaven it with the occasional fat hit. You’re right – it’s context
Agree with both of you.
The biggies having been strip-mined of any possible surprises, would much rather listen to deep cuts than hear the same-old, same-old again and again
For me it was “Yes it is” when I’d heard “This boy” too many times
I tend to only make playlists by geniuses. They always remain fresh.
Could you please share your Lana Del Ray playlist?
Ok
The only song that remains Fresh is by Kool and the Gang surely? And that’s shite.
I don’t make playlists and am still one of those fossils that listens to albums.
That said, I understand what you mean and agree – it’s like when I was growing up, I could never understand why people asked for their favourite tracks on radio request shows. Surely, if it was a favourite track, you would have anyway and like you say, it takes away some of the magic.
Me a fossil too – albums are my choice.
Although, like the playlist argument, there are certain albums that I just feel I don’t need to listen to again (at least not for a good few years).
New albums get a heavy rotation and are then consigned to the shelves, to be picked out when the mood and the browse takes me.
I agree. I wouldn’t consider making a playlist of Favourites. There are certain songs however, that pop up a lot on the pub juke box, that I never tire of – No More Heroes, Paint It Black, Bigmouth Strikes Again to name a few. Maybe the beer helps as an anti-jader
On FairyTale of New York, I think I’ve heard it enough (I probably have heard it enough) but I still love it and it never fails to bring a tear to my eyes.
All songs can get worn out with use. That’s true. I find the ones that last for me are often a series of elements that are less predictable and don’t involve repetitive choruses. Not boring basically. Something like Strawberry Fields or Echoes where there’s a lot going on. You can focus on different parts. Even then these rare gems must be rationed for fear of over familiarity. Fortunately nobody I know tends to want to hear such wonders. Playlists for us are more for having on in the evening with drinks when it’s just the two of us. You can have a four hour playlist though and it still diminishes in appeal quite quickly. Better with a LP record probably, when alone, depending on what you want music for in that moment.
This may be why I have such a love of cover versions, as a good one will draw out nuances from the original and run in a different direction. Bad cover versions, however, are just shit, and draw attention to the majesty of the original. I have been on a little run of chasing out covers of ubiquitous bangers by people I wouldn’t normally expect to be listening to, and it has been very informative, educational and quite fun. Bangers by people I wouldn’t normally? So, songs like Beyoncé’s Halo, Miley’s Wrecking Ball and Pharell’s Get Lucky.
Playlist, please?
Still working on it but will as it nears competition. I don’t use Spotify so it may just be 3 lists.
One way I keep myself surprised is by buying themed compilations.
The five or six I have by Bob Stanley are of a uniformly high standard. I’m also a sucker for genre comps such as the Bear Family 60s soul series that came out a few years back, plius Davi Godin’s Deep Soul Treasures series and the festival themed Between The Music Vol One (WTF is Vol 2?)
Ace records compilations have been brilliant for that with their various series, including as you say, the Bob Stanley ones.
Oh dear. Having made a playlist of my 100 favourite songs and spent a year thinking and writing about them I have some recent experience of this.
I can’t say that the exercise diminished my love of any of the records involved. But then it was an active, rather than passive experience; I had a good think about each track on the list, and generally came away with a slightly deeper appreciation/seeing them in a new light. I don’t find myself experiencing the music fatigue that a lot of people on here seem to.
That said, there are definitely favourite songs I ration. I only ever listen to A Change Is Gonna Come when it feels like an apt moment, for example, precisely because I never want the magic to be diminished (obviously, it never is). Maybe there’s also a sort of weird respect angle going on too.
On the other hand, there are songs I have given an absolute hammering to and they seem to stand up to it just fine. Sweet Thing and De La Soul’s Buddy, for example.
There are some friends who are best when you see them every day. There are others who work better when there’s a bit of a gap between visits. Songs are a bit like that too.
That’s the best way – rationing. Like you, I reserve Change is gonna come, or Matt Monroe’s On days like these, or even uptempo bubblegum things for when I need that mood. Sam Cooke offers so many more, as does Ray Charles
One of the best gags in St Trinians film is where a psychiatrist has recommended his patients get out a record of a Pastoral dance when they’re overcome by nerves. Certain tunes are best laid aside for emergencies
As I go 11 months of the year without listening to Fairy Tale then I am fine with that. I don’t really listen to my absolute favourites that often these days. Occasionally I can get in a mood where I remember how I felt when I first heard a particular song that I love. It’s very good when that happens
On Playlists I have some much-loved playlists of tracks from lesser-known albums by artists with large catalogues: Dylan, Neil Young and Prince being my best three. I listened to every Prince studio album during lockdown but the dozen or so classics I have (basically every one from 1999 to the mid-nineties) and this playlist are fine. Sign 0 is on the listening rationing list.
I no longer make playlists, preferring to hear full albums, preferably as originally released without any “bonus tracks” that have been tacked on later.
I don’t listen to music in my car any more and my 2 iPods are now gathering dust in a cupboard. Also can’t remember the last time I played music from my phone, apart from (rarely) what I’ve recorded live earlier that same day.
If a track I particularly like starts to pall because of hearing it too much, I avoid hearing it for a good while (if I can*) and eventually it will be heard accidentally and give pretty much the same pleasure as before, I find.
I tend to avoid places that play music constantly, as to my mind this is the way music and the enjoyment of it can get degraded. I’m no longer one of those who always has music playing at home, for the same reason. I appreciate silence and ambient sounds more than I used to.
*I know that sometimes this is hard to accomplish.
Along with ‘magic depletion’ another effect I have noticed more recently is that like coffee and pretty much anything else the first of the day is the best. This is particularly true on a Sunday morning when the right music coupled with coffee and toast looking out at the garden has an effect that the 50th track of the day just cannot.
The first track on vinyl, if its been Spotify and CDs, can also reboot my audio system.
I have some 58000 songs in the cloud to listen to – clearly I am never going to listen to all of those, particularly when I keep adding more. I tend to listen a selection of 500 on random play at a time, and mark any I like with a thumbs-up. There are now just over 1600 of those, which make for a fairly decent radio station of varied music.
Then I do actually have a playlist called ‘ the best’ which is for those songs that just wow me, and I don’t want to lose track of them among the masses. There are 47 of them and I don’t listen to them much, but when I do, they completely recharge me in similar but different ways. I fall into the song and it occupies me completely.
Like I have favourite dishes that I love, but wouldn’t eat every day, but I want access to them when I need to. And I love finding more to add to them.
I can’t see the point in listening to albums all through any more. Unless it’s a symphony or a concerto, where the parts make a whole, I’d rather appreciate individual songs for their own unique quality, rather than as a merge of similar sounds. I like going from Colombian cumbia to 30s swing to Egyptian Mahraganat to 50s jazz singer to 80s 4AD. If it’s good music, it’s ageless
But for me there are certain albums where the parts do make a whole – precisely because they were the whole when I first heard the album. I want to hear them like that, back to back and collectively present, whenever I revisit the album.
For example, that quaint little initial phrase that introduces Caravanserai? At that point I know I’m in for 51 minutes of glorious music, and that frisson lasts every step of the way to the closing notes of he album. It’s most definitely a perfect whole.
I agree about that frisson for certain albums. I’ve just been listening to the Beach Boys Greatest Hits from 1976 – every song ending launches the next one in my mind, instinctively. It was one of the first three albums I ever heard, along with Bonzo’s Gorilla and The Carpenters – Singles: 1969–1973. It all started there for me 50 years ago.
I remember that feeling, even more ironically enough with cassettes I recorded from LPs. The last song of The Cult’s Love – Black Angel always fades into New Order’s Your Silent Face, for example.
I have a memory of ABBA Arrival on cassette that my father recorded off a friend. I was quite young when he was recording the record, and didn’t really know what this black thing was spinning around with a needle on it. I was a curious child (yes in both meanings), and decided it would be interesting to turn the dial from the number marked 33 to 45. Goodness! I’ve got The Smurfs on record. I’d better turn it back. Needless to say, every time I listen to (I think it’s) That’s Me, I am expecting to hear the speeded-up part.
I completely get that. But that’s a bit of a time capsule effect for me. It doesn’t have to be the rule for new music I listen to.
That frisson is wonderful, isn’t it? I get it for well-loved songs and certain classical pieces – when you hear a few notes and can anticipate what is to come almost with more pleasure than that later moment when you actually hear it.
I sometimes wonder if that is how good conductors convey their passion to their orchestras – playing out in front of the musicians what they are already hearing with such pleasure in their heads? My mum used to do that in the kitchen when we were small. She used to be a supremely talented player of Beethoven and Chopin piano pieces and while she served us lunch, if a Beethoven symphony or concerto was playing in the radio and there was a quiet moment in the playing, she might be waving her hands about furiously and I didn’t understand why – until a few moments later when the crescendo came in. She was teaching us how to appreciate that frisson – and I still have it to this day.
That phrase at the start of Caravanserai… sounds like the universe farting. Or a wasp caught inside another wasp. Great album though!
Completely agree. I don’t mind hearing, say, Light My Fire or A Hard Day’s Night but it will be in the context of the albums they were on. I’m more likely to be listening to the five Action 45s, fresh as a daisy they are, or more obscure LPs, but then I reckon 95% of the population wouldn’t know Soft Parade or (even) Pet Sounds if they bit them on the bum!
Unlike the above comment, I always listen to albums as they were released. More so now than ever.
And music radio truly baffles me.
They might not know Pet Sounds but what the last week’s proven to me at least is that even the most pop-indifferent seem to know and love God Only Knows
I have mixed feelings about God Only Knows.
Obviously, it’s charming – in a mannered sort of way – but I really dislike the horse shoe clip clop that runs throughout it, and the weird, uncalled for descending bit that breaks it up just after the minute mark and sets off all the ba ba baing.
It’s a really beautiful opening 45 seconds, but it always feels to me like they kind of half arsed the rest of it.
I’m more of a Pacific Ocean Blue guy.
Q1 klaxon alert!!!! The second part of the @leffe-gin endorsed 1970’s Beach Boys appreciation theory alert!!
What have I started?
Stop the presses “Bingo claims Wilson is half arsed”. Must be true! 😉
Personally I think it is completely perfect on an album where pretty much everything is.
Hey, I did say the first 45 seconds are really beautiful 🤷♂️
It’s the opening line that upsets me. “I may not always love you. ” Well, f*ck off, then…
I have, more than once on here, shared my opinion that lyrically God Only Knows is a passive aggressive suicide note. I may not always love you (bet-hedging) but if you should ever leave me , you may well trigger my death by suicide. Coercive control exhibit A m’lud.
I kept this off the Brian Wilson thread out of respect.
@Bamber
I was reading somewhere the other day that in the spirit of mimsy words like “passing” replacing good old fashioned “dying”, people are now referring to “people committing suicide” as having “unsliced themselves”
I also recommend Jon Savage’s work with Ace Records and Caroline True Records for putting old wine into fresh new bottles: he got me listening to some lesser known Doors tracks after a long time avoiding them.
PKSA: Talking of playlists, Apple have just sneaked a cunning new feature (in Oz and NZ only so far), whereby you can import libraries from Spotify, Amazon, Tidal, Qobuz and YouTube into Apple Music.
I’ve done it with Spotify and Amazon and it worked fine apart from getting a bit neurotic about duplicates. I realise that some would rather gnaw their own legs off than get involved with Apple; I imagine Tidal/Qobuz tracks get downgraded for instance. But I’m rather enjoying having all my stuff in one place on Sonos.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
I’m always looking for something new to listen to, so I enjoy playlists put together by other people. I almost never make my own. I enjoy listening to music that isn’t absolutely amazing sometimes, I can happily go down rabbit holes listening to some band that springs into my mind – and just dig it for what it is. I can also play a song or album any number of times, and if I like it, I never get bored of it, and usually hear something new each time.
I like to make playlists by theme so they’re not necessarily my favourites but fit well within the context. I also like getting input here which gives me new things.
Playlists are largely about mood for me, whether it’s an active, upbeat occasion or a quieter set for background listening at dinner time (my wife can’t put up with “thump” music while she’s trying to eat). Occasionally, I think I’ve heard a particular track a bit too often but that’s the exception.
Part of the reason I’m into jazz (the clue’s in my profile name) is that, because of the nature of improvisation, you’re always finding new aspects.
Oh and by the way @rexbrough, I listen to your mixcloud sets on a regular basis and always enjoy them, particularly the 40s/50s sets.
Elsewhere on here I have shared my ongoing daily use of minidiscs. They are just the perfect medium for compilations of artists or genres you love. My Jonathan Richman collection (lp2 format) has over 60 songs from probably 20 or so records and
CDs and when I get fed up of any particular song, it’s soon replaced by another. Always using shuffle mode keeps it fresh. Others that regularly get played are my Tom Waits, Lyle Lovett, Waterboys and New Order comps. Genres include Best of the 80s, Funk. Loud stuff, Chillout stuff, Country Rock and my favourite vinyl singles. For most of the above, Spotify can’t compete as not everything is available there.
The crucial difference is that I can leave off any of the popular numbers that usually feature on compilations by these artists that I am sick of hearing or can’t stand.
Minidiscs are great for their “tinkerability”.
You can easily move tracks about in the playing order of a disc or completely replace them if they no longer satisfy.
Great for prototyping CD mixes, in the days when I used to compile them.