Playlist - male voices

A few weeks ago I posted a playlist of female voices/fronted bands, and right afterwards I started working on the male version. This one took me AGES to make, and I had to trim it down a lot. I know that I have forgotten some, but all of these are special to me. Really special. Bring back a million memories special. Make me cry special (well, that's not really that difficult to do). Just... Ah listen to it. I don't really have anything else to say as I can't say it better than the music does.

Here is the playlist on Spotify:
Voices Men

Tim Buckley, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, David Bowie, The Cure, Bauhaus etc etc etc. Just... Listen.

Playlist - Female Voices

For some reason that I can't actually remember I started making a playlist of songs sang by women last night. Actually, going back through my thought process, it started with me randomly listening to Catatonia, remembering how much I liked them in the 90's and then automatically moving on to Mazzy Star and Garbage. Then I just decided to make a playlist of female artists who had touched me at some point in my life, and most probably continue to do so. It started smallish and then just grew to 123 songs. There are probably some that I missed, and there is definitely more than one song for those that I would (and most likely still do) listen to over and over again. I had to reduce some in places, and I wish I could have added more of others, but I think it's quite complete.

A lot of the 90's favourites like Hole, L7, Belly, Throwing Muses, passing through Stevie Nicks, Tracy Chapman, all my favourite Motown ladies, Etta and Ella, on to some 80's (I nearly forgot Madonna, but added her at the last minute), my folky ladies, and some newer talents. And of course, Don't Need The Sunshine, my favourite Catatonia song.

I will make a playlist of male voices in the next few days!

Enjoy - link to playlist on Spotify below.
Voices
Voices

My 112 Best Tracks From The Past 15 Years

I used to read NME and Melody Maker every summer when I was a teenager (only in the summer, because I was only in England during the summer. France was sadly devoid of this type of publication). All those articles in 1995 about Richie Edwards disappearance and Hole's Reading performance, The Levellers, New Model Army tours, Blur VS Oasis, Oasis VS Oasis, Brett Anderson, Glastonbury etc etc.
Anyway! Apparently NME.com has been around for 15 years (I'm surprised it's been that long already, but am not going to make myself feel old, so lets move away from that topic rapidly). For their 15 year anniversary they posted a list of what they thought were the 150 Best Tracks Of The Past 15 Years (click on the link to see them).

Now, it does say that it is a list of songs that meant the most to them over the course of the past 15 years. So, of course, I have to completely disagree, and even further, I had to make my own one. It took me all day, so someone had better appreciate it. Or at least listen to it. Then again I'll play it at 200 Orchard during my next shift, so you should come and listen to it.

I kind of wished that it were still 2010, because there were a lot of albums released in 1995 that I REALLY wanted to use. I also realised how much "old" music I listen to, much more than "new" bands. So it took me quite a few hours to painstakingly choose one song per artist that meant something to me personally and also was released between 1996 and today... And then I decided to add some artists more than once, because they just need to be on this list and I couldn't choose just one song. My list is VERY different from the one that NME published, so I suppose we lost track of each other over the past 15 years (probably at the time that I spent too much time dancing the night away in goth clubs or stage diving at black metal shows or discussing radical politics around cheap wine bottles). I don't know, listen, enjoy, comment...

Here is a complete track listing:


Link to track listing

And here is the playlist on Spotify:
My 15 Year Version

Another happiness-inducing playlist

I kind of woke up on the unhappy side of the bed today, so while I was procrastinating over writing some really boring articles I needed to submit this afternoon I made a new playlist. I am not going to apologise about putting two songs by the Ronettes in the playlist, because they make me happy and I love them more very very much.

How can a mix of the following artists not make anyone happy?!: Martha Reeves, The Ronettes, Elvis, The Crystals, The Shirelles, Otis, Roy Orbison, Mary Wells, The Temptations and so on...

Time

Enjoy!