This makes my iPod, and in fact my entire iTunes account, a weird mishmash of stuff you'd find in concert halls, Ibiza nightclubs, on commercial radio in the nineties and on the inflight programming of a flight to Sydney.
I have sorted a lot of my stuff into playlists, which is my attempt to make sense of the strangeness. The playlists have names like 'Diner' (a bunch of songs reminiscent of a 50s diner, for example Be My Baby by The Ronettes), 'Hi Energy' (which was ostensibly put together for exercising/running but is really used when I have to do the vacuuming or clean the bathroom, Canned Heat by Jamiroquai being an example of a song which can motivate me to do those things) and 'Honest to God Disco' (which is fairly self-explanatory and headlined by Chaka Khan).
The problem with playlists is that I get sick of them. Sure, I might be in a 'Lounge' mood for awhile, but life needs to be more surprising. Even the 'My Top Rated' list gets a bit old from time to time. So, this week I've tried a new approach. Instead of just working out what I feel like, I've given myself parameters. I'm working through my entire iTunes Library alphabetically. And the level of weirdness has been kicked up a notch.
I usually like to listen to a mix of songs rather than an album, so I'm changing that for starters. I'm working through the artists sorted by first letter, and taking in an entire album at a time. Here's how it went this week.
When this came out in 2006-ish I was teaching for the first time and one of the kids in my grade was family friends with the drummer, or something - I can't really remember and maybe the kid wasn't in my grade, but it was primarily for that reason that I purchased the album. Tracks like One Crowded Hour became quite popular but I really liked The Cold Acre when I was listening this week. It was good to listen to after a long time between hearings, moody and chilled and a little bit angst-y in a really unthreatening kind of way. Good for the start of the week.
I won't deny it was tempting to just stop at The Beatles or Bryan Ferry, but as mentioned above, I'm giving you the no-pretensions version of this process. I will also admit that I really dislike the early stuff where the boys sound too earnest and clean cut, with the faux-folksy feel of tracks like World. Respecting that the Bee Gees were an amazingly prolific song writing force in music history I confess I'm more a Jive Talkin' kind of girl. You can take the girl out of the seventies but DON'T EVEN TRY TO TAKE THE SEVENTIES OUT OF THE GIRL. It's my birthright, and Night Fever is the consequence.
I know, I'm getting all retrospective here, but the choices were limited. Plus I really couldn't stomach Coldplay, and that's all Gwyneth's fault. Carole King is fantastic because her singing register is exactly the same as mine, so when she belts out Natural Woman I'm not competing on an Aretha Franklin scale and the high notes are within my reach. Plus there are so many great songs on this album - I Feel the Earth Move, It's Too Late and the aching Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? which was co-written by Carole but originally recorded by The Shirelles. Plus it's pretty much her and a piano, so it's raw and really honest. No artifice. Love it.
That's as far as I've got at this stage but I'm at a point where I can't wait to see what comes up next. But there's no cheating - no planning ahead of time. I'm not even thinking about the letter 'D' and what's in my library. Or 'E', or 'F'...
