thee Mix of Your Life

this is one of those hokey-as-shit things, i know, but i'm turning 40 next month so i thought it'd be entertaining (to me, at least) to make a chronological mix of songs from all the years to date. basically i picked one from each year i've been alive (which means there's actually 41 on it, including both bookend years). i didn't have any strict rules about it, although a lot of them are things that meant something to me at the time they came out, that i have some kind of direct memories of them being part of what was going on then. otoh, there's some stuff that i missed when it came out and got into later. plus of course the songs from the first 7 or 8 years do not in any way reflect what i was listening to then. they're just songs from those years that i like a lot and that somehow represent their era to me. (or have some other resonance, like, putting "forever young" and "dignified and old" back to back.)

i gave myself some leeway on the years, pazz/jop style -- a song could count either in the year it came out on an album or the year it figured as a single (which is why the daddy yankee and taylor swift songs, e.g., are in their respective places).

anyway. for what it's worth. it ends up as i guess both a little character sketch, and also a scattered tour of styles, artists, genres, as they come and go.

1969: "Love Buzz," Shocking Blue
1970: "Run Through the Jungle," Creedence Clearwater Revival
1971: "Whole Lot of BS," Funkadelic
1972: "The Message," Cymande
1973: "The Crunge," Led Zeppelin
1974: "Forever Young," Bob Dylan (the shorter version)
1975: "Dignified and Old," Modern Lovers
1976: "American Girl," Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
1977: "I Don't Wanna Know," Fleetwood Mac
1978: "Stay Free," The Clash
1979: "Are 'Friends' Electric?", Tubeway Army
1980: "Uptown," Prince
1981: "We Want the Airwaves," The Ramones
1982: "Crimson and Clover," Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
1983: "Color Me Impressed," The Replacements
1984: "Jam On It," Newcleus
1985: "Her Head's Revolving," The Three O'Clock
1986: "I Believe," R.E.M.
1987: "Mr. Brownstone," Guns 'N' Roses
1988: "Bring the Noise," Public Enemy
1989: "Like a Prayer," Madonna
1990: "Poison," Bell Biv Devoe
1991: "Come Together," Primal Scream
1992: "Settled Down Like Rain," The Jayhawks
1993: "Ain't Nothin' Ta Fuck Wit," Wu-Tang Clan
1994: "Violet," Hole
1995: "Mystery Train, Part II," Steve Earle
1996: "Goodnight Loser," The V-Roys
1997: "The Drama You've Been Craving," Sleater-Kinney
1998: "The Boy With the Arab Strap," Belle & Sebastian
1999: "Nigga What Nigga Who," Jay-Z
2000: "Gasoline Dreams," OutKast
2001: "Essence," Lucinda Williams
2002: "Business," Eminem
2003: "Easy Lee," Ricardo Villalobos
2004: "Oye Mi Canto," N.O.R.E. feat. Nina Sky, Tego Calderon, etc.
2005: "Gasolina," Daddy Yankee
2006: "Get It," T.I.
2007: "Bird Flu," M.I.A.
2008: "My President," Young Jeezy
2009: "You Belong With Me," Taylor Swift

http://aycu31.webshots.com/image/23310/2000687251921693269_rs.jpg

(also, i tried to not think about how obvious or nonobvious anything was in any given year -- like fleetwood mac in '77 or whatever. just stuff that made sense to me from a personal standpoint.)

and obviously this is more fun for the elderly among us, because we get more years to pick from...

fwiw, the fleetwood mac song is the first thing on the list that i have direct contemporaneous memories of. my parents and all their friends played that album nonstop.

Cool idea! I might try it but it'll take a while, long long while etc.

yeah, it took a little while. was fun tho. (and i might still tinker with it more. i have it on my ipod now.)

ok so a couple anecdotes to go with the tracks on mine:

-- tubeway army song was #1 the year my family lived in england, which was also the year i really discovered top 40 radio and all that. watched top of the pops religiously.
-- "jam on it" is my "this one time at band camp" song -- i first heard it played over and over on a kid's tapedeck my freshman year of high school, while on a school band trip. a bunch of us on the bus memorized all the lines and drove the lionel-richie-loving band director crazy with it.
-- "poison" represents my senior year of college, when one of my apartment-mates and i were on a big hip-hop/r&b/new jack swing kick. he tried to talk me into learning the kid'n'play kick step so we could do it together at parties, but i was way too self-conscious for that.
-- jayhawks i guess were my entree to the whole alt-country thing (well, i had an uncle tupelo record in college, but it didn't seem like a "genre" yet at that point.) also sort of prefigured my move to tennessee a year later, where the alt-country immersion was much more pronounced (as represented by steve earle and the v-roys).
-- having both "oye mi canto" and "gasolina" on the list waaaay exaggerates the presence of reggaeton or any latino stuff in my overall listening, but i love both those songs and they both seemed important to me. (also very much a side effect of living in nyc.)

I've thought about doing a V-Roys poll (of the debut) but figure it'll just be you and me who vote.

probably so. poor v-roys. that album's pretty great.