playlists – sangsara.net

I considered not making one of these playlists this year, but someone said that traditions are most worth protecting when everything else has changed. My instinct with traditions is sometimes just to snap old things off and find something new to do. Maybe a couple of years of therapy will tell me why, but until then, I figured it was pretty low stakes to just make one.

And to my surprise (happens every time), it was an enjoyable exercise and I’m reasonably happy with the result, even though it contains some really basic hits and I probably left out a whole lot of other great stuff.

One thing I noticed as I was pulling in favorites I’d saved throughout the year: there was a tendency towards quiet or mid-tempo songs this time around. Probably a reflection of staying home amidst an apocalypse unfolding in slow motion. In trying to balance that out, I rediscovered a few songs I’d saved but never got back to, like the opening song Don’t Die. As usual, I tried to build in continuity of themes and good transitions, and there are a few intentional jokes in the sequencing of titles.

Edit: Looking back, I discovered many of these songs serendipitously outside of recommendation engines and so on. Apple Music does offer personalized weekly new music picks, but I tend to find new songs by tuning in to the Apple Music 1 live radio station (née Beats 1), or checking in on their curated genre playlists. Algorithms, don’t trust them.

Listen on Apple Music | Spotify

Don’t Die — NOBRO
Shook Shook — Awich
Cool With Me (feat. M1llionz) — Dutchavelli
Inside Out — Grouplove
Together — beabadoobee
Mood (feat. iann dior) — 24kGoldn
fuck, i luv my friends — renforshort
you broke me first — Tate McRae
PAIN — King Princess
Say So (Japanese Version) — Rainych
Laugh Now Cry Later (feat. Lil Durk) — Drake
I Dunno (feat. Dutchavelli & Stormzy) — Tion Wayne
Apricots — Bicep
The Hill — Model Man
People, I’ve been sad — Christine and the Queens
Kids Again — Sam Smith
Eugene — Arlo Parks
Lover — G Flip
Young Americans — Durand Jones & The Indications
Lockdown — Anderson .Paak
It’s Hard (feat. Email Sandé) — Giggs
Show Me Love (feat. Miguel) — Alicia Keys
snow jam — Rinne
Holy (feat. Chance the Rapper) — Justin Bieber
death bed (feat. beabadoobee) — Powfu
Devil That I Know — Jacob Banks
Believe — Anna of the North
the 1 — Taylor Swift
You’re Still the One — Okay Kaya
Good News — Mac Miller

Comment section

Don’t Die — NOBRO
Not only a fun song with a great animated video, but an obvious message to open with? Don’t die!

Shook Shook — Awich
I don’t understand why someone whose husband died from being shot would make a song that appears to glorify gun violence, but it’s a banger.

In the early days of this blog and being online, I’d make mixes and upload them somewhere for friends and readers. Those were usually one and the same, who am I kidding? Personally, I hardly have time to listen to playlists made by experts, so I don’t know why I thought people would listen to mine. Adult hindsight: I made them for myself.

The end of year mix was a particularly fun undertaking. I don’t scrapbook, or watch algorithmically generated Year In Review videos from Facebook/Google/Apple, and I lack the openness to write an entry all about my experience of the year without doing it in relation to another topic. Hence music.

Every track you add is inevitably a personal choice. Some were soundtracks to moments, some were recommended by important people, others are evidence of flirting with new genres, trying to stay in touch with the distancing past or the youthfully new. A listener could conceivably read between the lines, but hopefully they’re already too busy forming their own reflections.

This year, I started a new job and as an end-of-year team activity, I thought it’d be good to compile a playlist with a couple of contributions from each member. Here it is.

That activity got me inspired to do a personal one, and I think I’m finally done at 34 tracks across 2 hours and 8 minutes. A double album! At the very start, I thought 2017 (not the best year, right?) would be a slim list. And way too many things that came to mind were actually from 2016. A year can seem like a small and fuzzy lump of time by December. But when you start going through your library, the months all come back and start to feel distinct again. It’s really therapeutic and I recommend it.

Anyway, here’s how my 2017 sounded. A few notes on particular songs follow.