Music Playlists
Songs, seasons, road soundtracks, memory triggers, and what to put on next.
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- Straight Greats No. 6: Pink Floyd Had Four Perfect Albums in a Row
Pink Floyd made four perfect albums in a row from The Dark Side of the Moon through The Wall. Of those four monsters, Animals is still the one I pick.
- The Five Years Before I Was Born
A five-year musical constraint turned into 150 songs, a classroom math idea, and proof that old music was never one genre.
- Straight Greats No. 5: The Rolling Stones Had Six — and the Weird One Counts
The Rolling Stones made six straight great albums from Their Satanic Majesties Request through Goats Head Soup: five Certified, one On the Edge, and the weird one counts.
- How the Straight Greats Scorecard Works
The rules behind Straight Greats: what counts as a skip, how the three badges work, where a streak begins and ends, and why the argument belongs at track level.
- Straight Greats No. 4: The Cult — Three Great Reincarnations Before They Fucked It Up
The Cult made three nearly perfect albums by becoming a different band each time—then Kurt slept through their peak from the front row.
- Straight Greats No. 3: R.E.M. and the Years I Was Lost
Three R.E.M. albums arrived at three moments when I was lost. Two clear the line clean; one survives a single strange, irritating detour.
- Straight Greats No. 2: Aerosmith Had Six
Aerosmith's first six albums all clear the line. The last two only felt like letdowns because the first four had made the band an eleven-year-old's main connection to rock and roll.
- Straight Greats No. 1: Radiohead
Radiohead opens Straight Greats with The Bends, OK Computer, and Kid A: three consecutive albums, three different versions of the band, and three Certified skulls.
- Joe Walsh: 34 Songs and a Familiar Kind of Crazy
A Joe Walsh playlist brought back a strange stretch of Chicago radio, Caribou Ranch, and a catalog whose writing gets better the closer I listen.
- The ’83 Hawaii Playlist
Forty-five songs from a 1983 senior-class trip to Honolulu. They still do not sound like 1983 to me. They sound like Hawaii.
- 1985: The Wrong Algorithm
A 1985 playlist becomes a Purdue time capsule about analog college life, wrong lessons learned well, and the scattered music of a young man getting good at a game he did not respect.
- 1993: The Year Everything Was Right in Front of Me
The songs from my musical home year — and the year I had everything right in front of me and didn't reach for it.
- Within a Listen
Thirty-six years is an ocean. Then a record starts and the distance folds down to the length of a listen.
- 1977: The Year That Wouldn't Pick a Lane
My favorite songs that make 1977 sound like 1977 to me, thrown together the way I still like to hear them: on random play, like FM radio is still in charge.
- Reasons to Reconsider the 80s
I have spent a lot of years being annoyed by 80s music. This playlist is my reminder that the decade was not all shoulder pads, gated drums, and songs built for shopping malls.
- Bad Company: 40 Songs Worth Burning Through
A Bad Company playlist brought back eighth-grade graduation money, a record-store splurge, and a band that still hits harder than I remember.
- Journey: 40 Songs and a Time Machine
A Journey playlist turned into a map of memory, bad timing, school dances, and the Steve Perry years.