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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   38819 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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Here's a dump of tracks, also following the rule of limiting the number of songs per artist to 1. Otherwise a ton of artists would show up multiple times.

Side note: Excellent exercise to do with friends, and it's about the same length as a monstrous road trip. Highly recommend.

Your list is sorely, sorely lacking in classic rock. The closest you have to it on your list in some 1990-2010 era alternative rock, but that's basically a whole other world of music. And you're just missing stuff from before the 90's in general. And all the amazing music before the modern era.

A few gems for you to try:

Princes of the Universe - Queen The Spirit of Radio - Rush War Pigs - Black Sabbath Layla (both the electric and acoustic versions) - Eric Clapton Blackbird - The Beatles Rainbow in the Dark - Dio Pressure - Billy Joel The Lark Ascending - Ralph Vaughn Williams Jupiter - Gustav Holst

So, you have some of my absolute favorite bands on here (especially happy to see The Band CAMINO get a shout-out) but I find it very strange that you enjoy those bands but can’t find anything to like about the bands and genres that directly influenced them. Like, a number of these bands are clearly very inspired by 80’s New Wave and arena rock, as well as 70’s disco and power pop. Like, if you’re into slick production, multilayered instrumentation, and bubblegum melodies, I think it’s very odd not to have any interest in, say, Def Leppard, ABBA, Prince, and Cheap Trick. Even if you think that music has moved in a direction of pure improvement, taking the raw clay of Boomer Music and fashioning into the Actually Good Music of today, surely you can see that there’s at least some music from 1990 and earlier which still holds up?

If you want me to give you a list of some older music that has all of the same important qualities as the music you’ve listed here, I’d be happy to provide it.

(Also, I want to shill my favorite band Marianas Trench here, as it seems you’d love their music based on the genres you’re into.)

I've heard from multiple people secondhand that one cool thing about Camino is the members are also mostly normal and good dudes. I'm going to get to see them on this tour which I'm psyched for.

I wouldn't say that I can't find anything to like about old music at all. I enjoy a good chunk of it, it just doesn't get pushed into making the cut here. If I tried to pinpoint why, a few things come to mind:

  • I am constantly on a musical treadmill. I save playlists of what I'm listening to for literally that season of my life, and then hear more of what's produced and add to that and so on. It's almost a blessing that I'm single-driven as opposed to album-driven nowadays since some 320kbps MP3s of what I listen to would take up a lot of disk space.
  • Old music is played a lot. I love Hotel California, but after hearing it once a night every night while closing at a restaurant, I don't want to hear it again.
  • My peers as a kid generally had more limited musical tastes and I was the one making mixtapes. This was rectified by college but then I was fairly set in my ways.
  • Some of my favorite genres are younger. It's a bit of a hot take, but hip-hop and rap have undergone a lot of "pure improvement" since their inception.

Bottom line though: I'd love to have a sample playlist of your suggestions. I would prefer to rectify this blind spot rather than leave it hanging.

How big a playlist do you want? As I told the last person here for whom I made a playlist, my autistic fixation will quickly overtake me if I’m not given a limit.

The bigger it is the longer I'll take to report back. 25 or 50 is ideal IMO.

Alright, I tried not to overthink it. Whittling down a list of 100 down to 50 was an interesting challenge, and there’s a lot more I’d like to include, but I think this is a good representation. It’s weighted toward the 80’s, with a good smattering of 70’s and a bit from the 60’s. I started with a few mega-hits but tried to stay away from songs that I’m sure you’ve already heard a million times, although I’m sure there’s a few on here you’re already very familiar with. Many of these are, of course, very well-known bands, and in those cases I tried to use somewhat lesser-known songs rather than the ones everyone already hears all the time. A few - for example, ABBA and Def Leppard, two of my all-time favorite bands - were very difficult because I would have loved to include a number of their songs, but decided to stick with just one each.

”Kiss” - Prince

“And She Was” - Talking Heads

“Fat Bottomed Girls” - Queen

“Peace Of Mind” - Boston

“What You Need” - INXS

“Don’t Bring Me Down” - Electric Light Orchestra

“Open Your Heart” - Madonna

“Youth Gone Wild” - Skid Row

“Soul Man” - The Blues Brothers

“Saturday Night’s (Alright For Fighting)” - Elton John

“Vacation” - The Go-Go’s

“Surrender” - Cheap Trick

“Roam” - The B-52’s

“Jungle Love” - Steve Miller Band

“This Charming Man” - The Smiths

“Dreams” - The Cranberries

“Wasted Years” - Iron Maiden

“Rio” - Duran Duran

“Waterloo” - ABBA

“Friday I’m In Love” - The Cure

“Do You Believe In Love” - Huey Lewis & The News

“Bad Reputation” - Joan Jett & The Blackhearts

“Oliver’s Army” - Elvis Costello & The Attractions

“War Pigs” - Black Sabbath

“Higher Love - Single Version” - Steve Winwood

“Emotions” - Mariah Carey

“Fox On The Run” - Sweet

“Freeze-Frame” - The J. Geils Band

“Land Of 1000 Dances” - Wilson Pickett

“Dance Hall Days” - Wang Chung

“Everybody Wants You” - Billy Squier

“Down On The Corner” - Creedence Clearwater Revival

“Hysteria” - Def Leppard

“Lido Shuffle” - Boz Scaggs

“Would I Lie To You - ET Mix” - Eurythmics

“Kiss Me Deadly” - Lita Ford

“Paradise By The Dashboard Light” - Meat Loaf

“You Can Call Me Al” - Paul Simon

“China Grove” - The Doobie Brothers

“Breaking The Law” - Judas Priest

“Tell It To My Heart” - Taylor Dayne

“We Belong” - Pat Benatar

“Nightrain” - Guns N’ Roses

“I Was Made For Dancin’” - Leif Garrett

“Stand” - R.E.M.

“Take It Easy” - Eagles

“Young Hearts” - Commuter

“Cold As Ice” - Foreigner

“Dreaming” - Blondie

“Don’t Worry Baby” - The Beach Boys

Maybe I’ve underestimated your knowledge of this era, and this list will all be stuff you know well. (Or, conversely, perhaps I’m assuming too much, and should have just gone with a list of 50 mega-hits. Who knows?)

Twenty songs.

Twenty songs? That’s barely a warm-up! We’re trying to bring this man up to speed on four decades of music! We need to let this thing breathe.

You asked for limits, man! Work with them!

But I didn’t ask you!!!

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