Intro Part 2 (or how I narrowed this down to 50 songs and other fun facts)

So, music lover, you’ve returned for more, to see exactly what I have in store for you, and what 50 songs could have made the mother of all playlists. But before we get into the songs, I thought it important to tell you how I arrived at these 50 special songs, how long it took me to choose them and the criteria I used and give you an idea of what my musical tastes lean towards. For example, if you’re a country music fan, you are probably in the wrong place…there are no country music songs here. Not that there’s anything wrong with country music, I’ve just never been a fan. But I would hate to see you, dear reader, waste your precious internet time waiting for a country music song and not seeing any. We’ll get to the genres represented here in a bit.

OK, so first the ground rules I had to follow and the criteria.

To qualify for the list, the song had to be released from 1970 on, and that includes if it’s a cover of an older song (which only occurs once anyway), so within the past 50 years. Now the very musically astute of you out there will be saying, “But that disqualifies the entire Beatles catalog, except for Let It Be…how can there not there be a Beatles song?” Well, there would have been no Beatles songs regardless…we’ll get to that 400-lb gorilla somewhere down the road.

Also…this is not a critics list, so it’s not like a VH1 special where I surveyed 1,000 artists and music insiders and got their opinions and ranked these songs based on their artistic quality. It’s also not a Casey Kasem Billboard countdown of the “hottest” songs of the past 50 years by sales or what was the most popular. You can get those types of lists on www.vh1.com or www.billboard.com. I have included some fun facts and figures with each entry, mostly for all of us chart and stat nerds out there, but that’s not how I chose the songs. I’m also going to present the songs in alphabetical order, so they’re not ranked in any way. It would not have been possible in a million years to rank them from 50 to 1. Besides, doing it alphabetically means that the songs are out of order of release, which means the total “story” is told out of order; think of it like a Tarantino film, without all the violence and Samuel L. Jackson f-bombs.

These are the songs that I feel most connected to, and that mean the most to me…each one is tied to a memory, a time in my life, a person, an experience, a milestone; something significant. In much the same way people will tie their memories to food or maybe a location, I tend to lean towards music or movies when it comes to remembering specific times in my life. So, whether that memory or recollection is good, bad or indifferent it will be here. I know what you might be thinking…wouldn’t it have been easier just to make a playlist of my favorite songs of all time, and put it on Apple Music or Spotify and be done with it?  Of course! But what fun would that have been? Hey everybody here’s the list, listen to it, make some comments, end of story.  The more I thought about it, the more meaning I wanted it to have, and that’s how it ended up becoming more of a project. There are definitely some guilty pleasures here, and some of my absolute favorite music will make appearances…my two favorite bands are here, including the first band I ever saw live and the one I’ve seen live the most; the song I believe I have literally heard the most in my life is here, a song off the first album I ever received is here, as well as two Christmas songs (yes, seriously!).

OK, so how did I choose and how long did it take me? From the time I got back from Aruba in September of 2019, I started thinking about what songs I might include, and began adding songs here and there until I had around 250. I knew this would be more about subtraction than addition, so at first, I didn’t give each selection much thought. There were some definite no-brainers, but in those early stages, if the song resonated with me in any way, I put it on. That lasted until about the end of 2019. Once we all went on pandemic lockdown and started working from home in March of 2020, I started looking at the playlist again. In the next few months, I probably narrowed it down to about 100-120 songs before I really started making serious cuts and putting the ones that didn’t make it on a list of Alternates, the junior varsity team if you will, but with the intention that once they went on the Alternates list, there was no coming back to the official 50 At 50 Playlist. I did it that way on purpose so that once I cut a song, I couldn’t use it anymore, making the decision final, and significantly saving me time and headaches. Once I had it down to about 75, it really started getting difficult to take songs off. They all began to have tremendous meaning in some way, beyond whether I simply enjoyed listening to it. There were some I felt a huge connection to, making it very difficult to remove it. And I was listening to these songs whenever I could….in the car, while I was exercising, doing chores, shaving in the morning… I felt like I lived with those earbuds in! But this really helped me decide who stayed and who went. Around July 4th, I was down to about 60, and then I decided to step away from it for a few weeks so I could “forget” what was on the list. My thought was that maybe not looking at it for a while and then re-visiting it would give me some clarity about who to eliminate.

Yeah, right.

In all honesty, it became harder, and then inexplicably, I began to add songs!! So… I was essentially going backwards. Maybe Nick was right; this was an impossible task and a dumb idea, and I shouldn’t have even started this. I pictured myself 10 years from now, alone in a dark room with my iPhone plugged into the wall scrolling through songs, and every time I got down to 50, I would add another, remove one and so on and so on, until I went insane.

In the end, I set a goal to have it complete by the time my 50th birthday rolled around in August of 2020, and after some really tough decisions, and literally a last-minute addition/subtraction, I had my 50 At 50 Playlist. So, what you will see here has not been altered in any way since August of 2020, and believe me, I’ve listened to these songs enough in the last 18+ months that I have had ample opportunity to make changes, and I have not made one edit.

Well then, what’s here exactly? Some fun facts:

Oldest song: 1975 (technically the oldest song here was written in 1941; the version of that song I include here was recorded in 1977)

Most recent song: 2019

Cover songs: 2

Songs recorded live: 4

Songs from movie soundtracks: 6

Artists/bands who appear twice: 2

Artists who appear twice with two different bands: 2

Longest song: 8:35

Shortest song: 2:37

Songs By decade:

1970’s – 6

1980’s – 28

1990’s – 10

2000’s – 3

2010’s - 3

Artists By geography:

US – 28

UK – 15

Australia – 1

Canada – 1

Ireland – 1

Iceland – 1

Denmark – 1

Songs By genre:

Pop/Rock – 19

Hard rock/Metal – 13

New Wave/Alternative – 9

Holiday – 2

Hip-Hop/R&B/Dance - 7

I may have given some hints as to what bands are represented by giving you the geography breakdown, so make some guesses and let me know if you’re right. And a word about the genres…I probably spent more time than necessary on classifying the songs, so I may look back and make changes, but I based it on the genre that the artist is generally considered, not necessarily the song. There are some songs that are acoustic recordings (so they’re not necessarily rock songs?) by rock artists, and many artists blur the lines between hard rock and alternative, so this all subjective obviously.

Future posts will include title/artist/songwriter, who performed on each song, and chart and award stats for each one. I’ll also include links to relevant articles, books, podcasts or anything else that I might have encountered in my travels with these songs and artists. Most if not all these songs have videos, but I also urge you to listen to the song without the video; the different perspective might surprise you.

About those music videos…I’m probably going to reference MTV a lot as we take this trip and talk a great deal about the music videos that accompany most, if not all these songs. If you’re my age, and you grew up with MTV, you know the effect it had on music and on culture in general, so the impact can’t be overstated. You felt connected to the music videos your favorite artists were making, and if you’re like me, you watched for hours on end. For those of you who caught the tail end of the MTV-era, and know it as a reality show channel, all I can say is that you missed out on a cultural revolution and leave it at that. My generation is also fortunate enough to experience music in all its formats; we’ve all probably owned music on vinyl, cassette, CD, iPod and now through some digital music service. There is a convenience to digital music, but nothing can replace going to your favorite record store and flipping through the albums or CDs and heading home with your favorites. I can remember saving allowance to buy my favorite records, and then later, allocating parts of weekly paychecks to go buy music. I’m going to talk about the evolution of the different musical formats a lot here; whether you’re a member of my generation or not, I really hope you enjoy hearing about that part of this musical journey.

And lastly…I am not a music critic or a music writer. Music is a huge part of my life, and while it may sound corny, music has been there whenever I’ve needed it to be. Do I have opinions? Oh yeah…but these are not Rolling Stone level reviews or essays here. I’ve done my best to do research and get facts straight, but unfortunately, I haven’t interviewed any of these artists nor was I there when these songs were written and recorded, so this is more from the heart and 100% for the fun of it. Hope that’s OK 😊

Thanks for sticking around! If you’re ready to begin, we’ll kick off the playlist next time with a rock trio from the UK, with a singer who is arguably more popular as a solo artist. 😉