Life, a Playlist
Music has always been my lost art. I tried to learn the drums when I was younger, but gave up too quickly. I learned rhythm, but was frustrated by how much technical skills was needed to produce *good* music.
Other arts—especially fine art—kept my attention in the ability to produce shitty work that was nevertheless aesthetically pleasing.
Raw creatively can flourish on a lower skill level in fine art. Less frustrating than music.
But I still loved music, and appreciated it. And in recent years I’ve spend music more time learning about it and why I liked certain things and not others.
I explored a lot of ground and listen to things that I grew up hating.
As a hobby, I’ve started to “DJ” my life. That is, rather than simply create playlists for “moods” or activities, I generally curate a single playlist that expresses who I am at a given moment in time, and listen to it often as a way of grounding myself.
Rather than tailor music to my mood, I try to tailor my mood to music.
I’ve then use variations of this playlist for specific purposes, like to DJ at the pool, but stick to core songs and sounds.
That playlist is not static. It changes. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, and for periods: not at all.
It’s not something I’ve really shared with the others tho, except for when I use it for that purpose.
I figure—why not try and change that.
I have no clue whether y’all are interested or share any of my music taste. I also can’t promise you’ll consider my taste “good.”
But hey, why not give it a try. So find it on Spotify here:
This playlist is a bit of a fresh start from my last one. It’s based off of mostly songs I curated for a party. Those songs had been in some part taken from my last “life” playlist.
So a lot of the core attitude of that playlist remains. All house of some form, whether originally or remixed as house. Largely female vocals—especially from relative unknowns or newer vocalists coming from a place of raw talent rather but not quite as polished as top divas. Many of those divas, which you might expect to find on a gay man’s playlist, make appearances on my playlists, but don’t generally fit the bill here.
That’s mostly because they are *too* successful. I can’t connect with Beyoncé on this level because I don’t feel anywhere near the level of confident she is.
Instead I relate more to up-and-comers.
There’s a lot of Avicii, of course, including favorites from his newly released posthumous album.
There are some songs I’m barely familiar with that were on collaborative playlists with friends that caught my ear and I want to give him a try to push beyond my comfort zone.
Over time I’m sure I’ll edit this playlist and it will get more cohesive, but this is a strong start I think. I hope you enjoy.