Big wheel keeps on turning. Or is it "Wheel in the sky keeps on turning..."? To everything, turn turn turn? All of it applies, really. Without regard for the headlines of the day or the contemporary climate of society, life keeps on happening. Love is routinely found, lost, remembered, and revered. The need to work never seems to cease, but how we work and what we find ourselves doing is a perpetually evolving, shape-shifting slice of our collective reality. Friends, lovers, co-workers, pets, bosses...nothing is safe from change.
Even as it too finds itself morphing, music sustains as a constant and connecting force through all of life's changes. A simultaneous soundtrack for these present times and gatekeeper to our pasts. Music connects us as a people globally (seriously, people love Drake everywhere). It is both therapist and entertainer. For me, it's everything. One of my life's obsessions has consistently remained seeking out and discovering new music to supplement the lifelong lyrical lexicon permanently lodged in my grey matter. I love the tunes in my rear view, but I live for that moment when I find a song or artist that blows my mind and changes my life. Or at least makes me rethink what music can be. It doesn't happen often, but it's freakin' magic when it does.
I stopped blogging in 2011. Life happened, work involved very long days, and I more or less detached from being up on all the new acts and tracks as I always had been. Lately, I've submerged myself back in to the culture of New Music Friday (RIP New Music Tuesday) and am again obsessing over what's new and finding the next artist to put a smile on my face.
The songs on the The Mixtape are new and recent releases that manage to stake their space between my ears, cozying up with the news of the day, myriad disparate work thoughts, and whatever my cat is trying to say to me. The Mixtape is essentially my Top 40. I started writing down Casey Kasem's American Top 40 every Saturday morning as a seven-year-old, cataloging it religiously and subsequently remembering the names of the songs and their respective artists). I did that for a few years until I started writing down my own top 40 each week, which I kept up with (weeks, sometimes months, were missed occasionally) for the better part of the next 30 years.
Casey's Top 40, my own, or this blog...each at one point or another has motivated and enabled me to indulge in the fine art of finding my next favorite artist. It's good to be back. I'll get around to what I'm listening to now, and much more, soon. For now, here's a quick and dirty list of some of my favorites since I've been gone. No order. Just songs I loved when they came out that still sound great to me today.
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