Ten songs is a harsh constraint, but a necessary one. Depending on the year you're looking at, hitting that exact number was either easy or a brutal exercise in "kill your darlings." Some years I genuinely struggled to find ten tracks, while others there were far too many!

The mid-to-late 1960s were particularly difficult for me to narrow down. This was the music I listened to growing up. Furthermore, it's the specific era that a lot of the bands I subsequently listened to during the 1990s were referencing, sampling, and pulling inspiration from. Whittling a momentous year like 1966 down was just rude. anyway!

But yeah, without the limit, an archive just becomes a playlist. It becomes passive. Forcing a ten-song cap means you have to make hard decisions about the narrative of that specific year. I have also tried to mold the 1000 songs as a narrative as a whole, so adding blue boy in 1997 looks back to Marlena Shaw's "Woman of the Ghetto" and that's on purpose!

10 Songs a Year

So yeah, I am trying to create an interesting, cohesive audio story spanning exactly 100 years, from 1930 to 2030. With heaters. That are a bit catchy.

• Resonance: Does it actually mean something. Does it bring to mind physical spaces, late-night radios, and specific human context over simple passive background listening?
• Me: Is the catalog a true reflection of personal, ear-crafted taste rather than an algorithmically optimized collection?