Hanni El Khatib “Gonna Die Alone”

I feel like the phrase “die alone” is most commonly associated with being a frustrated single person, but this song by Hanni El Khatib goes to a darker place than that. This is more about paranoia, and feeling like everyone is out to get you one way or another, and just wondering when it’s all going to finally end. There’s a bit of humor in this – you can tell he’s smirking in some lines, and the tone of the music is fairly loose and fun. But despite that, the core of this really is anxiety and terror, and this powerful feeling that you have no control over your destiny, and that no one is willing to help you. It’s an incredibly fatalistic tune, but pretty funky too.

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Rose Elinor Dougall “Closer”

Rose Elinor Dougall’s voice has always signaled a thoughtful introversion, even back when she was one of the Pipettes. Back then it subverted the band’s retro girl group aesthetic – she came off like the sort of ostensibly shy girl who’s always about to say something a bit cutting and wry when people aren’t looking. Her solo work has been a lot more mellow and demure, so it’s interesting to hear her move in a slightly more danceable direction with her new record. “Closer” is still fairly reserved as far as dance rock tunes go, but there’s enough of a groove and hook to it that the music nudges her to be a little bolder. But only so much – this is a song about passively waiting for someone to make a move, and she sounds a lot more impatient than insistent.

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Syd “Shake Em Off”

“Shake ‘Em Off” reminds me a lot of Missy Elliott and Timbaland’s mid-‘90s material, at least in that it’s got this very similar push-and-pull between lushness and minimalism; warm sensuality and aloof distance; clever artsiness and pop hooks. Syd’s voice is very much at home in a track like this – there’s always a lot of shades of ambiguity in her phrasing, so Hit-Boy’s production makes that an asset rather than a liability. It is interesting that Syd’s singing about being sure of her decisions and confident that she’s about to become a star, but the overall tone of the music is quite ambivalent. I don’t think she’s undermining her self-belief, but I do think adding these shades of uncertainty feels emotionally true.

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Letherette “Villim”

“Villim” sounds like it should be soundtracking a sequence in a movie that’s dark and frightening, but also a bit surreal. A late night journey, an encounter with something alien, lost in a forest. Something like that. The string parts – sampled, I’m guessing, but I have no idea – are overtly cinematic, but the magic in this is the way they’ve chopped up these chiming sounds so it sounds quite lovely, but clipped up just enough to feel slightly unstable.

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This is the second in the 1990s survey mix series, which will come out monthly in chronological order through this year. It’s important for the ‘90s to be presented in order, because the story of music in that decade is basically a trilogy in which each act ends in tragedy – the suicide of Kurt Cobain, the murders of Tupac and Biggie, and the toxic masculinity run rampant at Woodstock ’99. You can find the 1990 mix here.

1991 is the proper beginning of the ‘90s aesthetic, though it’s not fully formed just yet. There’s still plenty of the glossy, optimistic post-80s vibe that was all over the 1990 survey, but the darker, earthier, and more abrasive tones that would come to dominate the early part of the decade are abundant here. It’s worth noting that a lot of the “sea change” albums of this year – Pearl Jam’s Ten, Nirvana’s Nevermind, Primal Scream’s Screamedelica, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik, A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory, Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger, My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, U2’s Achtung Baby, and 2Pac’s 2Pacalypse Now – came along near the end of the year. Everything changes after the summer, and the vibe is set for the next five years at least.

Thanks to Paul Cox, Rob Sheffield, Sean T. Collins, Chris Conroy, and Chris Ott for their valuable assistance in putting this set together.

DOWNLOAD DISC 1

Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit” / U2 “The Fly” / Siouxsie and the Banshees “Kiss Them for Me” / Throwing Muses “Red Shoes” / My Bloody Valentine “To Here Knows When” / P.M. Dawn “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” / Lenny Kravitz “It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over” / The KLF “Justified and Ancient (Stand by the Jams Mix)” / Mariah Carey “Emotions” / Amy Grant “Baby Baby” / Paula Abdul “Rush, Rush” / Toad the Wet Sprocket “All I Want” / R.E.M. “Losing My Religion” / Metallica “Enter Sandman” / Fugazi “Reclamation” / Pearl Jam “Alive” / Guns N’ Roses “You Could Be Mine” / A Tribe Called Quest “Scenario” / Naughty by Nature “O.P.P.” / Cypress Hill “How I Could Just Kill A Man” / Massive Attack “Unfinished Sympathy” / Temple of the Dog “Say Hello 2 Heaven” / Boyz II Men “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday”

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Michael Jackson “Black or White” / Prince “Cream” / Shanice “I Love Your Smile” / The Divinyls “I Touch Myself” / EMF “Unbelievable” / Red Hot Chili Peppers “Give It Away” / Blur “There’s No Other Way” / DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince “Summertime” / Del tha Funkee Homosapien “Mistadobalina” / De La Soul “A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’” / Cathy Dennis “Touch Me (All Night Long)” / Big Audio Dynamite “The Globe” / Matthew Sweet “Girlfriend” / Pixies “U-Mass” / Hole “Teenage Whore” / Slint “Good Morning, Captain” / The Smashing Pumpkins “Rhinoceros” / Pavement “Debris Slide” / Roxette “Joyride” / Heavy D and the Boys “Now That We Found Love” / Another Bad Creation “Iesha” / Color Me Badd “I Wanna Sex You Up” / Negativland “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” / Mark Cohn “Walking In Memphis” / Bonnie Raitt “I Can’t Make You Love Me”

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Primal Scream “Movin’ On Up” / Jesus Jones “Right Here, Right Now” / N.W.A. “Alwayz Into Somethin’” / 2Pac “Brenda’s Got A Baby” / MC Lyte “When In Love” / 3rd Bass “Pop Goes the Weasel” / C&C Music Factory “Things That Make You Go Hmmmmm…” / Gerardo “Rico Suave” / Pizzicato Five “Baby Love Child” / Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch “Good Vibrations” / Nitzer Ebb “Godhead” / Orbital “Belfast” / Enya “Caribbean Blue” / Vanessa Williams “Save the Best for Last” / Mr. Big “To Be With You” / Garth Brooks “Shameless” / Extreme “More Than Words” / The Field Mice “Tilting At Windmills” / The Tragically Hip “Little Bones” / Brooks & Dunn “Brand New Man” / Genesis “Hold On My Heart” / Ween “Dr. Rock” / Kyuss “Son of a Bitch” / Scorpions “Winds of Change” / Natalie Cole & Nat King Cole “Unforgettable”

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Primus “Jerry Was A Race Car Driver” / Ministry “Jesus Built My Hotrod” / Anthrax featuring Public Enemy “Bring the Noise” / Soundgarden “Slaves & Bulldozers” / Morrissey “Sing My Life” / Voice of the Beehive “Monsters and Angels” / Hi-Five “I Like the Way (The Kissing Game)” / Kool Moe Dee “Rise N Shine” / Geto Boys “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” / Moby “Go” / The Commitments “Chain of Fools” / Londonbeat “I’ve Been Thinking About You” / Pet Shop Boys “Where the Streets Have No Name/Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” / Lords of Acid “The Most Wonderful Girl” / Rozalla “Everbody’s Free (To Feel Good)” / Troop & Levert featuring Queen Latifah “For the Love of Money / Living for the City” / Sarah McLachlan “Into the Fire” / Live “Operation Spirit (The Tyranny of Tradition)” / Sam Phillips “Now I Can’t Find the Door” / Trisha Yearwood “She’s In Love with the Boy” / Tom Petty “Into the Great Wide Open” / Spin Doctors “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues” / Crash Test Dummies “Superman’s Song” / Phranc “Gertrude Stein” / Liz Phair “Divorce Song (Girlysounds version)” / Spacemen 3 “Big City”

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Stereolab “Super-Electric” / Shudder to Think “Red House” / Unrest “Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl” / Nation of Ulysses “You’re My Miss Washington DC” / Bongwater “The Power of Pussy” / Mercury Rev “Car Wash Hair” / Teenage Fanclub “The Concept” / Dinosaur Jr. “The Wagon” / Fishbone “Everyday Sunshine” / Autoclave “Go Far” / Heaven to Betsy “My Red Self” Sebadoh “The Freed Pig” / Superchunk “Seed Toss” / Ugly Kid Joe “Everything About You” / Screeching Weasel “Guest List” / Susana Hoffs “My Side of the Bed” / Crystal Waters “Gypsy Woman” / Queen Latifah “Latifah’s Had It Up 2 Here” / Jodeci “Forever My Lady” / Gang Starr “Who’s Gonna Take the Weight?” / Keith Sweat “Keep It Comin’” / Public Enemy “Can’t Truss It” / Coil “Answers Come In Dreams II” / Slowdive “Celia’s Dream” / Sun City Girls “The Court Magicians of Agartha”

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Van Halen “Poundcake” / Ice-T “O.G. Original Gangster” / MC Hammer “Too Legit to Quit” / Vanilla Ice “Ninja Rap” / Mr. Bungle “Squeeze Me Macaroni” / Type O Negative “Xero Tolerance” / Uncle Tupelo “Gun” / Therapy? “Meat Abstract” / Jawbox “Consolation Prize” / Sting “The Soul Cages” / Randy Travis “Oh, What A Time To Be Me” / George Strait “If I Know Me” / Widespread Panic “Mercy” / Martika “Love…Thy Will Be Done” / Kirsty MacColl “Walking Down Madison” / Talk Talk “After the Flood” / Ned’s Atomic Dustbin “Kill Your Television” / Nice & Smooth “Sometimes I Rhyme Slow” / White Trash “Apple Pie” / Urge Overkill “The Kids Are Insane” / Scrawl “Please Have Everything” / The Judybats “Don’t Drop the Baby” / Blake Babies “Take Me” / Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 “Four O’Clocker 2” / Unwound “You Speak Jealousy”

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George Michael and Elton John “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” / Catherine Wheel “Black Metallic” / Drivin’ and Cryin’ “Fly Me Courageous” / Cannibal Corpse “Meat Hook Sodomy” / Sepultura “Arise” / Tesla Edison’s Medicine” / Jimmie Dale Gilmore “After Awhile” / Alan Jackson “Don’t Rock the Jukebox” / Mekons “The Curse” / The Ocean Blue “Ballerina Out of Control” / Chris Whitley “Living With the Law” / American Music Club “Sick of Food” / fIREHOSE “Walking the Cow” / AMG “Bitch Betta Have My Money” / Ice Cube “Steady Mobbin’” / Leaders of the New School “Case of the PTA” / LFO “LFO” / Linton Kwesi Johnson “Story” / Hoodoo Gurus “Miss Freelove ’69” / Sonny Sharrock “Little Rock” / Billy Bragg “Sexuality” / Chapterhouse “Falling Down” / Take That “Do What U Like” / NOFX “The Moron Brothers” / Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson “Beauty and the Beast” / Reba McEntire “For My Broken Heart”

DOWNLOAD DISC 8

Madonna “Rescue Me” / Lisa Stansfield “Change” / Electronic “Getting Away With It” / Erasure “Chorus” / L.A. Style “James Brown Is Dead” / Consolidated “Friendly Fascism” / The Fall “Shiftwork” / Alice Cooper “Feed Me Frankenstein” / Pennywise “Living for Today” / Entombed “Sinners Bleed” / Butthole Surfers “Hurdy Gurdy Man” / Tin Machine “You Belong In Rock N’ Roll” / Queen “These Are the Days of Our Lives” / Skid Row “Monkey Business” / Monster Magnet “Pill Shovel” / Screaming Trees “Bed of Roses” / Crowded House “Weather with You” / k.d. lang “Barefoot” / Elvis Costello “The Other Side of Summer” / Bratmobile “Girl Germs” / The Field Mice “Tilting At Windmills” / DJ Quik “Born and Raised In Compton” / Christopher Williams “I’m Dreaming” / L.A. Guns “Over the Edge” / Deacon Blue “Your Swaying Arms” / Daisy Chainsaw “Love Your Money” / Julian Cope “East Easy Rider” / Curtis Stigers “I Wonder Why” / Michael Bolton “Time, Love, and Tenderness” / Bryan Adams “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”

Priests “JJ”

Katie Alice Greer sounds thoroughly appalled throughout “JJ,” starting first with herself for having “such awful taste” in men while looking back on some regrettable ex. Then she shifts that over to the ex, whose “bad attitude” pose extended to thinking she was disgusting. And then she pulls back a bit further to shaking her head at a society that conspires to make her or anyone else feel like they “deserve” to be treated like shit. It doesn’t take the blame off anyone for insensitive behavior, but it does put everything in context. Would we undermine ourselves and be attracted to things we know on some level will hurt us if we didn’t have toxic messages in our lives? Is this nature or nurture? Anyway, fun things to think about in a danceable punk song song!

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Thundercat featuring Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins “Show You the Way”

When I learned about this song I was like “wow, Thundercat got Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins on a song?!?” And then I heard it, and you can hear Thundercat expressing the same thing in the song itself. What luck, right? This is how you know you’ve made it. This is how you find out that you are exceptionally smooth. This is one of your slickest bass lines going to Yacht Rock Heaven. So I’m of two minds about the kitschy announcements of each singer throughout the song: The joke is funny the first time, but not so much on repeat listens, and the schtick gets in the way of the vibe and sentiment of the music. But it comes from a place of very genuine joy and admiration and surprise and wonder, and who can blame this guy for being so hype about landing either of these dudes, let alone both of them? Certainly not I.

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Ty Segall “Break A Guitar”

There has been no shortage of dudes drawing on Black Sabbath riffs over the past – oh, hmm, 40 years or so? – but a lot of the time, it’s just aimless sludgy riffage without much charm. Ty Segall does it right by keeping that sort of heaviness and bombast connected to the more delicate and tuneful aspects of psychedelia. In his hands, the riffs don’t just sound like the lumbering thuds of a giant, but are nimble like a musclebound football player who moves with an unexpected speed and grace. Segall is never breaking any new ground, but he’s always refining approaches to things other musicians do quite lazily, and he makes rock that some might write off as retro feel fresh though sheer force of will and vitality.

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Gabriel Garzón-Montano “Sour Mango”

Gabriel Garzón-Montano’s melodies are bold and immediately charming, but rendered in layers of muted pastel tones that keep a relatively busy song like “Sour Mango” from feeling too rich and heavy. There’s a nice feeling of weightlessness in this song, with the vocal and instrumental harmonies hovering around a crisp beat that keeps a steady groove but feels more like scaffolding for melody. Garzón-Montano’s voice is soulful but not showy – it’s the most vibrant aspect of the song, but doesn’t overwhelm the low-key, relaxed feeling of the overall track. I’m particularly fond of the vaguely siren-like keyboard part that carries through the piece as a crucial part of the harmony and serves as a nearly subliminal hook that sticks around in my head after the song’s over.

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Japandroids “Arc of Bar”

“Arc of Bar” is a skyscraper of a song, building upwards towards the heavens with each verse as if the band was on a solemn mission to go get a beer with God Himself. A lot of beers. This is the most epic drinking song I have ever heard, and maybe the only one I’ve encountered that makes drinking booze seem like some kind of defiant, heroic duty. Brian King’s verses are wordy and deliberately grandiose, but the chorus is exactly the sort of cathartic, mindless bombast Japandroids does best: “Yeah yeaaaah! / YEAH YEAH!!!” This is seven minutes of theatrical rock music designed to make people go wild at a concert, and is such a convincing advertisement for inebriation that it’s a huge boon to the bartenders at every venue this band plays for the rest of the career. But as much as this song sets up a good time, it’s lost and confused and tortured at its core. It’s constantly grasping upwards at something – grace, glory, redemption? – but never getting a hold of anything. So it just keeps going higher and higher until it inevitably falls down.

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Delicate Steve “Nightlife”

Delicate Steve plays guitar like a lead singer, so it works out nicely that there’s no singer in his band. His lead parts carry the central melody of the tunes, but even if it works as a substitution for a traditional rock singer, it doesn’t necessarily feel like one. Steve’s parts are highly expressive and instantly memorable, and frankly, convey a lot more personality than most indie rock singers. The songs on This Is Steve are so catchy and well-composed that they’d probably be hits if they had singing in place of Steve’s leads, but they’d lose a significant amount of charm, and distract from the colorful, idealized alternate reality suggested by the music. “Nightlife” in particular sounds like some better, more cheerful world where seemingly disparate elements from twangy rock and reggae blend together seamlessly and it’s totally chill and casual.

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Foxygen “Avalon”

If you are a musician skilled in mimicry, glam rock is your friend. There’s never any need to be authentic, and you’re only limited by a lack of shame and/or a lack of funds. Foxygen gave up on shame years ago, and now they’ve got the budget to back themselves up with a large orchestra, so you’d better believe they went well over the top on their new record. “Avalon” is gloriously artificial, bouncing around between ‘70s touchstones both unimpeachably cool (Bowie) and perennially tacky (Meat Loaf), and like, actual musical theater. This is theatrical rock that sounds like it aspires to actually becoming gleefully dorky Broadway razzle-dazzle, as though the record won’t be truly finished until it’s a jukebox musical. It’s all kinda-sorta a joke – on some level they’re goofing on musical tropes as much as they’re embracing them, and I am certain you’re meant to smile and go “wow, they really did that!” when you listen. But there’s no way you invest this much time and craft and personality into something you think is bullshit, unless bullshit is your absolute favorite thing in the world. And with these guys, I think that could be true.

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The xx “Say Something Loving”

The xx have become significantly less minimalist on their new album I See You, integrating the samples and muted dance music aesthetics of Jamie xx’s solo material while still sounding exactly like the xx. The shift isn’t drastic – pretty much all of this still can be described as “minimal” compared to most other things and the music still is all about creating a powerful sense of intimacy. Romy and Oliver, both openly queer in real life, still sound like a very intense straight couple when they sing to each other. But the sound is brighter, less static. The world implied in their songs feels a lot bigger than just the two of them in close quarters.

“Say Something Loving” is about finding love again after being starved for affection for a long time, and the conflict between feeling happy and grateful for this good fortune, and terrified that you’ll screw it up somehow. “I wasn’t patient to meet you,” Oliver sings. “Am I too needy, am I too eager?” They articulate these anxieties but don’t let those feelings overtake the song, keeping the emphasis on the warmth and affection. They evoke a specific moment a lot of us have experienced: Getting exactly what we want but spoiling it by thinking the whole time about how it’s going to go away.

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Joan of Arc “This Must Be the Placenta”

Tim Kinsella is very playful in his approach to lyrics, and seems to layer his work with sly references to music, literature, and art both obscure and famous as if to make it all a code for someone nearly as clever and tasteful as himself to crack. But it doesn’t stop there. Kinsella has a gift for juxtaposing vividly strange phrases with lines that start out like self-aware jokes but have an agonizing emotional resonance. You get all of that in “This Must Be the Placenta” on top of a track that manages to feel wobbly and seasick despite a steady, in-the-pocket groove. There’s a lot of great lines in this one, but the one that really sticks with me is “I’ve had a 26-year-old girlfriend since the day I turned 11.” It’s funny, but also so strange and provocative as it sits in my mind and I try to unpack that thought. I like to think that it’s not the same girlfriend, but that his desires have shifted from aspirational maturity and yearning for maternal attention to looking for an equal to wanting to reverse the original dynamic. Another phrase that gets repeated is “all along unknowingly I acted out the plan,” and in light of that, the “26-year-old girlfriend” bit seems more like a joke he’s barely in on.

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Alexander F “Soft Coffins”

“Soft Coffin” is a song that does its best to be kind and reassuring to some anxious, depressive person, but doesn’t seem to actually understand what this person is going through. It’s sympathy and love, but not exactly empathy. And while that’s not ideal, it’s something I think all of us feel from time to time when someone we care about is hurting themselves one way or another and we just want them to stop and to acknowledge they are loved. Alexander F’s song has the hallmarks of an uplifting arena rock song but the underpinnings of something more uncertain and twitchy, and the lyrics spike sweet sentiments with jokes to mitigate the tension and to keep it from being prescriptive. It sounds like a very recognizable mix of kindness and awkwardness and exasperation.

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Chavez “Blank in the Blaze”

Chavez songs share a similar formal logic in which tension is introduced and then doubled or tripled before it is released. Matt Sweeney and Clay Tarver’s guitars on the new song “Blank in the Blaze” alternate between melodic part that tighten up like coils of metal wire or riffs that clench up like fists. The approach is exactly the same as when they more regularly produced music 20 years ago; this could easily be an outtake from Ride the Fader. There are some bands who could come back after a long hiatus and end up feeling different, but it makes sense that Chavez would snap into their distinctive groove, since the band emerged from a set of clear formal rules and restraints. And all of those rules are there just to make sure that you get exactly what’s at the end of “Blank”: a soaring sensation of triumph tempered by a feeling of exhaustion and lost.

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Run the Jewels “Call Ticketron”

Run the Jewels have been great from the start, but I think it’s taken them a bit to transition from “project” to full-time collaborators. The intensity and chemistry has always been there, but Killer Mike and El-P sound emboldened by the realization that RTJ has becoming the defining work of their long careers, and seem thrilled to give the people what they want. These are guys who’ve built their reputations on projecting confidence, but they’ve never seemed as sure of themselves as they do on these new songs. It must help to know when you’re writing songs exactly how excited people will be to hear them, and what will make people lose their shit when you perform live. “Call Ticketron” is one of the songs that seems built specifically for the live show – there’s the “l-l-l-live from the Garden” refrain, sure, but it’s more in the way the track contrasts its vast negative space with a rhythm that tightens up a lot before releasing the tension. El-P and Mike switch up their approaches to the beat through the song, with the former lurking around it at the start, and the latter ratcheting up the tension in his last verse by packing in the syllables and leaning into internal rhyme.

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Nine Inch Nails “Burning Bright (Field on Fire)”

Trent Reznor approaches record formats like a painter – some works are large canvasses, others are diptychs or murals, and a few here and there are miniatures. Not the Actual Events is in the latter category along with Broken and the first How to Destroy Angels EP. As with those previous small scale works, it’s a complete thought with a distinctive aesthetic. The songs have the raw garage punk urgency of The Slip, but it’s far more cluttered and abrasive, and mostly avoids the melody and harmony at the core of even Reznor’s heaviest music.

Not the Actual Events is a deliberate mess; it’s a calculated replica of a chaotic state of mind. It starts off with a punk song that cuts out just as it starts to accelerate, as if the song just crashed into a wall, and then lurches though a middle section that sounds lost, desperate, and confused. Reznor and Atticus Ross go wild with texture – there’s a lot of clashing and overlapping planes of sound, and stuff that sounds like Joy Division strangling My Bloody Valentine guitar parts to death. Reznor’s voice is present through the whole thing, but it’s often obscured or nearly incoherent as he recites lyrics that are closer to free verse than his usual rhythmic and melodic cadences. The themes aren’t far off from where he was last time around on Hesitation Marks – he’s afraid of backsliding into old habits and destroying the life he’s built, and overwhelmed with paranoia about a world in decline. It all ends with a sort of thwarted catharsis in which Reznor finds the strength and clarity to push back against all of this anxiety, and he gives himself some space for a clear, relatively calm vocal melody to cut through the blaring guitar. But in the same song where he’s singing about being forgiven and free, he’s telling himself “you’re not really what you know you are.” It doesn’t feel like a victory.

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Welcome to the ’90s, dude.

This is the first in the 1990s survey mix series, which will come out monthly in chronological order through this year. It’s important for the ‘90s to be presented in order, because the story of music in that decade is basically a trilogy in which each act ends in tragedy – the suicide of Kurt Cobain, the murders of Tupac and Biggie, and the toxic masculinity run rampant at Woodstock ’99.

In this framework, 1990 is like a prologue in which we watch the 1980s shift into the 1990s with a great deal of innocence and optimism. 1990 is a peculiar year with a distinct aesthetic that is almost entirely abandoned by 1992. It’s as though at some point in 1989, everyone was sent a memo “hey, this is what the ‘90s is gonna sound like” and then by spring of 1991, another memo went out telling people to scrap all that and go in another direction. Anyway, enjoy immersing yourself in the first draft of the ‘90s. It’s pretty fun for the most part, and it starts off with Mariah Carey showing up out of nowhere and changing the course of pop music forever.

Thanks to Paul Cox, Rob Sheffield, Sean T. Collins, and Chris Conroy for their valuable assistance in putting this set together!

DOWNLOAD DISC 1

Mariah Carey “Vision of Love” / Wilson Phillips “Hold On” / Madonna “Vogue” / Deee-Lite “Groove Is In the Heart” / George Michael “Freedom ’90” / The Black Crowes “Hard to Handle” / Tevin Campbell “Round and Round” / Janet Jackson “Escapade” / INXS “Disappear” / Depeche Mode “Enjoy the Silence” / Sinead O’Connor “Nothing Compares 2 U” / My Bloody Valentine “Soon” / Nine Inch Nails “Sin” / Enigma “Sadeness Pt 1” / Bell Biv DeVoe “Poison” / C&C Music Factory “Gonna Make You Sweat” / Happy Mondays “Step On” / Primal Scream “Come Together” / Maxi Priest “Close to You” / Ralph Tresvant “Sensitivity” / Queensryche “Silent Lucidity”

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LL Cool J “Mama Said Knock You Out” / Public Enemy “911 Is A Joke” / MC Hammer “U Can’t Touch This” / Morrissey “Piccadilly Palare” / Garth Brooks “Friends In Low Places” / Concrete Blonde “Joey” / The La’s “There She Goes” / The B-52’s “Roam” / Aerosmith “Janie’s Got A Gun” / Alannah Myles “Black Velvet” / Heart “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You” / Suzanne Vega & DNA “Tom’s Diner” / Lisa Stansfield “All Around the World” / Snap! “The Power” / Adamski “Killer” / Soho “Hippychick” / 808 State “Pacific 202” / The Cure “Never Enough” / The Soup Dragons “I’m Free” / The Stone Roses “One Love” / Ride “Vapour Trail” / Cocteau Twins “Iceblink Luck” / Roxette “It Must Have Been Love” / Go West “The King of Wishful Thinking” / Celine Dion “Where Does My Heart Beat Now”

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Jane’s Addiction “Been Caught Stealing” / Pixies “Dig for Fire” / Sonic Youth “Kool Thing” / Fugazi “Repeater” / A Tribe Called Quest “Bonita Applebum” / Keith Sweat “Make You Sweat” / Salt-N-Pepa “Let’s Talk About Sex” / Roxanne Shante “Brothers Ain’t Shit” / Vanilla Ice “Ice Ice Baby” / Consolidated “Product” / The KLF “What Time Is Love?” / Black Box “I Don’t Know Anybody Else” / Neneh Cherry “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” / Stevie B “Because I Love You (The Postman Song)” / Julee Cruise “Falling” / Yo La Tengo “Oklahoma, USA” / Clint Black “Loving Blind” / Emmylou Harris “Tougher Than the Rest” / King Missile “Jesus Was Way Cool” / Buffalo Tom “Skeleton Key” / Mudhoney “Hate the Police” / World Party “Way Down Now” / Winger “Can’t Get Enuff” / Nelson “Love and Affection” / Phish “Bouncing Around the Room” / Prefab Sprout “Wild Horses” / Everything But the Girl “Driving”

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Paul Simon “The Obvious Child” / Alice In Chains “Man in the Box” / Nirvana “Sliver” / The Breeders “Iris” / Lush “Sweetness and Light” / Mazzy Star “Holah” / The Sundays “Here’s Where the Story Ends” / Blake Babies “I’ll Take Anything” / Cinderella “Shelter Me” / Billy Idol “Cradle of Love” / Los Lobos “I Walk Alone” / Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians “Black and Blue” / Heavenly “Escort Crash on Marston Street” / Aztec Camera “Good Morning Britain” / Teenage Fanclub “Everything Flows” / The Simpsons “Do the Bartman” / Tony! Toni! Toné! “Feels Good” / Brand Nubian “Feels So Good” / Ice Cube “Who’s the Mack?” / Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. “Psyko Funk” / Dr. Alban “No Coke” / Cud “Magic (Farsley Mix)” / Betty Boo “Where Are You Baby?” / Nikki “Notice Me” / Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “The Ship Song”

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N.W.A. “100 Miles and Runnin’” / Above the Law “Murder Rap” / Pantera “Cowboys from Hell” / KMFDM “Godlike” / Iggy Pop “Candy” / Poison “Unskinny Bop” / Mother Love Bone “Stardog Champion” / Warrant “Cherry Pie” / Indigo Girls “Welcome Me” / Bongwater “Talent Is A Vampire” / Guy “Wanna Get With U” / Too Short “Short But Funky” / Johnny Gill “Rub You the Right Way” / Beats International “Dub Be Good To Me” / The Orb “Little Fluffy Clouds” / Adrian Belew “Young Lions” / The Chills “Heavenly Pop Hit” / The Charlatans “The Only One I Know” /Bailter Space “Fish Eye” / Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine “Sheriff Fatman” / New Kids on the Block “Step by Step” / The Pooh Sticks “Radio Ready” / Mecca Normal “Water Cuts My Hands” / Inspiral Carpets “This Is How It Feels” / Prince “Thieves in the Temple”

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MC 900 Ft. Jesus “UFO’s Are Real” / Big Daddy Kane “It’s Hard Being the Kane” / Monie Love “Monie in the Middle” / EPMD “Gold Digger” / Digital Underground “The Humpty Dance” / Eric B. and Rakim “Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em” / Youssou N’Dour “Toxiques” / Whitney Houston “I’m Your Baby Tonight” / Meat Beat Manifesto “Genocide” / Nitzer Ebb “Fun to be Had” / Boogie Down Productions “Love’s Gonna Get’cha (Material Love)” / DC Talk “Nu Thang” / Brian Eno & John Cale “One Word” / Dead Can Dance “The Song of the Sibyl” / His Name Is Alive “How Ghosts Affect Relationships” / Lloyd Cole “Downtown” / They Might Be Giants “Birdhouse In Your Soul” / The Bats “Smoking Her Wings” / The Replacements “Merry Go Round” / Dwight Yoakum “You’re the One” / Straitjacket Fits “Down In Splendour” / The Lemonheads “Stove” / The Flaming Lips “Take Meta Mars” / Pavement “Perfect Depth” / Sun City Girls “Space Prophet Dogon”

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AC/DC “Thunderstruck” / Neil Young & Crazy Horse “Fuckin’ Up” / Jon Bon Jovi “Blaze of Glory” / Reba McEntire “Fancy” / Uncle Tupelo “No Depression” / Rosanne Cash “What We Really Want” / Cowboy Junkies “Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning” / Bob Dylan “Born In Time” / Hothouse Flowers “Give It Up” / Midnight Oil “Blue Sky Mine” / Rod Stewart “Downtown Train” / Cher “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” / Elton John “Club at the End of the Street” / Kylie Minogue “Better the Devil You Know” / Rob N’ Raz featuring Leila K “Got to Get” / 2 In A Room “Wiggle It” / Technotronic “Get Up” / Intelligent Hoodlum “Black & Proud” / X-Clan “Raise the Flag” / YZ “Tower with the Power” / Pop Will Eat Itself “Touched by the Hand of Cicciolina” / The Lightning Seeds “Pure” / The Clean “Draw(in)g to a (W)hole” / McCarthy “And Tomorrow the Stock Exchange Will be the Human Race” / Manic Street Preachers “New Art Riot” / Social Distortion “Ball and Chain”

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Big Audio Dynamite II “Change of Atmosphere” / Jesus Jones “Real Real Real” / Pet Shop Boys “The End of the World” / En Vogue “Hold On” / Kid N Play “Funhouse” / Calloway “I Wanna Be Rich” / Yngwie Malmsteen “Making Love” / Anthrax “Got the Time” / The Jesus Lizard “Killer McHann” / Helmet “Repetition” / The Fatima Mansions “Look What I Stole for Us, Darling” / Prong “Lost and Found” / Flotsam and Jetsam “Deviation” / Bob Mould “It’s Too Late” / The Boo Radleys “Eleanor Everything” / Superchunk “Sick to Move” / Big Dipper “Love Barge” / L7 “Shove” / Afghan Whigs “Retarded” / Bad Religion “21st Century (Digital Boy)” / The Posies “Suddenly Mary” / Traveling Wilburys “She’s My Baby” / Mary Chapin Carpenter “Down at the Twist and Shout” / The Beautiful South “A Little Time” / The Cannanes “Vivienne” / Björk “Gling Gló” / James Ingram “I Don’t Have the Heart” / Michael Bolton “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You” / Bette Midler “From A Distance”

George Michael “Praying for Time”

“Praying for Time” is a song from 26 years ago, but its lyrics are extremely resonant in this rather dire time we’re entering at the end of 2016. George Michael is singing about a world in which empathy is in very short supply, but fear and greed is rampant, and there’s this pervasive feeling of dread because it seems clear that the worst is yet to come. But again, this song is 26 years old – it’s always been this way. And there’s some hope in that, because it shows us that there’s a future, even if that future is full of the same human failings that have plagued us for centuries. The chorus is about just that: “It’s hard to love, there’s so much to hate / Hanging on to hope when there is no hope to speak of.” George Michael had no answers, and wasn’t trying to tell anyone things would be OK. But he was imploring everyone to make an effort to be kind, and to lift up those who need help, and to make the best of what time we have left. I don’t think he was asking for too much.

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George Michael “I Want Your Sex (Part One)”

If you’re in your late 30s or early 40s, you almost certainly heard this song on the radio or MTV as a kid around your parents and felt super awkward about it, even if you didn’t really know what sex was. I remember it being an “after hours” thing on pop radio at some point in the late ‘80s, but then, if I was listening to “after hours” pop radio when I was, like, 8 years old and it was probably around 9:00 at night, then what exactly was the point?

“I Want Your Sex” is one of the most musically and lyrically radical major pop hits of the 1980s; a sex-positive funk tune that shifts seamlessly between minimalism and maximalism, and effortlessly conveys a supremely horny vibe on a purely musical level. George Michael was running with ideas that Prince had introduced circa 1999 and refined with “Kiss,” which was a hit a little bit before this track was recorded, but his feeling is very different – confident and unabashedly sexual, but considerably more frustrated. The entire song is George Michael laying out a very persuasive and respectful case for why you should have sex with him. He’s basically saying “Hey, I’m so HORNY I’m gonna BURST but no pressure, OK, sex is a beautiful thing and I respect you and need your consent and want you to have a great time.” The miracle of this song is that it’s kind and generous and loving, but also makes you feel the urgency of George Michael’s raging boner. The sweet-talking is totally sincere, but so is this guy’s powerful urge to fuck, and so you get this song that’s seductive, sweet, and comical all at the same time.

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