Good Morning Friends! I have managed to make it to another week and with it comes a new mix. For those who might be new to the blog, each Monday I present my readers with a collection of tracks that I assemble into a Mixtape. Granted physical media doesn’t exactly translate to the internet terribly well, and as a result, I serve them up to you using YouTube and Spotify. Along with this mix, I create some fake album art, some of which is more creative than others… and I have to admit today’s is sort of a low effort showing. The goal is to create an album that plays nicely from start to finish and makes you maybe a bit nostalgic about making your own mixtapes. I absolutely was a kid that made them constantly and distributed them to my friends… and now do the same with you, my readers.
Now That’s Nonsense
During the late 90s and early 2000s, there was a string of infomercials advertising a mega compilation of pop music called “Now! That’s What I Call Music”. Each album compiled a number of Billboard top 200 chart songs, into a vessel of pure poppy nonsense. However, I am coming to find out that apparently, this series got its start over in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. Most of the music I listen to on a regular basis likely never actually got any radio airplay other than alternative and college rock stations. However every so often there is a slice of the pop pie that interests me. This morning I assembled my own “Now” album made up of a lot of alternative adjacent songs that got significant radio play and in many cases appeared on a wide number of movie soundtracks. Basically, this is an album that proves I still regularly dip my toes into the top 40 pond from time to time.
Track List
- Radioactive – Imagine Dragons
- Pompeii – Bastille
- Chandelier – Sia
- Wake Me Up – Avicii
- Can’t Hold Us – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Ray Dalton
- Tightrope – Janelle Monae feat. Big Boi
- Sail – AwolNation
- I Love It – Dylan Summer
- Royals – Lorde
- Titanium – David Guetta feat. Sia
- We Are Young – Fun feat. Janelle Monae
- Pumped Up Kicks – Foster the People
- Viva La Vida – Coldplay
- Counting Stars – OneRepublic
- The Fox – Ylvis
Listen On Spotify
Listen On Youtube
Listen On Tidal
With that, we bring the seventeenth Mixtape in the series to a close. I am going to be honest, this entire process started because I really like Sail, Chandelier, and Radioactive and wanted to create a pop-themed mix around those songs. The result ended up with me digging out a large number of those guilty pleasure tracks and compiling them into something that is extremely easy to listen through. If you are brand new to this feature and want to catch up on some of my other mixes, you can check out the archive below.
These days I tend to think of anyhting that’s not clearly jazz or folk or orchestral as “pop”. All the rest is just subgenres. Chandelier and Royals are both great. Especially Royals. Pumped Up Kicks a super-weird song. I spent a whole afternoon reading about it a few months ago. Even when you read the full lyric it barely explains the context people put on it. Hell of a catchy tune though.