Year pages
1970 | 1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 | 1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979
1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989
1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999
2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009
2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019
2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025
What these are
They’re attempts at well-rounded playlists for each year – 3ish hours in the modern day, and scaled back a little for the past to adjust for the lesser amount of music being released. Each year’s list is in chronological order of release date, so if you play the lists in order, they are actually in order.
I tried to do reviews of all of these songs – and got 4.5 years done – but it was WAY too much work while also making music ever. I might blog the occasional review of an obscurity, since that’s the main service I can provide anyway.
How I pick these songs
I’m not quite doing a historical-importance thing, though that can tip the scales. I’m looking at it from a song creator’s perspective maybe more than anything: what innovated? What had ambition? What executed its ideas really well? What has held up over the years in a way that wasn’t foreseeable back then (zeitgeist and aging well are at opposite ends of the alphabet)? It’s those sorts of considerations that win me over more than a checklist that a music journalist might go for.
Some pop transcends its era; some alternative rock doesn’t. I’m hoping to go for the more transcendent pieces over genres I happen to like, but I can’t claim I’m bias-free here.
What I will note is that I’m going heavy into discogs.com to round out my collection before deciding on a playlist. I sort overall, and then some genres, by Most Wanted in a given year and go through the first few hundred, checking out anything I’ve been meaning to check out or that looks interesting. Most Wanted is a good criterion because it lets me know, years later, that someone was willing to click a thing on a website saying this is interesting to them. That’s better than simply having it already, which could be true for hoarder reasons at this stage.
So the songs get here as a combination of what I already know about the year, fleshed out by the larger music-appreciating community’s understanding.
Oh, and no more than 3 songs per artist per year. Variety and life spices and all that.
My content filter
These playlists are, at the very least, safer than a typical radio station to have on at work or in front of a relative. Besides that there are a lot of instrumentals, my levels of language and raunchiness toleration are very low and set to family-friendly (but more on that in a moment). If “words matter,” as I have heard many say, then they matter because of the other person involved, regardless of why they’re offended. So I keep the coarse language out of these playlists for the same reason I keep various -isms out of there too. Why offend people with that sort of thing?
But that’s easier to get a hold of than a topic filter. I’m a lawyer by day; I deal with a bunch of tough adult situations. There’s no reason I have to do it with post-watershed words.
If you want movie ratings, I’d estimate these lists as PG for language and PG-13 for content. They are cleaner than the radio I grew up with. I wouldn’t call the entirety of these lists family-friendly so much as family-accessible, if you get my meaning. Family-friendly has an unfortunate sense of being anodyne or bowdlerized. Family-accessible is more like that all members of the family can stick around for the serious, dark topics if they want.
That does mean some songs I would otherwise include don’t make these lists. I’d rather have a list that most people are comfortable playing start to finish (myself included) than start any ruptures or debates on appropriateness. But, if you’ve listened to my music before, you’ll know that’s no compromise on edginess of the music, which is top-notch throughout these compilations. You’ll get plenty of genres and ideas over the years. Enjoy!
Kick it off with 1990
restlessmosaic.com 