Musically Inclined

A glimpse into the musical tastes of some bloggers can be seen at Professor Barnhardt's Journal, where Bob Sassone asked a few for their ultimate mix of 20 songs from the past 25 years, including me. Bob told us to "list your favorites, not some list of 'best' or 'popular' or 'influential,' or whatever VH-1 was doing with that thing." Lots of bloggers seem to be They Might Be Giants fans. Even so, fellow contributor, 601am's Aaron, says his list "runs towards the embarassing," but as we at Gothamist know, everything can be embarassing - friends, family, hairstyles, behavior - so we take embarassing to be pretty status quo. Also, creating a mix, though it's permanent, is just a glimpse into one moment of your life (the science of a mix can be more elegantly explained in High Fidelity), and I expect my own list would be different tomorrow.

And for the record, I'll be making a mix based on Aaron's selections and am happy he covered off songs I love, to the embarassment of Jake, like "I Want It That Way" by the Backstreet Boys, which is pretty much a perfect pop song (my perfect pop song on the list is "There She Goes" by the La's), similar to Bob's choice of "Barely Breathing" by Duncan Sheik.

Entire albums that I would put on a list if I had, say 100 songs to list: Grace by Jeff Buckley, A Different Class by Pulp, Perfect From Now On by Built to Spill, Stone Roses by The Stone Roses.