Introducing Unskippable

Welcome to Unskippable, a blog like series of posts of my top 100 songs that I cannot skip.

Let’s face it, 2021 was a challenging year for all of us. For me, it was full of hardships as well but also, healing, unpacking of baggage, victories, setbacks, and strides of personal growth. In March of 2021 I came up with the idea of going through all my music and finding my “best”, or favourite songs and then analyzing them to see what commonalities they had and if that had any bearing on who I am as a person. You see music for me, as I’m sure it is for many people, is more than just background noise — though sometimes it is, it speaks to me. Whether it’s lyrics, music, tempo, harmonies, rhyming or nonsense lyrics I can get lost in music, escape in it, let my mind wander and unlock creativity. I got tired of skipping over songs in my general listening playlist because I “wasn’t in the mood” for it. So, what songs am I always in the mood for then?

It started with a library of roughly 20,000 songs (Spotify and personal library combined). I then added all the songs I knew I wanted to listen to. Then I listened to the entirety of the playlist, skipping over tracks I didn’t want and adding others to the Unskippable playlist. I didn’t listen to entire songs, unless the mood struck, I just populated a playlist. Once satisfied, the work began.

Six hundred songs in total, that I listened to over and over and over, for 8 months, slowly deciding which to keep and which to get rid of. I was going to stop at 300, but on the advice of a friend, I reduced it to 100 because it is an easier playlist to manage and listen to.

What makes a track “unskippable” you ask? My criteria was fairly easy. Keep listening to the tracks over and over, and as soon as I got sick of one I removed it from the playlist. I listened in random order, by artist, by album, recently added etc. Any way to filter the track order I did it. Some were easier to cull than others. The last 200, from 200-100, took about five months to complete, though to be honest, I listened to audiobooks and podcasts when I wasn’t listening to this playlist, exclusively, for a year. I missed out on an entire year of new music, though there are some new releases in there, I didn’t hunt them out, they just kinda found me.

About halfway through this project I decided I didn’t want to “analyze” the tracks, mostly because I have no idea how to do that. Instead something else happened while I was listening to them. I started to remember things. Things I hadn’t thought about in decades. It struck me that perhaps writing down thoughts like, the first time I heard the track (time, place, circumstances), why I like it, maybe a personal story related to the track could offer some insight. Also, it gives me an excuse to update the site with something, and get me into my writing room.

So join me, if you like, starting the first week of January 2022, as I post two songs a week and explain when I first heard it, why I like it, what it means to me and any stories that come out of it. Accompanying the post will also be the music video, so you can listen too! Maybe you’ll like it as much as me, or more, or less. It doesn’t matter, just enjoy what you enjoy.