Mood Music for 2010

For a couple years I was in the habit of exchanging yearly soundtracks with a close friend. They acted as a score to our lives, but it was also often an exercise in cartharsis.  But for the past two years, my life has been less emotionally tumultuous, and because of my living, working, and transportation arrangements, I have had less time for music, and therefore have missed a few soundtracks. This year was similar, but I refused to skip another year, so I threw something together. It's hard because I spent most of the year listening to a few albums over and over. As a result, there isn't much variety, so I kept it short.

Here is the track listing for 2010; I call it 12 Songs for 12 Months:

1. "Twilight Galaxy" - Metric
2. "Knotty Pine" - Dirty Projectors Featuring David Byrne
3. "Big Red Machine" - Justin Vernon & Aaron Dessner
4. "Tightrope" - Yeasayer
5. "Gentle Hour" - Yo La Tengo
6. "Changes" - Stars
7. "I Died So I Could Haunt You" - Stars
8. "Psychic City (Classixx Remix)" - Yacht
9. "Hysteric" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
10. "Robots" - Flight of the Conchords
11. "Walking Down the Hill" - Travis
12. "King's Highway" - Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers

I thought about posting videos instead of a list but nearly none of these songs have official videos and anyway, even with only 12 songs this post would be too long for anyone to slog through if I embedded videos for all of them. However, I will mail a copy to anyone who wants one, just email me at mistymichael15@gmail.com.

Mood Music for the Holidays

So my friend NJA wrote a post dedicated to Hanukkah related videos earlier this month (and even though Hanukkah is over I would recommend checking it out!) and yesterday my friend Rachel posted about her favorite holiday music, so I thought I would follow the trend. Some of mine are pretty cheesy, probably because I grew up listening to "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" every year at my grandmother's house.

"Nutcracker Suite"

I will listen to pretty much any version of the Nutcracker Suite. This one, though not traditional, is very upbeat and festive.

"The Chipmunk Song"

Let's be real. I was a kid during the run of the second Chipmunks television show, so I ate up all their stuff. I particularly liked Theodore because he was just plain nice.

"Carol of the Bells"

A little more traditional here. I particularly like the more traditional versions of this one, which is why I picked this video instead of say, that of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

"Little Saint Nick"

I had this on cassette and loved it.

"Let It Snow"

As an adult, my love for the, uh . . . classier Christmas songs has grown.

"Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth"

It's not necessarily that this is a favorite, but how could I leave out this video? It's also kind of fun to check out the Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly parody.

And just for fun, "Hallelujah Chorus" performed by a flash mob . . .