At 3:52 this afternoon, I saw the titled text from My Daughter Diandra (MDD).
After five hours of agonizing ecstasy, I was able to compile a list.
The first 14 songs came easily. Some time ago for reasons long forgotten, I had curated a playlist of 19 songs that I had an emotional attachment to. That was a good starting point for this challenge to which I applied the key criteria of “instant joy the second you hear the first note”.
(I liberally interpreted this as the first notes – plural – if those notes came as a package to form the initial, memorable impression.)
However, the criteria of “each artist can only feature once” was a problem. This meant excluding “first note” faves such as:
- “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” and “Ma” by The Temptations.
- “The Eyes of a Woman” by Journey.
- “Living for the City” by Stevie Wonder.
And Prince was a REAL problem. Limiting myself to one Prince song isn’t fair. Even limiting myself to one song from the Purple Rain soundtrack ain’t right! 🤣🤣[1]
Whatever Prince song I would finally land on would give me 15 of the 20 tracks. The last five songs were where the agonizing ecstasy came from. Imagine me, on the road, at a hotel bar with headphones on, sipping on a fabulous Black Stallion Cabernet, and openly emoting while listening to all the candidates for those final five spots.
So yeah, I had to make a #20 tracks addendum to the #20tracks, so you could see what hit the cutting room floor.
In the end, I was quite satisfied with my #20 tracks, in that it is reflective of my history with music and my love for the sounds of music irrespective of genre. There is pop, rock, R&B, soul, jazz, blues, and disco. What’s missing and what I especially agonized over is harder rock, which makes up much of the 20 tracks addendum playlist. The first three songs on that list – Swamped, Weathered, and Let Down[2]– were the most painful cuts from the top 20. MDD’s playlist is actually 23 tracks, so the struggle is real.
That said, I’m happy that I can play this playlist and feel all the feels without feeling like something is missing (no country songs or songs from musicals were harmed in their lack of consideration for this list 🤣).
P.S. What tipped the scales to Let’s Go Crazy as the Prince track? The church organ followed by the classic “Dearly Beloved” speech. 😀
[1] From Purple Rain: Darling Nikki, Baby I’m a Star, and, of course, Purple Rain. From non-Purple Rain, where do I even start? Kiss, 1999, U Got the Look, The Cross, Delirious, Cream, Black Sweat. I could go on. One thing I learned through this process is that Prince was the king of highly memorable first notes.
[2] A melodically beautiful song by a Chester Bennington (Linkin Park) side project. A live performance I saw of this was an out of body experience. RIP, Chester.
Ray's Musings 
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