Music 2

When I first thought about creating a compilation with my favorite music, I thought it was going to be child’s play. But being a perfectionistic, full-on music nerd, this turned out to be quite a stressful undertaking.

At first, it was a fun exercise. But soon enough, I started obsessing over it. Suddenly, I felt compelled to feature my entire Spotify library. How could I dare to leave out The Beatles, Elvis Presley, or Beethoven in favour of some obscure band? I enjoy their compositions and acknowledge their contribution to music history, so not including them felt akin to committing a crime. My intention with this, however, was far from creating an exhaustive ranking, but rather give you a grasp of how my life sounds like, and in doing so, hopefully introduce you to one or two pieces of music that could also enrich your own life’s soundtrack.

When it comes to music, it’s so easy to take for granted how fortunate we are to be alive at this point in time. Technology has allowed us to stream every existing piece of music under the sun, in high-quality, wherever we are, whenever we want, for as many times as we want, virtually for free. Just a couple decades ago, to have an interest in music meant spending a ton of money on physical records and equipment. Go back a little further in time, and listening to music digitally was not only an inconceivable notion, but 99.9% of today’s music didn’t even exist. I feel that’s a strong enough reason to feel appreciative and take the opportunity to broaden our relationship with music beyond what the mainstream pushes onto us.

There’s a number of reasons that made me recommend albums as opposed to artists or individual songs. I love the feeling you get when you come across a cohesive album you can enjoy without feeling like skipping any song. Lots of bands are able to produce a hit song, but fewer of them manage to put out a solid album. Ocassionally these albums revolve around a theme or narrative that make them more appealing to be consumed as a whole. And for the purpose of this list, they also offer a powerful visual element that would be missing if I recommended songs or bands.

A few extra considerations, for simplicity purposes:

• Only one album per band
• In no particular order
• Every album includes two emojis indicating how challenging I consider the album to be (from green to red) and the main emotion it evokes on me

In case you prefer to explore this collection on your own, I’ve created this Spotify playlist with one song from each album so that you can easily explore the collection below on your own. Go grab your headphones, and enjoy!