I think it might have been sometime in 2013 or 2014 that I first got the idea to do a CD mix for every year beginning with 1981, and fill each one with music released that year that I like. I’ve chronicled this effort on my blog before, and over several years I eventually made it to 2010. Some years were a struggle to find enough to fill an 80 minute CD with enough music I liked. And as time passed I always came across music I wish I had known about when I was making the CD mix. This along with some of the CDs becoming too scratched to play properly led to a few remakes. Last year I finally decided to update it with a full playlist on YouTube. (I don’t really do Spotify, since I already pay for YouTube Premium for my son and Spotify doesn’t have all the obscure stuff anyway). I didn’t realize how overly-long and unruly the playlist would become, so later, I divided it into decades. This seems to have been the right move, as some include more than 250 songs. After a lot of work and polishing it, I got it all the way to the present, 2024. And going full circle, I recorded the best songs of this mega-playlist onto blank DVDs using my DVD Recorder and a Nintendo Switch. By hooking a DVD player to my stereo system, I can listen to the playlist off the DVDs like a two-hour 48-minute mix CD. Even so, the playlists are always a work in progress.
These playlists follow a few rules. One song per album allowed (except in some rare cases it’s easier to just add the whole album on one video); if an artist released more than one album in a year they’re eligible to have two songs in one year. Compilation albums or movie soundtracks with more than one artist are immune to this rule. The song must have been released at some point during the year in question. Demo versions are allowed. The list is chronological only by year; within each year, I tried to match songs together that complimented one another. You won’t get a radio-friendly alternative rock song immediately juxtaposed with a heavy black metal song, for instance. The genres are mostly grouped together, in a mixture of songs I actually listened to during that year and songs I discovered much later. Some are mainstream hits you may have heard on the radio, others are obscure Yugoslavian post-punk from 1987 and the like. The number one rule of course is I have to like the song.
I was born in 1986, but I feel like I missed out on the best part of the 80s, music-wise. Now I never did a CD mix for the year 1980 because it was still too 70s for my tastes and I couldn’t find enough songs I liked to fill a CD. Well now that it’s a playlist I can add the few songs from that year I do like. At the moment I have a performance by The Cure, a song from Siouxsie and the Banshees, and a couple others.
On YouTube I included a “Table of contents” for each playlist, listing the first song of each year. Some videos have the year in the title which can help a little with navigating the playlists, but not all. In determining the first song of each year, it is either the song that most makes me think of that year, the best song of the year in my opinion, or just a song that has the year in the video title. I usually favored music videos, when one was available.
Genres: New Wave, post-punk, goth rock, coldwave, industrial, synthpop, alternative rock, early grunge, hair metal.
Table of Contents:
1981: Kraftwerk - Heimcomputer
1982: New Order - Temptation
1983: Journey - Separate Ways
1984: Mick Smiley - Magic
1985: Killing Joke - Eighties
1986: Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer
1987: New Order - Temptation ’87
1988: The Church - Under the Milky Way
1989: Nirvana - About a Girl
Here’s a decade I was fully conscious for, and probably the playlist with the most different genres on it. 1990 itself was a great year for music. Anything not rock or goth is music I actually remember listening to at the time when I was 4 years old, like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles soundtrack and Janet Jackson. We see grunge explode onto the scene after seeing some of its early beginnings in the 1980s. Then later in the decade, nu-metal, alternative rock I remember hearing in my childhood, and underground goth and black metal. There’s a good reason this is the longest playlist, with the 80s as a close second.
Genres: Grunge, alternative rock, post-punk, goth rock, black metal, power metal, gothic metal, nu-metal, synthpop, coldwave, darkwave, industrial, one rap song.
Table of Contents:
1991: Nirvana - Something in the Way
1992: Alice in Chains - Would?
1993: Nirvana - Heart-Shaped Box
1994: Alice in Chains - Nutshell
1995: The Smashing Pumpkins - Tonight, Tonight
1996: Alice in Chains - Frogs
1997: Third Eye Blind - Semi-Charmed Kind of Life
1998: System of a Down - Sugar
1999: Korn - Falling Away from Me
The shortest playlist thus far, barring the unfinished 2020s. These were my teens and early 20s, when I gradually drifted away from listening to anything mainstream. You’ll see the mainstream music pretty much disappear after the early 2000s. The decade wasn’t a terribly good time for goth music though, hence why the playlist is short, especially once you get to the late 2000s. During those years I was listening to a lot of older music. 2007 to 2012 was a terrible time for goth music, and arguably music in general. This is where I started to run into trouble doing the mix CDs. I ended up having to fill the CDs with sub-par music just to fill up 80 minutes. Having it as a playlist enables me to just pick what I actually like.
Genres: Nu-metal, black metal, power metal, alternative rock, post-punk, goth rock, darkwave, and whatever genre Aurelio Voltaire is.
Table of Contents:
2001: System of a Down - Toxicity
2002: The Kovenant - The Chasm
2003: Kraftwerk - Vitamin
2004: Voltaire - Wall of Pride
2005: System of a Down - Holy Mountains
2006: Das Ich - Nahe
2007: Voltaire - Hell in a Handbasket
2008: Ayria - Six Seconds
2009: Das Ich - Kannibale
Goth music hit a renaissance during this decade, right around the time Lebanon Hanover debuted. You also had the emergence of 80s-style synthwave in the mid-2010s, which largely seemed to have been largely killed off by Covid in the 2020s. This playlist is almost completely either goth or synthwave, with a few random Armenian songs thrown in, and a bit of rock. 2017 was where the decade really started to blossom musically, regardless of how much things sucked politically at the time.
Genres: Post-punk, rock, goth rock, darkwave, coldwave, synthwave, Armenian pop.
Table of Contents:
2011 - Voltaire - Oh Lord (Wake the Dead)
2012 - And One - The Sun
2013 - Lebanon Hanover - Gallowdance
2014 - And One - Nyctophilia
2015 - Lebanon Hanover - The Moor
2016 - David Bowie - Lazarus
2017 - Glaare - My Love Grows in Darkness
2018 - Lebanon Hanover - Alien
2019 - SYZYGYX - In Pieces
This brings us to the present. I decided not to wait until 2030 to start this one. By 2024 I had enough separation from 2020 to really look back on it more objectively. Listening to the 2020 section can be a bit emotional, as it makes me relive the Covid pandemic and the invasion of Artsakh. But the songs I picked, I feel, really capture the feel of that year. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you might recognize a lot of these songs. The goth renaissance that started in the 2010s shows no signs of slowing, but like my 2010 playlist there is the occasional rock song or Armenian folk pop song (and even some Armenian post-punk). For now, whenever I come across a new song I really like, I add it to 2024. This playlist is more chronological than the others, and the first song of each year is typically the first song I remember liking that year, except in the case of 2020 because “Alert Level” by Ministry might as well be the official theme song of 2020.
Genres: Post-punk, rock, goth rock, darkwave, coldwave, Armenian pop.
Table of Contents:
2021: Schröttersburg - Keter
2022: Slow Danse with the Dead - Strangers in the Dark
2023: Lila Ehjä - Bats
2024: Obsidian - Night Director
So what’s next? Maybe I’ll do The 1970s in Music, but it might be kinda short, most of my favorite genres weren’t invented yet.
