It’s a thing now that we do one playlist a week, and this week is my week. I’ve never been proud of my taste in music — I’ve always been sort of embarrassed by it — so I’ve been dreading my week. I’ve listened, more or less, to the same genres of music since high school, and I think I average out at about a year behind the curve of ‘understanding’ new music to the point where I can actually start liking it. This is a general rule for me.
So I’m not necessarily expecting you to like this list. Though I hope you do. I’ve titled it “A Playlist For Your Office Job” on Spotify — which is the complete playlist (the 8track version is abridged) — because much of it is instrumental, or has muted, faded vocals, or has the vocalist singing like two lines over and over. (There are some lyric-based songs — mostly the Beirut ones.) And much of it is sort of focus-inducing, for me at least — repetitive, beating, constant. I can’t really work to music with too many lyrics because the words get in my head and I can’t think my own thoughts, thus the title of the playlist.
It’s sort of contrast-y — early Cure against Chopin, Crystal Castles against songs from the Marie Antoinette soundtrack, Boards of Canada against Animal Collective, Anticon stuff against ‘post-dubstep’ (I think?) and a little electro. If my selections seem totally random to you, I understand. I don’t know enough of any one genre to do a playlist that isn’t just like, “Songs I Listen To A Lot,” which is what this basically is.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYKQXUYQ9ks&w=584&h=390%5D
I couldn’t figure out a way to organize it my own way, so I’ve just been organizing it alphabetically by song title, so that it’s mixed up a bit (the shuffle button seems to always select the same songs). I recommend doing that for this playlist. I also recommend setting Spotify’s crossfade feature to three seconds, it sounds good this way (“Preferences” > “Crossfade tracks”).
A lot of the other people who have done playlists on this site ask for suggestions of songs to add. Because of the nature of this playlist, I’m not sure if I want suggestions to add — all of these songs are weirdly meaningful to me. I love discovering new music, though, so feel free to share the music you love in the comments. Thanks.
Click here to listen to the playlist on 8tracks. 
