First Dance Friday: The Playlist Edition

I should think every one of us has, at some stage, had to make a playlist of some kind. Whether it's bunging together a Spice Girls mix for a party, gathering a broad range of floor-fillers for a wedding or carefully picking out a representative selection of a single genre in order to get your Aunty Pat into minimal techno.

Playlists are similar to mix-tapes (you can read the helpful rules on how to do that from Nick Hornby's High Fidelity here), but differ in a few critical ways. Playlists need more songs because they're designed for a time, place and a purpose rather than simply self-expression. Basically, they need to please the listener rather than the creator.

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2008 was the first year I made a festival playlist for our annual pilgrimage to mud it up in a field. It was a vintage year of playlist making. There were only two of us going (my excitable best friend and I) so I had a small, easy-to-please audience made up of myself and somebody I had known for almost 20 years - somebody I had an entire musical history with. I could pillage the Pretty Woman and Dirty Dancing soundtracks and get no eye-rolling from boys. And it was pre-90s revivalism, so it was genuinely exciting to hear U Sure Do by Strike for the first time since school. The playlist was an easy win, there were over 100 songs and almost every one seemed to attain the playlist-making holy grail of having somebody (even if it was the people two tents over) shouting "TUNE!"

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The "Secret Garden Party Mix" as it has been known ever since, eventually became a victim of its own success.  It got trotted out at every party for the rest of the year, so by the time 2009 rolled around we couldn't hear On A Ragga Tip without wanting to pour bleach in our ears. I had to (yes, had to, this is serious stuff, and I am a very important person) dredge my brain and create a new playlist. This time I had to take into account the harder-to-please boys, and with none of the overplayed cheap shots I had been using. Every year since it has got harder, as we get bored of songs and I take it upon myself to tear my hair out coming up with a refreshed list of crowd-pleasers. I have also gained a rival playlister in the group, which at first was a threat, but for the last two years has felt like a blessed relief. Now I can share the burden, and pool techniques as we continue to drill for our precious and expendable natural resource - the Tune.*


Overplayed? I'm almost sick of hearing it.... almost....

Quick Tips For Festival Playlisting:

• Contemporary pop (guilty) pleasures
• Mine a genre or decade for classics (anyone for acid house?)
• Tracks by artists at the festival (you can argue education if anyone moans)
• Songs that remind you of a night out with the same group
• Unreleased/underplayed tracks from a classic album everyone knows (the Blue Album, always)
• Tribute songs to artists who have recently passed away (raise a glass to Whitney and Donna this year)
• Good covers (or originals) of the songs you've already played to death
• Original songs that have been sampled in other, more famous songs
• If all else fails, go through the Now! back catalogue - now helpfully available on Spotify.

Have a great weekend everyone! I'll be back on Tuesday with stories to tell...