Many of my fellow Gen Xers remember the power of the five-disc changer. Instead of putting in one CD and listening to it in its entirety, you could put in five CDs, hit shuffle, and spend the afternoon switching between Toad the Wet Sprocket, Sinead O’Connor, and Blues Traveler (to name a few of my ’90s favorites).
Today, I get a similar effect from daylists on Spotify. Throughout the day, the audio streaming service offers up playlists crafted for my individual tastes, culling from its library of more than 100 million music tracks. A few recent favorites:
Coastal grandmother international morning. Indie chill whimsigoth afternoon. Post-punk revival indie sleaze Saturday.
It’s easy to look back at the joys of the past and compare them to today’s modern, high-tech world of music, but I can’t deny the fun of hitting daylist and being treated to a personalized mix of my old favorites, under-the-radar gems, and a new world of songs and artists I would have never known about back in my five-disc days.
An appreciation for the past informs several of our features in this month’s Music Issue: Angela Easterling is bringing family history to life in song, RadDad recapture their youth as “some dads who like to rock out in Tommy’s basement,” and artist Dumah Morgan captures the sound of his favorite bands in vivid paintings.
Plus, we present cocktails inspired by songs, six music venues to check out, and a record collector with 2,000 albums and counting. The sound of vinyl will always have its appeal, but so will my latest daylist, granola vibes main character afternoon.
Have you discovered an artist, venue, or organization that you’d like to see covered in TOWN? We’d love to hear from you at leigh@communityjournals.com or @towncarolina on Instagram.
