Start Off The Year With Swagger
Playlists that set the mood for busting into 2023 like a boss.
The past month has been great; I love popping into everyone’s best-of or Wrapped lists to discover something delightful and new. After all, Spotify has branded me an “adventurer.” This is what I live for. I listened to 165 genres, 2,264 artists, and 4,924 songs for over 64,000 minutes of musical indulgence over the course of 2022. Should I be joining a support group of some kind? Apparently, I listened more than 95% of the other Spotify listeners in the U.S. I’m not sure if I should be really proud or a bit embarrassed.
What I am sure of is that I am not looking to cut back on my music consumption. Music is a pretty benign vice with no known side effects. In fact, 2023 has already played host to quite a few tunes and a few playlists.
I started out with my Happy New Year playlist, which includes the fabulous New Year’s Day by Taylor Swift. I am smitten with the lyric “please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere” which may have played on repeat to welcome the new year. It will probably be on my 2023 Wrapped list! The playlist also has Jeff Buckley’s New Year’s Prayer, which is a favorite that I don’t remember to hear nearly enough throughout the year. It’s a pretty chill list with some danc-y parts to accommodate the bursts of energy conjured by sipping champagne.
I also warmed up my vocal cords listening to a playlist of some old favorites (to my knowledge, my boyfriend and dog were not harmed during this performance). However, as the first official, non-holiday work week began, I realized I needed to switch gears.
Let’s be honest: the past few years have reeked and most of us are trying to recover whist the stink still softly lingers. Things can be pretty weird out there in the real world, and that is presuming you are able to accurately identify what is “real” in the first place. I have begun to believe that since I can only control how I behave and how I feel, it is up to me to claim this year for myself in whatever way I decide. I want to make this year my bitch. I am ready for optimism and adventure and taking the bull by the horns. Not 100% sure about what taking the bull by the horns truly means, but it feels like the right phrase for the moment.
What better way to fix my mind and determination on the prize than by queueing up some swagger? Boom Swagger Boom, the title of the playlist and the opening track by The Murder City Devils, is now public so I can share it with you. Sadly one of the tracks, The Model by Big Black, is no longer available on Spotify, so my playlist has a gaping hole between P.J. Harvey’s Victory and The Fall’s Mountain Energy. Nonetheless, it is a nearly complete collection of forty six songs meant to awaken your inner bad-ass.
I’m also revisiting Mad World, an older compilation that pulled a bunch of percussion heavy songs together into a concise collection. It has some serious swagger as well, but it is tempered with some soothing, mellow tracks and jumps genres like an American Ninja Warrior jumps obstacles. These two playlists have always felt connected, at least in my mind. Maybe because there are quite a few artists that appear on both. Or perhaps I fell in love with them during the same era in my musical journey. For our purposes here, however, I’d say the connection is the vibe. Both of these lists make me feel good. They share the energy, confidence, and sexiness that combines perfectly into the cool, blue state of swagger.
What vibe are you curating for 2023? Do you have any playlists that are starting your year off with style? If you are so inclined, please do share them below.