Top 500 Songs - Billy Ocean, Dire Straits, The Pointer Sisters

Sorry for such a long delay between posts, work has been kicking my nuts. Back to work!...like, the other work. This work. You know what I mean.


Billy Ocean

1. Caribbean Queen
2. Suddenly

Dire Straits

1. Money for Nothing
2. Brothers In Arms
3. Sultans of Swing
4. Down to the Waterline
5. Telegraph Road
6. Walk of Life

The Pointer Sisters

1. Neutron Dance
2. Fire
3. Jump
4. Slow Hand
5. I'm So Excited

Bonus Songs

1. Florence + The Machine - Shake It Out
2. Jefferson Starship - Jane
3. Breaking Benjamin - Blow Me Away
4. Firefall - Strange Way
5. Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya, P!nk - Lady Marmalade
6. Molly Hatchet - Flirtin' With Disaster
7. The Black Keys - Your Touch

Top 500 Songs - Mike & The Mechanics, Mr. Mister, Starship, Tears For Fears, Wang Chung

I finally figured out a way to format the titles of these posts, only took like a month! Here's some lists for some 80s bands. And, one of them is a new overall #1 song!

All of these songs have been integrated, as well as the Journey songs from last time, so we're up to date.

Mike & The Mechanics

1. Silent Running
2. Living Years
3. All I Need Is A Miracle

Mr. Mister

1. Kyrie
2. Broken Wings

Starship

1. Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now
2. We Built This City
3. Sara

Tears For Fears

1. Break It Down Again
2. Shout
3. Everybody Wants To Rule The World
4. Elemental
5. Power

Wang Chung

1. Everybody Have Fun Tonight
2. Dance Hall Days

Bonus Songs

1. John Parr - St. Elmo's Fire
2. Glenn Frey - The Heat Is On
3. Corey Hart - Sunglasses At Night

Top 10 Journey Songs, Bonus Songs

As an homage to my college days, I've decided to make my first big list out of songs by Journey. This big load of tunes gave me a real sense of how challenging it's going to be when this list gets huge. So I think I'm going to have two different sorts of content in these posts: lists and integrations.

Lists will be like what I've posted so far, the ranked list of songs by a particular artist. Integrations will be done after I put together a list, but I'm not ready to incorporate it into the big list. Eventually the band will get sorted into the big list, and I'll add a note to list post indicating that it's taken place.

I'm also going to occasionally include one-hit wonder type songs, just noted in one list together. Of course some of them won't be true "one-hit wonders;" more so, they'll be individual songs that are the only song by the artist that I like/know. Elvis Costello has lots of songs, he just happens to only have one that I really like. We'll call them Bonus Songs. See below for an example.

Top 10 Journey Songs (not yet integrated)

1. Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'
2. Ask the Lonely
3. Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)
4. Don't Stop Believin'
5. Any Way You Want It
6. Faithfully
7. Be Good to Yourself
8. I'll Be Alright Without You
9. Open Arms
10. Wheel in the Sky

Bonus Songs (integrated)

1. The Droge and Summers Band - Two of the Lucky Ones
2. Panic! At The Disco - Nine in the Afternoon
3. thenewno2 - Crazy Tuesday
4. EMF - Unbelievable
5. Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah
6. Elvis Costello - Alison
7. Snow - Informer
8. Lucas - Lucas with the Lid Off

The First Top X Lists for the Project - Top 3 Songs by MGMT, Top 2 Songs by The J. Geils Band

So it took me some time to get going, but I've finally put together the first Top X List for my massive project. MGMT is a fun little band that I've always wanted to listen to more of, but never got around to. But they had three big songs, and all three might make my final top 500.

1. MGMT - Electric Feel
2. MGMT - Kids
3. MGMT - Time to Pretend

And to show how this will all work, I'm also going to add in my favorite songs by the J. Geils Band:

1. The J. Geils Band - Freeze-Frame
2. The J. Geils Band - Centerfold

Now look over on the sidebar and you can see how these two lists interact. And I'm going to do my best to not second-guess my rankings through the whole process...good luck to me lol.

The Biggest Project Ever

I have a new idea, something to get me thinking more, listening to more music, and making blog posts more frequently, though with not probably a ton of writing.

The idea is to make a list of my top 500 favorite songs.

"But Joe, why would that involve a bunch of blog posts?" Good question. I'm not going to do like all the websites do these days, make you click through 500 times to see each individual song in a ranked list. That's annoying as hell.

No, my idea is to create the list organically as I make blog posts. So, the idea is to segment out categories of music. For example, a blog post might be Top 4 Weezer Songs or Top 31 Dave Matthews Band songs (yeah, there could definitely be that many in my top 500). So, I'd post those songs, and then update an as-yet-uncreated sidebar, mixing those songs into the running list.

You'll get the hang of it when you start to see it in action.

Playlists

So in thinking about the Playlists feature, and in talking to Chip about it, I'm sort of seeing that I was setting it up for failure on a few different levels.

First, on a very basic level, "walking music" isn't really something that people can grasp, because most people don't walk just for exercise. They have people walking with them, or they are walking a dog, or pushing a stroller, so they've got other things to be concerned with while walking. And while it's true that I'd like to incorporate more jogging into my walks, the majority of my walks are spent, well, walking.

I was able to find some solid walking music, but that's more from my own conceptions about walking, not from some base standard of "good walking music." That one Primitive Radio Gods song is an example, in case you were wondering what I'm talking about. But I'm not asking for any more assistance on walking music.

I'm also not going to just offer a wide open "give me some songs" anymore. While I'm obviously interested in hearing all sorts of musical suggestions, leaving it so wide open I think makes it a little tough for people to feel comfortable responding. And that's all I really care about, making you folks feel comfortable tossing in a response or five.

I haven't completely resolved how I'm going to change the format of Playlists, and it might not even be called Playlists anymore. But at some point, we'll get it going. Stay tuned.

Please stay tuned.

Playlists - Walking

Another new "feature" I want to start running here is what I'm going to simply call Playlists. I've always been a big fan of making CDs and playlists, but I'm starting to realize that there's a lot of music I just don't know. But maybe you folks can help me out.

Part of this process will involve me generating the playlist on Grooveshark and posting it for you guys to check out and critique. INTERACTIVITY!

Our first playlist is actually going to be pretty challenging, because there isn't really a conventional feel for "walking music." What I'm thinking is zone-out kind of music, but songs that still have a strong beat. Maybe some jam bands like Allman Brothers Band or Dave Matthews Band? Right now I've got a couple Arcade Fire albums and an album by a band called Bonobo on my mp3 player; both seem to work pretty well.

I appeal to you, Internet. Offer your wisdom.