The plan was to chill over the holidays, and not make any shows for a good six weeks. Instead, I made four.
There were two things driving me. One was the simple fact that I hadn’t attempted something like this in ages. I’ve done several mixes encapsulating a single year, but this is the first time since 1992 that I’ve tried to compile a decade, when my friend Steve Wamsley and I made a bunch of cassettes called The Wonder Years. If I may say so my damn self, those mixes still hold up rather well, and Steve, thankfully, moved them to the digital realm and expanded on our original set. What he’s done should be in the Smithsonian.
The other thing driving me was the fact that this is in all likelihood the last time that I will be engaged enough to want to do something like this. When the next decade ends, I’ll be 61 years old, for crying out loud. *reaches for cane* Odds are, by the time the 2020s end, I will be in full Abraham Simpson mode, yelling at clouds and complaining about once being ‘with it,’ but then they changed what ‘it’ was, and how what I’m with isn’t ‘it,’ and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me. Heck, that’s been my Popdose byline for the last 10 years. It will absolutely be a reality 10 years from now.
I’m not quite ready to go into the deep dark night yet, though. I hope you enjoy these as much as I enjoyed making them.
Volume I
Artists include: Franz Ferdinand, Django Django, Arcade Fire, The Rubens, Foster the People, Miike Snow, The Weeknd, CHVRCHES, Hey Champ, New Order, Tame Impala, Duran Duran, OMD, White Lies, Kaiser Chiefs, Ride, Death Cab for Cutie, Johnny Marr, My Chemical Romance, Muse, IAMDYNAMITE, The Like, Twenty One Pilots, Charli XCX, Alphabeat, Panic! At the Disco, LSD, Emily Haines, and Florence + the Machine.
Volume II
Artists include: Dan Wilson, Ben Folds & Nick Hornby, Fitz & the Tantrums, Hanson, The Seratones, Just Loud, Bastille, Daft Punk, Le Flex, Sia, Ellie Goulding, Jagwar Ma, OK Go, PHASES, Mark Ronson, Saint Motel, Sofi Tukker, Bell X1, Tom Bailey, The 1975, Keane, Cut Copy, Big Data, Bright Light Bright Light, Howard Jones, Stars, M83, Pet Shop Boys, Grace VanderWaal, Diego Garcia, and David Gray.
Volume III
Artists include: The Struts, AWOLNATION, Vampire Weekend, Arctic Monkeys, Nothing but Thieves, Nigel Stanford, Editors, Atlas Genius, The Feeling, Drowners, Coasts, Elogy, School of Seven Bells, The Jezabels, David Bowie, No-Man, Kylie Minogue, Bear in Heaven, Roosevelt, Midnight Juggernauts, Chemical Brothers, Scissor Sisters, Galantis, Lindsey Stirling, Giorgio Moroder, Teddybears, The Ting Tings, Audio Bullys, Fever High, and Little Boots.
Volume IV
I started double dipping here, because certain bands demanded it.
Artists include: The New Pornographers, The Primitives, The Trashcan Sinatras, The Divine Comedy, The Silver Seas, Saint Etienne, The Suburbs, Squeeze, Tears for Fears, Simple Minds, Mark Ronson, Ellie Goulding, Sofi Tukker, Muse, Metric, Panic! At the Disco, Capital Cities, Death Cab for Cutie, White Lies, The War on Drugs, The Fiction Aisle, Twenty One Pilots, Duran Duran, Coldplay, Findlay Brown, and Harry Styles.
