379 to 50: Counting down my top 50 tunes

In response to a challenge amongst some friends, and with a bit more time on my hands at the moment as many of us do, I’m adding to the current listomania glut.  My contribution is a list of my 50 favourite songs (well a few more than 50 actually)…

Quite an undertaking and this 50 has been whittled down from an original longlist of 379 tracks, with the added stipulation of only choosing one song by individual artists, so some tough decisions have needed to be made.  Plus, these choices will of course change constantly, so this is what it looks like in April 2020 anyway; ask me again in three months time and I’m sure it would be different again…

I’ve put this top 50 into a couple of Spotify playlists (see below), as well as a couple of playlists featuring my numbers 51-100 that didn’t quite make the cut.  There are also 12 playlists featuring all 379 tracks from my longlist, split by genre (also linked to below).

I’m also going to write some short blogs about each of my top 50 and count down in true TOTP style towards my number one choice.  To kickstart this, I’m posting blogs about numbers 50-46 today and will then look to try to add a new post every day or two over the coming weeks.  I’ll take a look back at each track, post an accompanying video, explain the reasons for my choice as these are very much my “favourite” tracks not necessarily each artist’s “best”, and highlight tracks from each artist that didn’t quite make the cut as my favourite.

So, to start off and find out what made number 50 in my rundown, click here…

 

TOP 100 PLAYLISTS

Below are the Spotify playlists highlighting my 100 favourite songs.  Songs in each playlist are in artist alphabetical order – rankings to follow on the blog…

• 379 to 50: My top 25 (listed A-Z not by rank)
• 379 to 50: 26 to 50 (listed A-Z not by rank)
• 379 to 50, bubbling under: 51 to 75 (listed A-Z not by rank)
• 379 to 50, bubbling under 2: 76 to 100 (listed A-Z not by rank)

Enjoy!

NB – a few of my top 100 songs are not on Spotify, so some playlists have slightly less than 25 songs.

GENRE PLAYLISTS – THE 379 LONGLIST

I’ve also complied some genre playlists, spanning all 379 songs from my longlist.  Each playlist is generally 25 to 35 tracks long, and again some songs are missing due to Spotify not having them (16 in total).  Genre definitions are completely my own too, should some tunes seem misclassified!  These playlists are also again alphabetically sorted by artist, not ranked.

• 379: Electronic
• 379: Garage/Psych (60s/70s)
• 379: Hip Hop
• 379: Indie A to D
• 379: Indie E to I
• 379: Indie J to N
• 379: Indie O to Sm
• 379: Indie So to Y
• 379: Pop
• 379: Punk (and post-punk)
• 379: Rock
• 379: Soul & Country