Build A Playlist, to help You Through the Day

01.04.20 – Darrell Priestley

Most things, I find, can be dealt with if accompanied by the right play list. Music – it’s something that’s always worked for me. There’s music for almost every mood, every situation, the trick of course being picking the right tunes for the moment. Don’t overlook instrumentals, which generally provide undemanding background listening for many a chore, with no mental struggles trying to work out wierd and frequently inane lyrics. Since it’s getting tougher all the time to find a radio station that plays a selection of music you actually like, you might as well put your own lists together, but positive aspects are i) it will fill up some time you unexpectedly found you had, and ii) it’s genuinely fun to do.

Your playlist should have a name, to suit the mood you want to use it for. But once you’ve made one, you will probably want to make more, so don’t try to put all your favourite tunes on the same list, as you will rarely find a tune that fits all situations. Curiously, I have a particular favourite tune I like to play while cleaning my teeth, though only at bedtime – how odd!

My go to streaming service is Spotify, which is incredibly easy to use and offers a free version, but there are a number of other services you could use. For these present times, you will no doubt want to put a good few uplifting tunes on your playlists, special favourites to take you away from the now. We have built up hundreds of playlists over the years, which may sound a bit indulgent but since this music powers us through our long days, often eleven or twelve hours, I think it is justified. Another thing about Spotify that I love is how is easy it is to explore music you might never hear on the radio, making it easy to discover some new favourites.

We get a lot of compliments on the music we play (when we are open!), but our tastes are quite eclectic, so it’s hard to make suggestions for you. However, you will already have a good idea what you like, so an idea might be to choose a favourite tune as a starting point and then build to a theme, eg ‘Tuneful Tranquillity’, ‘In Line Online’ (aka ‘Waiting for a Website’ – a kind of hold music of the pandemic, I suppose), or perhaps at the opposite end of the spectrum, ‘Demonic Dusting’. By now, we have a playlist for nearly every occasion, the longest of which has maybe a thousand songs, and we come up with around two new list for Christmas alone every year. So, to help you get started, the advice would simply be this: start to build a playlist, it should soon be enough to help you get you through the day.