Playlists
Nine public playlists, most of them assembled for a particular car, table or Friday. Everything below plays here — no app, no account.
EU Roadtrip!!!
Twelve hours, which is roughly the point at which a European drive stops being a trip and becomes a way of life. The lineup refuses to pick a country: Rossini and the Czech Symphony Orchestra share space with Fabrizio De André, Édith Piaf, Louis Armstrong and Philippe Entremont — and then the Hornroh Modern Alphorn Quartet turns up, which is the detail that gives the whole thing away. It ends on “Me Has Invitado a Bailar.”
2023 Fall Break Family Playlist
Sixteen and three quarter hours, built for a car with more than one opinion in it. The California Honeydrops and Moon Taxi make room for Meghan Trainor and Tones And I; Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat sit a few tracks from The Chicks and Kungs. Nobody got everything they wanted, which is usually how you know the negotiation was fair.
2024 Fall Family Roadtrip Mix
The next year’s edition, and the balance of power has shifted. Myles Smith, Stray Kids, Shawn Mendes and the Jonas Brothers now hold ground that The Beatles and N.E.R.D used to have to themselves. Fitz and The Tantrums keep the peace across ten hours and fifty minutes.
2026 Valentine’s Day Road Trip Family Collab
The largest of these, the only true collaboration, and still growing. The reggae runs deep — The Wailers, The Gladiators, The Meditations, Natural Vibrations — then Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt and Oscar Peterson arrive from another direction entirely, with Cleo Sol and Sault somewhere in between. A shared playlist ends up being a portrait of everyone who had the aux.
Wedding Dinner Mix
The shortest list here and the most deliberate: sixteen songs sized to the length of a dinner rather than a night. Coltrane and Johnny Hartman for sitting down, Maceo Parker and The Meters for later in the meal, Aretha somewhere in the middle. Ilene Woods and Samuel E. Wright are on it too, which tells you there were children in the room. It closes on “Let’s Stay Together” — either a good sign or excellent planning.
15th Wedding Anniversary Dinner Mix
Fifteen years on from the one above, and the mix has loosened considerably — four and a half hours now instead of one. Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, The O’Jays, Hall & Oates, Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes doing the obvious thing beautifully. Then A Tribe Called Quest and Toploader, which is what happens when a dinner playlist stops worrying about being a dinner playlist.
Friday DJ Shares
Seven hours of what gets passed around a workplace on a Friday. Heavy on funk and its ancestors — The Meters, Candi Staton, Connie Price & The Keystones, the Whatitdo Archive Group — with Sonny Rollins, Joe Lovano and Supersax pulling it toward the jazz end and Hendrix turning up somewhere in the middle. It finishes on “Fishin’ Blues.” The through-line is people showing each other things.
Sample This
Forty-three songs whose lineup reads like a producer’s crate: William Bell, Hank Crawford, Jimmy McGriff, David “Fathead” Newman, Manu Dibango, Allen Toussaint, Calvin Newborn. Dilated Peoples sitting among them is the tell — this is source material and what got built on top of it, running in the same sequence.
Replay: All Time
Not curated — counted. Apple Music assembles this one from what actually got played, which makes it the least flattering and most honest list on the page. Maceo Parker, The Meters and Stevie Wonder near the front, Tina Turner and Dennis Brown holding steady, and Idina Menzel and CKay as evidence that a household listens to a household’s music rather than one person’s.