A song for every mood
Just a list of 12 songs, one for each mood (no other moods available)
It is summer now, even if the temperature hasn’t caught up yet, which means time for my quarterly assessment of the Spotify algorithm. At the start of each season, I start a new playlist and throughout the following months I dump in it whatever I’m likin’ hearin’ — it’s my musical journal, so I can look back on how I was doing and go wooooaaaahhh nelly that’s a lot of piano ballads, maybe try lightening up?
This isn’t that — that is way too personal a thing to share, but it did get me thinking about what music I do want to share. And I realised, as a doctor1, I’m authorised to write prescriptions2 for *songs for every mood*. You can see it as a “feeling a certain way? why not listen to…” sort of thing. Remember, these are the only moods available to me, a woman in peak emotional health, and if you have moods that aren’t on this list, I don’t know what to tell ya, probably time for some help, buddy.
If you do personally have any other moods, I’m fascinated to hear what other people are feeling throughout the day. I’d be more than happy to prescribe you a song for that mood — as you’ll be able to tell when you read this, I know *a lot* about music — so let me know by commenting or by reply to this email.
I also made a playlist of all of these songs so that you can listen to them sequentially and really feel like you’re Going Through Something. It’s an aural mood swing the likes of which you’ve never experienced.
Time to get sexy
Give Me One Reason, Tracy Chapman
It’s the sparse, syncopated opening guitar drive, combined with Tracy’s melodic vocal slides that just gets me. There’s a bit of a Patrick Swayze inhale and jaw-clench about it. It brings up a Dirty Dancing sort of sensuality, very playing Solomon Burke’s Cry To Me on vinyl while it rains outside and you're just about to bone down (that's right!) with your hot, brooding dance teacher. There’s longing in the lyrics of both of these songs, a kind of need me need me feeling that can only end in sex.
On your way out in the evening
What I Want, MUNA
I’d love to say it’s about more than the lyric “I want to dance in the middle of a gay bar” but all I can really say is that it’s also about the lyric “I want that girl right over there to wanna date me”. Sorry but those are my only two ambitions every time I leave my house in the evening! That’s it. That’s just What I Want, and MUNA gets it, and it only very occasionally happens.
Absolutely NOT going out, actually!
Night In, Brittney Spencer
Actually, don’t feel like it tonight, you know. Somehow, a miracle! No one else wants to go out either. Everyone just wants to sit and watch, I dunno, re-runs of Doctor Who probs? Probs in PJs. Probs chips’n’dip. I’m just a homegirl! Just wanna be home, girl! Brittney gets it.
After a break up (still pissed off)
Being You, Beulahbelle
Did you know that Kaitlyn Dever (of Booksmart) and her sister Mady were a band and they sang songs with harmonies? Well, now you do. Being You by Beulahbelle is the perfect anthem to feeling bitter about someone you’ve been dating moving onto someone else, never growing, just going around hurting more people. And you just know he's going to keep doing it! But it’s slow and mellow and gorgeous, so it doesn't feel bitter.
Walking around the city in the summer (early evening)
Sunset, Caroline Polachek
It does really need to be sunny for this one to hit properly. A warm horizon. I especially like the lyric:
Woo, oo-oo-ooh, oo-oo-ooh
Oo-ooh, ooh, ooh ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh
Woo-ooh ooh ooh, oo-oo-ooh
Oo-ooh ooh, ooh ooh, oo-oo-ooh
Woo-oo-ooh ooh, oo-oo-ooh
Oo-ooh ooh, ooh ooh, oo-oo-ooh
Oo-oo-ooh ooh, woo-oo-ooh
Woo-oo-ooh, ooh ooh
It really captures the mood of sauntering down the street with my legs out, an imaginary giant red flower behind my left ear.
Door kick into an official city meeting
Ride or Die, ARXX
Whenever I listen to this song I’m always in the middle of doing a big door kick entrance into a room. The room is full of men in suits making big decisions about things that ultimately won’t affect them and I turn up with a bunch of, usually, gays. On the first line of the chorus, I do a huge DOOR KICK into the council chamber and we walk in and stand in a clump with our arms crossed staring at them as they all look at us in pearl-clutching alarm. Then we throw a bunch of official papers in the air in slow motion and run outside laughing HA HA HA HA HA fools. They’ll never catch us!
Roadtrip, front passenger seat because you can’t drive
So Sick of Dreaming, Maggie Rogers
Sunny afternoon, window down, complete control over the playlist because you aren't driving because you didn't learn at 17 when everyone else did for whatever reason and now you really should but you're in your 30s without the fearlessness of youth and all you can think about is how much responsibility it is to be in charge of such a huge machine so even though you now need to drive now you can't bring yourself to learn. Also you live in the city, and you can't afford a car so it really doesn't make sense most of the time except when you get the hankering for the wilderness and realise you just can't do that on a whim. So your friend comes and picks you up and says “let’s go, you’re in charge of the music” so you play Maggie Rogers and nothing else for 3 hours and rather than growing sick of it, it just gets better with every listen.
Cut your bangs, babe
Cut Your Bangs, Girlpool
Babe, your bangs are too long. Trim em, babe.
Desperately need to cry!
This Is On Me, Ben Abraham and Sara Bareilles
Sometimes you need to cry. Sometimes you need to lie down and behave like you’re going through a painful divorce with your childhood sweetheart, which is only happening because of a breakdown in communication and not because either party did anything wrong, and ultimately if you both put the time in and made an effort, you could turn it around and be there for each other, but somehow neither one of you ever says that one thing that could stop the other from walking away… Or maybe I’m just about to start my period, could be that.
Waking up over the course of sixteen minutes, or figure skating
Boléro, Ravel (London Symphony Orchestra)
Literally !LITERALLY! the perfect alarm music. It starts off so quiet you don’t even know it’s playing and then veeeery slowly builds over the course of about 10 minutes in volume and intensity until minute 13 when it reaches its absolute climax (love a song that takes this long to drop the beat) and then you will find yourself not just awake but OUT. OF. BED.
Also, you know, good if you’re an ice skater.
Rain, no umbrella, enjoying it
Padam Padam, Edith Piaf
French music was built for the rain, especially a rum pum pum waltz. I just envision myself in Paris, soaking wet, swinging around lamp posts and stomping in puddles. Feel free to also try this with Kylie’s Padam Padam.
Digging a hole, of any size
Diggy Diggy Hole, Wind Rose
When you need to dig a hole. Diggy diggy hole (diggy diggy hole).
Full playlist here, if you dare:
Absolutely not.
Cannot stress this enough, I’m in no way a doctor and can officially prescribe nothing.
Off to rewatch Torvill & Dean smash it now.