#124 Party Mix

It started simply enough. Tess and I had invited most—if not all—of our seminary friends over to celebrate my 25th birthday. Our apartment wasn't huge. We were mostly going to sit around and talk and snack. Maybe an hour before party time I had a thought. The party needed some background music to add even more life to the atmosphere. So I opened Spotify to make my ultimate playlist. I looked up albums I loved from artists I loved and added only my favorite song from each of those albums. Soon I had 100 songs, more than enough to cover our entire party. Party Mix was born.

It seemed like that would pretty much be the end. After all, I like to listen to albums when I work or when I drive. I enjoy listening to a single artist for a while, and I tend to think of albums almost like stories. I want to hear the whole story, even if some pieces of it are weaker than others. And yet, I understand the appeal of the playlist. You get the best of the best with no filler. Shuffling gets you the (theoretical, at least) randomness of listening to the radio without getting songs you don't like or certain songs too often. And so, without a radio station that I really liked, I found myself turning to Party Mix when I didn't know what album I wanted or when I only needed a few songs at a time.

It eventually grew into something bigger. After about fifteen months, I had a thought: What if I went further and pulled in the best songs off the rest of the albums I loved from the artists I loved? What if I made Party Mix bigger, better, and even more ready to party? I did a deep dive, scouring albums and artists I hadn't thought of the first time around and searching out albums that had come out since I created Party Mix. By the time I resurfaced, Party Mix had swelled to about 200 songs and become Party Mix 2.0.

It didn't stop there. Party Mix became a living, breathing playlist. I relistened to albums and decided there were a handful of songs I liked better than the ones I had originally put on the playlist. I kept on discovering new artists. Old beloved artists put out new albums. Party Mix 2.0 gave way to Party Mix 2.1. I still listen to albums quite a bit when I'm working or playing cards or driving long distances with Tess available to queue up new music from my phone after an album ends. But I find myself being drawn more and more to Party Mix. With well over 200 songs, every listening experience is different, and every song makes me think, "I love this song!" It doesn't get much better than that. Long live Party Mix.

Grace and peace,
BMH