Firstly, Happy New Year! I wanted to start 2026 off with something a little different, and although it is another playlist, the reason for this particular list and the way it came together, needs some further explanation. As I have written about in a previous post (“Music & Memory: Play It Again…North!”), I went back to school in September, taking a class called: The History of Rock, Pop, and Soul Music, which wrapped up a couple of weeks ago. Since the bulk of the class was spent in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, I could easily rename it: The History of the Music of My Youth. It was an awesome class. However, what made it especially great was listening and discussing all this music with a group of students who were, for the most part, more than 50+ years younger than myself. I was definitely the old fart in the room, or, as one student I worked with said to me when I told her I was old: “You’re not old, you’re ‘vintage!’”
Over the course of four months, we listened to a vast array of music, all of which was selected by our “intrepid” instructor, Kassandra K. For one portion of our final, however, Kassandra turned the music selection over to the class, asking us to prepare a short presentation of our “favorite” song, providing details about the song, the artist, the particular genre, etc., and, most importantly, what made the song special to us.
The following playlist, as far as I am concerned, brings new meaning to the ALBOE (A Little Bit of Everything) playlist, because instead of listening to tracks that I have selected for your listening pleasure, the 25 tracks here were selected by a random group of youngsters, plus one “vintage” selection. The songs on the list represent 62 years of music (1963-2025) representing the following genres: Pop (6), Alternative (5), Hop Hop/Rap (3), R&B/Soul (2), Urban Latino (2), Rock (3), K-Pop (1), Vocal (1), Electronic (1), Jazz (1).
So enjoy this special musical journey, and bonus points for whoever can guess which was the vintage selection! In case you’re wondering how, I could possibly remember all the songs presented, I may be old but I am somewhat tech-savvy!
Los Angeles 2026