Welcome to Monday Morning Mixtape, a PoYB Contributor-curated playlist of songs, made just for you at the start of each week.
"Dancing on My Walk Home"
Songs that make you want to dance, even after a shitty day
chosen by Gloria
"It Runs Through Me" by Tom Misch ft. De La Soul
from Geography, 2018
This is the first song that I have on a playlist on Spotify titled "Dancing on my walk home," which is just a joyful playlist full of songs that can change your mood. Everything that I picked for this playlist is from that one. And I'm hoping to add a few more songs from your picks to it. We'll see, it's a tough set of criteria, it's not just happy songs, or songs that I like, it's things that will straight up change your day. —Gloria
"Life During Wartime" by Talking Heads
from Fear of Music, 1979
Fuck, not having my iPod with me is a pain in the fucking ass (maybe by the time you read this USPS will have delivered the fixed product, but as of this writing it's been gone for a couple weeks), because I can't look things up. I have an idea of a band from the past like seven years, I remember being convinced they were the next coming of Talking Heads, the same potent combo of art-rock post-punk new-new-wave except by a band with 0.01% of the audience, but I don't remember what their name was, and that's really fucking frustrating. Here's some Talking Heads instead, fuck it. —Joe
"Scream & Shout" by will.i.am ft. Britney Spears
from #willpower, 2013
I forgot about this song until early 2022 or late 2021, when I was running up some stairs at an outdoor spring and some teens were playing it out loud. We collect lots of stories in life, and even the people who say they don't collect stories do end up collecting them, just the same. You just need a keen eye and a bit of creativity, which not everyone can tap into as easily, but I believe in it. This story about teens and Britney Spears and a forgotten song is almost a forgotten story, but it's also a story that makes me smile when I remember it. —Zach
"Doing It Right" by the Go! Team
from Proof of Youth, 2007
I never used to walk home from anywhere, it was usually a bus ride or train ride somewhere that I would put up the volume and blast some music that made me want to dance, but theoretically, maybe realistically wiggle in my seat or something. Lately, I've been playing Cardinal by Pinegrove during every car ride home, I don't know why. Something wistful, I guess. Can't really dance to any of that though, so here's a good drunk dancing song from way back in the day, back when we'd play drunk dancing songs from indie rock bands on Comcast OnDemand. —Joe
"Got to Be Mine" by Vulfmon
from Dot, 2024
I love this song; it's fun, it's flirty, and it features the flute. Everything I'm looking for in a song that will change my mood. It's hard not to want to dance around like Evangeline in the music video for this, even if you're just walking home from the train. It also always makes me think I should take my roller skates to Kelly Drive. Anything that can take your mood from kind of shitty to thinking about roller skating deserves a spot on this playlist. —Gloria
"Deadcrush" by alt-J
from RELAXER, 2017
I used to have a Macarena dancing club with some friends. All we would do was get together every few months and dance the Macarena, on repeat, for one hour straight. Along the way, we tried other songs, like "Electric Slide" or "Cupid Shuffle." One time I heard "Deadcrush" and I became convinced it would be the perfect song to dance to for an hour. I sent it to my most Macarena-inclined friend, thinking he would agree immediately. He wrote back incredulously. "This isn't a dance song!" he wrote. I disagree. It is, and I want to move to it, always. —Zach
"Deceptacon" by Le Tigre
from Le Tigre, 1999
Eventually there will come a point in my life when every artists and every piece of art that I've ever heard of, I will have listened to and explored. I'm not talking about the millions or billions of artists I'll have never heard of by the time I die. I'm instead talking about bands like Le Tigre, bands that I've heard of and heard of and heard of but never heard, until I'm scrolling through some list of some person's or people's opinions about what I should listen to and I say oh shit I've heard of these guys plenty of times before, I should finally try it out, and it's cool, and it's danceable. And then there's a mixtape theme that fits and we all know what happens from there. —Joe
"I Feel It All" by Feist
from The Reminder, 2007
The mind went from the dancing iPod commercials to Feist and from the song that was actually featured to the song off the same album that you can actually have some low-key funning dancing to. But my fucked up brain goes back to that first song, "1234," and I remember that there was some truly noxious The Office late-season plotline where Andy is stalking some poor woman and stole a Feist album out of her car and attempts to sing "1234" to her so as to get her to sleep with him. I don't even remember who the poor woman was. Was it Erin? Does it matter? Jesus fucking christ, I hate The Office. I think it's a funny bit that more than once I've defaulted to hating The Office in one of these MMM blurbs. I'm uniquely positioned to hate The Office. I have seen so much of that show. I watched the entire series in real time and then rewatched the entire series again at least twice. The Office is like the Pizza Hut pizza of sitcoms—I love it my whole life, and then one day I violently puke out of my mouth and my ass at the same time and then that's it, no more, ever, I hate it, just like that. —Joe
"Get Down Saturday Night" by Oliver Cheatham
from Saturday Night, 1983
They say when you're tired of disco, you're tired of life. Or maybe that quote is about Paris. It doesn't matter what it was originally about. Multiple things can be true at the same time. Disco was never just about music; it was an important cultural movement that united communities often excluded from mainstream artistic expression. —Gloria
"Beggin for Thread" by BANKS
"Beggin for Thread" by BANKS
from Goddess, 2014
BANKS lost the election for hottest non-RC artists albums for the summer. I think I'm the most upset about that one. I wish I hadn't included Mandy Moore; I did it almost as a throwaway, without ever expecting her to win. BANKS is hot, and her music is hot, too, and so are her music videos, especially the one with Doechii. But this music video is hot, too, hot as hell, and makes you want to dance. —Zach
"Bobby's Forecast" by Pottery
from Welcome to Bobby's Motel, 2020
Oh shit, I REMEMBERED!!!! It was Pottery. Wow. Goddamn. Haven't thought about this album in a second. A totally serviceable Talking Heads pastiche, with a slightly modern bent. I'm not saying it's the best thing ever, but it's something you can dance to. I guess. I don't know, man, I don't really dance anymore. But I like feeling happy after shitty days. Pottery can definitely get me there. —Joe
"Last Dance" by Donna Summer
a single, 1978
Last Thursday was the sixteenth anniversary of my and Pam's original meeting. "Meet-iversary" is the made-up term that can be used. We bonded, sixteen years ago, over the fact that neither one of us wanted to stick around for the final song of the night, a Masque tradition, because we thought it was lame and we'd rather be making out on the bus. That was a good night. The funny part is that "Last Dance" is legitimately a great song, and worthy of dancing to. But I think the DJ could've played the greatest song of all time and I still would've chosen to bail on it and hang out on the bus. Dancing makes you happy, but you don't need dancing to make you happy. —Joe
"Nice for What" by Drake
from Scorpion, 2018
Every New Year's Eve, I try to do something a bit wild at the open mic I help run in Jerusalem. This year, I decided to dance to "Nice for What" and learn a few moves to do it. I also wrote parody lyrics to the song. I asked my friend to stop the song in the middle so I could give a philosophical speech about doing things that terrify us. I must have practiced the words at least 50 times, but I still forgot them in the middle. There's nothing like the real thing to bring the real pressure. Next year, I want to write a one-act play and perform it with costumes. —Zach
"Portrait of a Time" by Peter Cat Recording Co.
from Portrait of a Time: 2010 - 2016, 2018
Peter Cat Recording Company describes their sound as a radio station from the near future or a vinyl from the distant past. It's such an apt and beautiful description. I saw them at TLA in 2024, and I'm still not over that show. The tempo change in the middle of this song is stunning; it feels like you are floating out of time. —Gloria
NEXT WEEK: "Guillotines for Every Billionaire" — Songs about getting rich, making stacks, and fucking over your small-time enemies (chosen by Sunny)
9 comments:
I thought a lot about what it meant a song to "change your mood" while listening to this mixtape. Especially since that was the crux of my Ludovico review on Friday. I originally chose these six songs for this MMM based on the "you can dance to it" criteria, but started thinking about it differently after reading Gloria's first blurb last night. I think the songs I chose hopefully still fit. I will say generally that, despite what I may have said on Friday, I feel this particular way every Monday morning: I get cheered up a little bit, at the start of another long week, by the Monday Morning Mixtape. Today especially. So thanks!
That Vulfmon pick was a great one, I'd never heard of that band before. I also appreciated Cheatham (similarly hitherto unknown for me), if only because the mixtape leaned more modern-heavy, and it was good to add some classic sounds.
I appreciate how invested Zach was in the RC summer album polls. I will say here what I told him in private: that particular poll was neck-and-neck between Mandy Moore and Lana Del Rey, and I've woken up every morning since thankful that Moore pulled it off, because, man, y'all would not have liked what I had to say about your girl Lana.
Speaking to the "this artist is hot" conversation, I was definitely thinking about it this morning, listening to this song from this artist I've never seen or heard before today (and heard of only because of the polls). My theory is that your physical attraction is not a make-or-break factor in what you think about their music, but it does push it up 10% from where it would have been had you never seen them with your own eyes. Like maybe my feelings about Mandy Moore's music go from like a B to a B+ because of the fact that I find her attractive.
(I only have experience with heterosexual male->female attraction, and cannot speak to the legitimacy of this theory regarding heterosexual female->male, gay or lesbian attraction, transamorous, or non-binary attraction. Though I had thought about this same theory in the past when one particular PoYB contributor creamed her pants over Hozier and Post Malone.)
Thank you! Vulfmon is RC alumni Vulfpeck's solo project.
Your picks still work so well! I’ve had Deceptacon on there in the past but removed it because, like I said, it’s a really tough set of criteria to pass and it needs to hold up for whenever I listen. I added the Pottery song! I wasn’t familiar with them until this playlist. Cool pick
I also added the Macarena, haha, not a song on this playlist, but a song that got a shoutout on this playlist
Idk why blogger signs me out between comments
Oooooooh, I should've known, the "vulf" definitely made me consider the possibility for a microsecond.
Playing this at the coffee shop over the loudspeakers today on the barista shift. The Le Tigre song is one I hear nearly every day on the regular playlist so it’s apparently in the cafe rotation. This is a great playlist.
MMM idea - best coffee shop music
- Zach and Zach
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