What Makes a Good Playlist? The Musings of a Musically Chaotic Middle Aged Woman
So there I was in the car, fighting with Olivia over the Bluetooth. FYI: this is not in the parenting manual. If they’re better at technology than you, let them sort it, or they will always win. This is not a battle you reclaim later. Pick your wars. Bluetooth is not one of them.
Anyway. She gets out at work. I immediately put my playlist on — obviously — and DJO – End of Beginning hits. Immediately. Brain rewired. Mood altered. Nervous system recalibrated. And that’s when the inner dialogue starts. Because why focus on the road when you can ponder what an absolutely epic playlist your life has accidentally created?
The Perfect Playlist (No Irony, No Apologies)
I have a playlist on Spotify called The Perfect Playlist. I named it that without irony, which should already tell you I’m not here to be reasonable.
It’s unhinged. Kylie and Jason. Especially for You is in there. DJO is in there doing unspeakable things to my brain. Dolly Parton lives there permanently. Eurodance turns up without warning. Power ballads kick the door in. This playlist spans six decades and zero shame.
I don’t listen to music because I’m supposed to. There’s no Elvis, no Beatles, no Oasis, no Michael Jackson. All culturally relevant, and it’s not that I don’t enjoy them. I do
But, I don’t listen to it because it’s cool, curated, or approved by people who alphabetise their vinyl. That doesn’t make it right for my “Perfect Playlist”
I listen because it does something. If it rewires me, it stays. If it makes me move against my will, it stays. If it makes me belt in public like I’ve lost control of my faculties, congratulations — permanent residence.
Questionable Taste Starts Early
Even as a child, my musical taste was questionable. Karma Chameleon was one of my all-time favourite songs. I remember being about eight, at a pub function, and someone putting it on the jukebox for me. Obsessed. Fully committed. No irony. No shame. A personality was formed.
This was the era of 9 to 5 playing like a manifesto. Big hair. Bigger shoulder pads. Blue eyeliner applied with confidence and no mirrors. And somewhere in there, I was also Waiting for a Star to Fall — which people forget started life as a proper 80s banger before it later became a club smash and then, decades on, found its final form as a gym tune for women who should stretch but don’t.
Who knew that music would still hold up forty years later? I didn’t. I also didn’t think I would hold up forty years later, but life is nothing if not rude.
Teenage Grief, Performed Loudly
My teens were not subtle.
When Take That broke up, I did not quietly process this. I did not journal. I did not lie on my bed staring at the ceiling. I hung out of my bedroom window, sobbing and shouting across the road to my best friend, fully hysterical, absolutely disturbing the peace.
How would I live without them?
HOW.
Céline Dion was right when she asked “How will I live without you?” because honestly, at that moment, I had no idea. This was not metaphorical grief. This was a full-scale emotional emergency, loudly performed to the neighbourhood.
Wham had already trained me for this level of commitment. I will always want to go to Club Tropicana. Even now. Even with joint pain. Even if I need a sit-down halfway through. That joy is permanent.
The neighbours heard everything.
I regret nothing.
Teenage angst doesn’t disappear. It just gets better timing and a louder chorus.
Power Ballads and Zero Subtlety Whatsoever
The 80s and 90s power ballads didn’t whisper. They arrived. They announced themselves. They demanded you stop what you were doing and feel something immediately.
This is why they still work. They weren’t designed to be background noise. They were designed for dramatic internal monologues and staring out of windows like you’re in a music video nobody asked for.
The drama never left me. It just learned where to sit in the playlist.
Eurodance Is Not Background Music
Then we hit the Eurodance.
Sandstorm.
Elysium.
Better Off Alone.
This is not background music. This is a full-body commitment.
You do not get out of the car before the drop.
You do not interrupt it.
If you try, you’re on my hit list. Naming no names. Olivia.
These are now my gym tunes. Once upon a time, they got me wasted. Now they’re getting me… less unfit. I am not shredded. I am trying. Same chaos, better trainers.
There is something deeply jarring about a peri-menopausal woman throwing shapes on a walking pad like it’s a 2001 club night while answering emails. And yet. Here I am. Five-hour workdays. Desk raves. Trance breaks. No fucks left.
Live Music Is Why Half These Songs Are Law
People think my playlist is random. It isn’t. It’s field-tested.
Take That was my first concert. First. Ever. I was at the back in the gods, obviously, but Mark waved. He winked. I died. Not metaphorically. Died. The lyric confirms it: “I just died in your arms tonight.” Evidence submitted.
I was there at the end, my first their last. Manchester. Last tour before they broke up. Post-Robbie era. I didn’t just have a Take That phase — I had a Take That timeline.
The other month, I recreated the entire Never Forget sequence on my walking pad exactly as they did it live. Because why go for a normal walk when you can emotionally reenact a stadium moment in your house like a woman possessed by nostalgia. Also, FYI: it was 30 years to the date they hit number one, and I was at the concert where they showed Top of the Pops footage of them finding out. Top of the Pops. I should be fossilised.
Westlife? We’ve seen every tour. Every single one. This year would have been the first we missed — until my daughter and eldest niece bought me and my sisters tickets.
I had already won Christmas. I’d conceded. I was at peace. And then they pulled that out.
I’m not mad.
I’m proud.
And slightly terrified.
Because the seats are up in the gods, and I am too old to be that high. Me and God are not on great terms. My sarcastic tongue made a deal with the devil years ago, and I don’t think heaven’s forgotten.
Iris Is the Best Song in the World
I need people to understand this clearly.
Iris is the best song in the world ever. Hands down. No questions. No appeals process.
When it comes on anywhere — playlist radio, car, shop, gym — I shout it. Aloud. The way I shout “beagle” when I see one. Slightly deranged. Entirely appropriate.
People who know me now just shout “BEST SONG IN THE WORLD EVER” back at me.
Special mentions go to Dignity by Deacon Blue — loudly requested in my 30s while dancing round handbags in dive bars — and Runaway by The Corrs, which still hits exactly where it’s meant to. No notes.
Elite Trolling, Even in Death
Yes. I have a funeral playlist. Doesn’t everyone? If you don’t, you should. And you should absolutely tell people about it.
It opens with DJO – End of Beginning. Reflective. Cinematic. That unsettling calm before people realise they’re about to cry. It’s there to make them think first. Dangerous territory. Deliberate.
Then Westlife — When You’re Looking Like That — dropped straight into a room full of grief.
“How am I supposed to leave you now, when you’re looking like that?”
Elite trolling. Precision work. Someone will snort. Someone will laugh through tears. Everyone will know — without a single doubt — that I absolutely did this on purpose.
Then Iris. Because obviously.
People who know me will hear the opening notes and immediately shout “BEST SONG IN THE WORLD EVER” at each other. Thankfully, for them, they’ll no longer need to endure it at ear-bleed volume at this point. Small mercies, I suppose.
And as people leave?
Defying Gravity.
“I hope you’re happy right now.”
That’s not a goodbye.
That’s a curtain call.
So What Makes a Good Playlist?
Not cohesion.
Not genre.
Not being sensible.
A good playlist understands timing.
It knows when you’re not allowed to move yet.
It knows when to destabilise a room.
Mine lives on shuffle because variety is the point.
Now, excuse me because fate and the universe just dropped Elysium, and that’s not a song you sit down to.
