I sent my mix to msbelle on one of those! If you're going to do one song per year, Aimée, you have to decide if the song from a given year is actually a song from that year or your song from that year. Which is to say, maybe you got into an artist or genre in Year X, or you had a traumatic breakup or some other event that dominated the year for you so you listened to artist/album/song non-stop & when you think of 1989, for instance, your "1989 song" is from 1959 or 1983 or 1975. That would be a more personalized way of doing it, IMO. OTOH it would be fun to catch up on years that are more or less a musical blank slate for you. "THAT was from 1987? Excellent!"

Cute CDs, Aimee!

And I'd do the song for each year mix because it seems to me like it would be more interesting musically with less effort. But I might be biased -- I did a "24 songs for 24 years" mix tape a couple years ago, and it's still one of my favorites. Should burn it to CD at some point.

Robert Gordon's It Came From Memphis is pretty entertaining, too.

Yeah, especially for the Big Star and wrestling aspects. I'm always fascinated by the gonzo recording culture that flourished in Memphis during the seventies. Big Star's 3rd could have only been done in that kind of environment.

I may have missed a mention, but has anyone mentioned Kings of Leon for the southern rock thing? I hear they're a throwback of sorts to that style.

Whoever posted that link to the power pop faves of musicians last week, thank you! I had much fun last night checking out some of those songs. Ah, Cheap Trick. Badfinger! Todd Rundgren!

> Aimee, I'd kind of lean toward doing a 1974 mix since a lot of good music came out that year in multiple genres.

"Let's see... Too Much Too Soon. Okay, only twenty more to go."

ETA: "Oh, yeah: 'The Streak'. That leaves nineteen."

Mix will go on these.

I've been using them, too. My FrankenMix is on one.

See, it'd be really hard to pin down ONE song from each year. And then, like joe boucher pointed out, it might be a song that wasn't from that year. Like "Been Caught Stealing" was one of my songs from 1992, but the album, Ritual de lo Habitual was released in 1990.

So, anybody know anything about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs? I've fallen madly in love with their song Maps. Very haunting.

EtA: People who would like to hear the song can go to their official web site. The page will launch a player in a new window, and the first of three songs played will be Maps.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs CD didn't do much for me, but they were excellent live.

And I'd have an easier time finding one song from each year than finding 30 songs from any one year, especially with the usual mix CD limitations. (No (or very few) duplicate artists, nothing so obvious that people will be sick of it, etc.) I also wouldn't do "my song for the year" rather than "song released that year," because it would just get really confusing. ("I know I was obsessed with the Cure in 10th grade, but did I listen to "Pictures of You" more in 1993 or 1994?" Best to just give up and stick it in the 198?6? slot.)

Big Star's 3rd could have only been done in that kind of environment.

Damn straight. Booker T & The MGs also could have only come from that environment.