Flight #2020-1920: Female Pop Between Pandemics
2+ hrs of buoyant female pop that departs from 2020, touches down in 1920, then returns, all at an average speed of 5 years per song. In order to reach the intended destination, the captain asks that you refrain from shuffling, and allow the songs to play in sequence. Thank you. And enjoy your flight.
Enjoy your flight.
on Apple Music
on Tidal
on Spotify
on YouTube
Flight time: 2 hrs. 15 min. ā¢ 40 songs
Flight path by year of popularity:
2020 Donāt Start Now (Dua Lipa)
2015 Send My Love (Adele)
2009 Love Story (Taylor Swift)
2003 Miss Independent (Kelly Clarkson)
1996 Everyday Is a Winding Road (Sheryl Crow)
1991 Make It Happen (Mariah Carey)
1986 Control (Janet Jackson)
1983 Girls Just Want to Have Fun (Cyndi Lauper)
1979 We Are Family (Sister Sledge)
1975 Love Will Keep Us Together (Capt. & Tennille)
1967 Respect (Aretha Franklin)
1963 Be My Baby (The Ronettes)
1957 Mr. Lee (The Bobbettes)
1952 A Guy Is a Guy (Doris Day)
1948 Buttons and Bows (Dinah Shore)āØ1942 Donāt Sit Under the Apple Tree (The Andrews Sisters)
1935 What a Little Moonlight Can Do (Billie Holiday)
1928 I Wanna Be Loved By You (Helen Kane, inspiration for Betty Boop)
1925 Sweet Georgia Brown (Ethel Waters)
- 1920 Crazy Blues (Mamie Smith; first hit by a black female artist)
- 1920 Left All Alone Again Blues (Marion Harris)
1925 See See Rider Blues (Ma Rainey)
1929 Nobody Knows You When Youāre Down and Out (Bessie Smith)
1935 The Object of My Affection (The Boswell Sisters; lead Connee Boswell was wheelchair-bound due to polio)
1938 A-Tisket, A-Tasket (Ella Fitzgerald)
1944 Shoo-Shoo Baby (The Andrews Sisters)
1947 Itās a Good Day (Peggy Lee)
1954 Hearts of Stone (The Fontane Sisters)
1960 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (The Shirelles)
1966 You Canāt Hurry Love (The Supremes)
1969 Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In (The 5th Dimension)
1974 Waterloo (ABBA)
1978 Last Dance (Donna Summer)
1985 How Will I Know (Whitney Houston)
1989 Express Yourself (Madonna)
1991 Emotions (Mariah Carey)
1998 Together Again (Janet Jackson)
2006 Aināt No Other Man (Christina Aguilera)
2013 Brave (Sara Bareilles)
2019 Walk Me Home (P!nk)
Why all *female* upbeat pop? Well I found that limiting the genre like that sharpened the sensation of being headed somewhere on purpose, the feeling of intention. And I guess thereās something to be said for beholding a parade of sisterhood that spans a continuous unbroken century.
HISTORY:
What does it mean, at a visceral level, that the previous pandemic was a hundred yrs ago? How do I assimilate that fact at the scale of living a human life (as if thereās another option when it comes to living our lives)? Every song on this playlist was part of public life between 1920 and 2020, that is, the century separating two pandemics. As you play the first 20 songs, you travel back in time 100 yrs, because each song is abt 5 yrs older than the last. (Keep it playing, and you make the return flight back to 2020.) Hearing this progression really does feel like...something...to me. Something that my humanness as a whole understands, that my human intellect alone cannot.
CONSCIOUSNESS:
How does it feel to meditate on the nature of consciousness, not just in the present, but in the context of past generations who came before us? This playlist helps me contextualize the experience of having ācome onlineā - of becoming conscious - in the world and into the project of humanity, all of it conscious before āme.ā It allows me to experience personal memory (since memories pin themselves to songs), as just a few points in a continuum of awareness much longer than āmyself.ā Itās a kinetic way to apprehend that: my consciousness arose within one particular generation among many, a generation I therefore call mine.
COMMUNITY:
The first motto of the pandemic was weāre #InThisTogther. I donāt care to see this as a hashtag. I want to feel it as an obligation. I want to feel my organism belonging forever to the human family. Pop music is popular music, the kind you canāt get away from bc you live here; like how your parentsā or siblingsā music was just part of the house. Pop hits are like banners that we gather under, that bond us together in public life. This playlist helps me feel that bond not only laterally across society but also at depth, through lifetimes. A big bonus is that it feels like a celebration since itās pretty much all upbeat pop.