For the past 7 months I’ve been compiling a list of songs in a playlist on Spotify that I dubbed Amazing Songs. It’s a playlist of songs that have stood the test of time in my opinion. It’s not a playlist I sat down and tried to come up with songs to put on. Instead it’s a playlist I’ve been adding to as I come across songs that I love. That is the reason there are so few songs on it at the moment. I will continue to add to it as time goes on, but I was inspired to go ahead and finally put it out into the world by this very topic being addressed in NPR’s The Good Listener column this week, in which Stephen Thompson answers the question: How do you know if you’ll love a song forever?. The publication of this column conveniently coincided with me finally having enough songs that it makes sense to talk about my playlist, so here we are.

There are a couple of rules for songs on this playlist. Mainly the song can’t be anything super recent. You never know when a song you love in the immediate will fall out of favor because it’s overplayed or it turns out it was just of its time and no more. These are the songs that stick with you. The ones that no matter when you hear them you think to yourself wow I love this song. You’ll notice the two most recent additions to the playlist are “Ho Hey” by The Lumineers and “Some Nights” by fun. (Stupid period at the end of their name is making me question whether that last sentence should end in fun..) I finally decided to add these songs because they are almost a couple of years old at this point and I still love them. I actually am shocked that they were way overplayed and still get a decent amount of radio play and yet I’m not tired of them. I figure at this point if they have withstood that level of overexposure and I still listen to them they deserve a place on this list. There is no hard and fast rule about how old a song has to be before it enters this category, but probably at least a year old and it must be past it’s prime radio days.

I’m not going to specifically comment on every song on the playlist, but some comments on a few of them for fun.

I just recently added “Your Love” by The Outfield to the playlist. There is something about the opening line of this song that just gets to me for some reason. I think it has something to with the J sound of Josie in combination with the music or something. Other verses of the song obviously have the same music behind them, but none of the rest of them feel the same way that the line “Josie’s on a vacation far away” does.

I’ve almost considered writing a separate post about k.d Lang’s “Constant Craving” a number of times. This was a song that I did not really like at all when it came out in the early 90s. I was in middle school then so it probably just didn’t speak to me at that age. It sounds like something someone’s mom would listen to. Not that I think my own mother even likes it. Obviously I was also too young to really understand the feelings being conveyed in the song. It’s a song that for whatever reason WXPN has on a fairly regular rotation, so I wind up hearing it every few weeks and it’s a song I’ve really grown to love as an adult.

I can’t tell you how much I love the song “Fade into You” by Mazzy Star, but I can tell you that I’ve tried to add it to this playlist something like 4 times before realizing that it’s already on here. I’m always afraid I’ve forgotten it for some reason.

I’ll obviously continue to add this playlist, so if you’re curious to see what songs make the cut you can subscribe to my Spotify playlist or check back here on occasion.