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Okay, I’ve been quiet on Facebook for a while, so I think it’s time to flex my song-a-day muscles. This one’s gonna be a little more ambitious, though, so buckle in.

I’ll be talking about hits and trends that I watched happen in the 90s that made me think about earlier music. This will be divided into three sections:

#1 – Giants on the Shoulders of Giants

This will include important songs and artists from the 90s compared with their musical predecessors. In many cases, I will be matching groups that the 90s artists don’t necessarily acknowledge as influences, but they share musical DNA.

#2 – Evolving Artists

This section will be all about how bands change over time – bands that were still active and well-known in the 90s but came from an earlier background. This list will include bands that were still together and artists that went solo or joined other projects.

#3 – Stream of Consciousness

This section will be more about my personal connections to music – songs that made me think of other songs for more free-associative reasons. You may not always see them the same way, but I’ll explain my logic so you can be amused by my connections.

Again, all of this is just about my experience. For those of you who have not seen me do this before, my lists are not meant to be all-encompassing or definitive. It’s just my own musical essay that I want to share.

Oh, and the ambitious part? I’ll be posting two songs per day. I’ll start with the 90s song and then I’ll post the connection in the comments. That’s 62 songs I have prepared for March.

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For those of you who have looped in here since July of this year, I will warn you that I occasionally do month-long projects of posting and discussing a song each day on a single theme or topic. You’ll find that I take these pretty seriously – perhaps unusually seriously. You’ll notice a couple of things about my posts during the month:

a) I go into a LOT of detail about the song, artist, and culture surrounding them. I curate these projects like collections of art (which I believe they are), so if you like reading descriptions next to paintings, then you should enjoy my approach.

b) I share videos, not just songs. I grew up in an era when MTV ruled our collective consciousness, so for me the video is often as important as the song itself. I know that Spotify-minded folks may have a difficult time with this, but I ask you to consider watching the videos for the full impact.

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I was reflecting recently that people who didn’t grow up in the 80s have settled on just a few go-to music videos for understanding the early 80s look and sound, but there’s so much more out there that I wish they could experience. It’s not just Take on Me and Africa.

So I’m going to be exploring 31 of what I consider to be the iconic videos of the 80s that have become somewhat forgotten. Make sure you watch, because the videos are absolutely as important as the songs.

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