I’m putting together my annual Block Party mix for this week’s block party in my neighborhood.
I always get boatloads of compliments on my choices, which I make very carefully.
It’s a wide range of people, because it’s a block party and it’s a pretty diverse neighborhood. We have children up to 90 year olds, every ethnicity and background.
I have a huge MP3 collection but I can’t go through it all - I thought maybe y’all could point at some good tunes.
I only use songs that are, in my opinion at least, really excellent - very memorable, catchy, upbeat. I like to balance between well-known (but not frequently played) hits of every decade, and lesser-known, even obscure songs that are so good that even though they aren’t familiar, they still immediately grab your attention and make you want to dance or at least smile.
Didn’t take much tracking… it’s in my collection. (I have 70,000 MP3s…, it’s sick - almost all I ripped from friend’s collections for them, in exchange for the copy.)
Madonna - ‘Hung Up’ or ‘Music’, both fairly recent (i.e. from the last decade) and huge hits likely to be known by everyone. I know that ‘Hung Up’ was much more popular outside of America (the US was one of the only countries in the world that it only went top ten and didn’t hit number one) so maybe ‘4 Minutes’ would be a better choice if you’re in the US.
Nirvana - ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ (as if anyone needs a link), this is such an obvious choice but I have never been in a party situation where this song didn’t “go off”, as they say. From suburban barbeques to gay clubs, it works every single time.
Run-D.M.C. vs. Jason Nevins - ‘It’s Like That’, a remix from the late nineties which is an absolute classic.
Not sure if they’re appropriate/would work for you, but those are the three that came to mind immediately!
)