The Mix

Listen along to this post with our Senior Year, 2008: (Time-)Trip Around the World playlist.

We don't know what people were drinking near the end of the last decade. But something was in the water, something that had been in our musical bloodstream before, because from about 2005 until 2008, there was a serious resurgence of global psychedelic rock. In order to understand the phenomenon, however, we've first got to take a little time trip of our own.

Back in the late '60s and early '70s, rock bands in locales as far-flung as the Philippines and Peru, Spain and Thailand began experimenting with acid rock: distorted, fuzzed-out studio effects; trippy, taffy-pulled sonic structures; wah-wahing organs; shuffling percussion; and, especially, plenty of loud, heavy and sometimes wavering and downright wacked-out guitars. The sounds were often linked to countercultural scenes and political movements, like Brazil's sharp-tongued, smooth-grooved samba (acid rock's musically mellower cousin) or Cambodia's Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Sereysothea, who were persecuted and tortured for their alleged threat to the Khmer Rouge regime. Their efforts produced some incredible recordings, difficult-to-acquire nuggets that have tantalized crate diggers for years.

Fast-forward to the mid-2000s, when, thanks to the Internet, information about and recordings of these bands began to circulate more widely. Labels such as Vampisoul and Dusty Grooves started to reissue compilations of the classic psych masters. Meanwhile, bands like Dengue Fever and Chicha Libre worked on their own globe-trotting, anachronistic revivals of '60s and '70s acid rock styles, lacing Cambodian pop and Peruvian psychedelic cumbia with bits of funk, Ethiopian sax jams, Afrobeat and salsa. And in North Africa, a veritable psych-rock revolution had begun when bands like Tinariwen picked up guitars instead of guns and wailed their politics, Hendrix-style, entrancing the world with their desert blues. Around the globe, music fans tuned in and turned on for this long, strange trip around the world, and back through time.

Listen along with our Senior Year, 1972: Post-'60s Mellow playlist.

In the years following Woodstock, the country's unified youth culture began to break apart like an iceberg that has drifted into warmer waters. No longer would the masses fixate on a single entity the way they did The Beatles (who split in 1970). Nowhere was this fragmentation more apparent than in the American high school, where kids formed tribes around their favorite subgenres of pop music. There were the heavy-metal lunkheads, the progressive-rock nerds, the glitter-rock weirdoes, the straight-up teenyboppers still clinging to the increasingly corny sounds found on the AM dial.

There were also a growing number of young folk grooving to the mellow sounds of Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Carole King. These kids were 18 going on 35. They played at being old, because old was hip. After the social and aesthetic turbulence of the '60s, the singer-songwriters they obsessed over were all about settling down, finding their way in the world, turning inward, playing house, grooming their cats. Sweet Baby James might've been their most identifiable icon (though not their most talented), seeing as how he enjoyed living the quiet life in secluded country cottages, where he could wax philosophic on all the fire and rain of his past (even though he was only 22 -- talk about feeling old).

This new domesticity blossomed in the canyons of Los Angeles and the quaint villages of New England, but you could find it being explored in most of the notable folk scenes in America and the United Kingdom: Hudson Valley/Woodstock (Don McLean), Philadelphia (Jim Croce), London (Cat Stevens).

That said, these teenaged sensitivos didn't restrict their bedroom hi-fis to folk and folk-pop. They found a similar solace in the smooth vibes then sweeping through soul music as well. Al Green, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder were all turning introspective and tender, much like their coffeehouse peers. Boasting hushed meditations on the environment and spiritual love, Gaye's What's Going On is one of the great singer-songwriter albums of the decade.

Just one last thing: best to explore this music while swathed in an earth-toned shawl. It will really get you in the mood.

Listen along with our Senior Year, 1988: Chicago House Nation playlist.

Dance music's been around long enough that it's split along a generational divide. The buzzing, throbbing sounds of big-tent EDM are a young person's game -- as evidenced by Steve Aoki's frequent stage dives, which end with select audience members covered in cake. It falls upon listeners in their 30s and 40s to be keepers of the flame for old-school styles like Chicago house.

It was not always thus, however. Back in the mid- to late 1980s, the hammering machine grooves and twisted synthesizer melodies coming out of Chicago labels like Trax and DJ International sounded as futuristic -- and as wild -- as anything on the planet, sending dancers into a sweat-soaked frenzy. Hip-hop had yet to capture the urban imagination, much less popular culture itself; if you were a black or Latino teenager in Chicago in 1988, chances are that house music was your music.

If you were lucky, you might have sneaked into the Music Box, a legendary (and legendarily loud) club before it closed down in 1987. That was where Ron Hardy had invented the rudiments of house music from scratch, using just turntables, a mixer and a reel-to-reel to play percussive edits and machine fugues that drove dancers to abandon. Even if you hadn't been there, you were surrounded by the music, thanks to WBMX's Hot Mix 5 -- DJs Farley "Funkin" Keith (aka Farley "Jackmaster" Funk), Mickey "Mixin" Oliver, Scott "Smokin" Silz, Kenny "Jammin" Jason and Ralphi Rosario. (Poor Ralphi, why didn't he get a sobriquet?) You were a member of the House Nation, and the commands and rhetorical questions of the canon -- "Move Your Body," "Time to Jack," "Jack Your Body," "Dance You Mutha," "Turn Up the Bass," "Can U Dance," "Can You Feel It" and the king of them all, "So Let It Be House!" -- were your bylaws, the dancefloor your sovereign terrain.

Reminisce along with our Class of 1988 with this playlist of essential Chicago house, ca. 1985-1988, including classic tracks from Marshall Jefferson, Frankie Knuckles, Mr. Fingers, Phuture, Steve "Silk" Hurley and more.

Listen along with our Senior Year, 1997: Gettin' Jiggy Wit It playlist.

Nineteen ninety-seven marked a new high in excess, whether it was director Hype Williams' omnipresent fish-eye lens effect in music videos that often cost millions to produce, Missy Elliott and Timbaland's delightfully garish hits; or Will Smith breezily using his Hollywood blockbuster Men in Black to launch the 10-times platinum Big Willie Style. It was all about the Benjamins, baby. It was the shiny suit era, as in Sean "Puffy" Combs and Mase cavorting amid exploding cars in the "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down" video, and The Notorious B.I.G. and Puffy driving speedboats while being chased by black helicopters in the "Hypnotize" clip, and Puffy doing the mamba with future girlfriend Jennifer Lopez in the "Been Around the World" video, and ... man, Puffy was everywhere.

Rarely has one man so dominated the rap landscape. Whether you preferred Master P and his No Limit minions, were still in mourning over 2Pac's unsolved murder, or were an underground hip-hop fan more interested in DJ Premier and Company Flow than "jiggy" rap, the impact of Puffy's Bad Boy Records was inescapable. So put on your Christian Lacroix heels, grab your Louis Vuitton handbag, pour out a little Cristal in tribute to the late Notorious B.I.G. and get jiggy wit' it.

Listen along with our Senior Year, 1969: Giving Peace a Chance playlist.

All was not exactly fine for the class of 1969. Vietnam dragged on. Nixon took office. The Beatles gave their last live performance. Brian Jones drowned. The Manson Family struck. And Altamont soon cast a dark cloud over the last days of a decade that was swinging, progressive and chaotic all at once. But this was just two years after the Summer of Love, and revolutionaries, peace activists and just plain fed-up citizens weren't giving up yet. Hope was still very much alive. Men were walking on the moon. The Civil Rights movements of women, African Americans and the LGBT community were finally making headway. John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their Bed-Ins for Peace. And then came Woodstock.

It can be argued that musicians truly ruled the year (and possibly the whole latter part of the decade), giving everyone from the idealistic hippies to the hopeless a reason to think, care and act. Pop culture was colliding with politics in a way it never had before -- and scaring the bejesus out of the establishment. The class of '69 may have been heading into a very scary and capricious "real world," but they had an incredible soundtrack to help keep their fight for peace and equality alive, including now-classics by everyone from Lennon and Ono to Crosby, Stills & Nash, Creedence Clearwater Revival to Jefferson Airplane, The Band to The Rolling Stones to Hendrix. How was there not peace with this kind of music around?

Listen along with our Senior Year, 1949: The First Sparks of Rock and Roll playlist.

World War II had ended only four years before, but in 1949, America sounded like an entirely different place: the post-war economic engine was revving on all cylinders, and Americans had more leisure time and income than at any other period in the country's history to date. Huge swaths of the black population, having migrated from the South for work during the war effort, were forging regional sounds in urban centers across the U.S.A. And due to an amazing confluence of cultural and social factors, the first fiery sparks of American rock 'n' roll were born.

Of course, it wasn't called rock 'n' roll back then. But the revolutionary brew of American music in '49 was evident in other musical name changes: Billboard's "race" charts were rebranded "Rhythm and Blues," and the magazine also minted a new offshoot of twang-y folk music, "Country and Western." But the biggest revolution was in format. After Columbia introduced the 33-rpm LP in 1948, rival RCA countered with the 7-inch 45 in 1949. Durable and inexpensive to produce, this format was ideal for the crosscurrents of its time; most importantly, they were cheap enough for kids to buy.

With new charts came new stars: Amos Milburn, all but forgotten today, was the most popular R&B act of the year. Born in Texas, Milburn was a larger-than-life persona who enlisted in the Navy at 15 to fight in the Pacific theater. When he returned home to Houston, he wrote novelty songs about boozing that were popular enough to top a Downbeat poll. (Decades later, George Thorogood made a mess of one: "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.") In 1949, he charted for 27 weeks.

While white American pop charts indulged in a schmaltzy cowboy fetish (Vaughn Monroe's "Ghost Riders in the Sky" was the hit of the year), Milburn shared a lesser but ultimately more influential spotlight with a handful of other black Southerners: Louis Jordan, the so-called "King of the Jukebox"; New Orleans pianist Fats Domino, whose "Fat Man" is said to be the first recording ever to use a straight rock 'n' roll-style backbeat from start to finish; and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a pioneering gospel singer and electric guitarist who was a primary influence on Elvis Presley.

John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen" -- a tune some argue was the first rock 'n' roll song ever recorded -- also grabbed a No. 1 in '49. If few of these caught the ears of that year's senior class, it's just as well: fewer than 30 percent of age-appropriate Americans graduated high school that year. But running between Milburn's Chicken Shack, Hooker's all-night party on Hastings Street and Jordan's Saturday Night Fish Fry, who had time for school, anyway?

Listen along with our Senior Year, 1979: Waiting in a Gas Line playlist.

What a summer to get your driver's license! OPEC holding back oil shipments in the wake of the Iranian revolution, prices escalating, pumps running dry of fuel, stations closing early, lines stretching for a mile and for hours, and cars using up all their gas while they waited or even before they got there. Jerks cutting into lines then getting shot for it, snobs with lots of money hiring employees to idle in line for them, suburbanites locking their tanks so next-door neighbors wouldn't siphon out fuel by sucking it through a hose, fistfights breaking out, hand grenades tossed at attendants.

A few states initiated gas rationing where you could fill your tank only on even or odd days, depending on whether your license plate was even or odd. "People rushed out to get gas even if they didn't need it, generating more lines in the process," writes Kevin Mattson in What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?, his study of Jimmy Carter's so-called July '79 "malaise" speech. "Families set up breakfast tables next to gas lines so fathers could wait in line to fuel up while the kids ate." Trouble started in California, but before long 95 percent of New York City's stations weren't doing business, and conspiracy theories sprouted about big oil companies hoarding gas at shuttered stations. Through the spring and summer, according to one historian Mattson quotes, American drivers "may have wasted 150,000 barrels of oil a day, waiting in line." Libraries (and liquor stores!), he goes on to write, were even known to hand out books (and beer!) to the captive audience.

Presumably, though, while all those engines were running, so were radios. And now that we're approaching a tense summer when prices might top five dollars a gallon, perhaps it's time to look back. Here are some songs impatient woofers and tweeters might have blasted during that Energy Crisis, starting with the Kinks' "A Gallon of Gas," ending with Jackson Browne's year-old "Running on Empty," sneaking Tower of Power's four-year-old funker "Only So Much Oil in the Ground" somewhere into the middle for kicks. But otherwise these are mostly just hits you likely would've heard on your auto's AM or FM in 1979, including one called "Driver's Seat," one called "Cruisin'" (even if that motoring pastime was necessarily falling by the wayside), one by The Cars, and a Blondie chart-topper that aptly went "Once I had a love, and it was a gas." (Sadly, two very timely 1979 novelty numbers -- Bobby Butler's country protest "Cheaper Crude or No More Food" and The Barron Knights' Supertramp parody "The Topical Song" -- "When I was young, all the petrol was plentiful/ Bountiful/ Oh, liberal/ My tank was full" -- seem to have disappeared along with eight-track decks.)

"These are the good times," Chic insisted, climbing to No. 1 by August's dog days. Many begged to differ.

Listen along with our Senior Year, 1997: Block Rockin' Ravers playlist.

Electronic dance music's breakout success seems to have caught everyone off guard, right up the chain to its biggest players -- even Skrillex professes that he never saw it coming.

But it's not entirely unexpected. Today's dubstep bros and curious kandi kids are, in many ways, the second coming of a phenomenon that kicked off in 1997, when American rave culture first metastasized into a mainstream affair.

That was the year the Alternative Nation set aside its guitars in favor of thumping breakbeats, ushering in an unlikely pantheon of crossover stars like The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and a pair of recalcitrant robots known as Daft Punk. The sounds that took root on domestic soil ran the gamut from Orbital's starry-eyed trance-outs to Roni Size and Reprazent's dramatic drum 'n' bass; what they tended to share were super-sized proportions that connected with an audience better versed in fist-pumping than hip-shaking. (Seen that way, 1997's Spawn soundtrack may have represented the movement's nadir -- with collaborations like Goldie with Henry Rollins and Orbital with Kirk Hammett spawning an unholy techno/nü-metal fusion -- but it was also its logical conclusion.)

So hop in with the class of 1997 as they hit the festival circuit and remake rave culture in their own image, one epic road trip at a time.

Listen along with our Senior Year, 1956: Hail, Hail Rock 'n' Roll playlist.

Rockabilly may take its name from rock 'n' roll and hillbilly music, but the undeniable influence of the blues and R&B is certainly there in spirit, if not name. While such artists as Frank Sinatra, Doris Day and Pat Boone reigned supreme in 1956, a newer, rawer sound was bubbling over. And once out, there was no way to put this genie back in the bottle.

It was an electrifying year for music. Rock 'n' roll fever was spreading faster than mono among teenagers. Country artists like Johnny Cash crossed over to the pop charts, while such R&B greats as Chuck Berry followed suit. Some artists, including Carl Perkins, actually appeared on all three charts! Clearly, it was a time for rewriting society's rule books and tearing down the walls of convention built by Depression-era adults.

High school seniors in 1956 weren't that different from seniors during any other year: their imminent graduation and subsequent entry into the "real" world made most teenagers feel both proud and a little shaky. As official adulthood loomed, it seemed the more they tried to act on their own, the more their parents (or The Man) tried to put them down. Amid this whirling vortex of emotions and hormones, this new fad called rock 'n' roll lured in teenagers like moths to a flame. Amplified power chords and swiveling hips were the guns and bullets used to kill the dying remnants of Mayberry, USA. Hail, hail the hits of 1956!

Listen along with our Senior Year, 1985: Material Girls vs. Unusual Girls playlist.

If you were a pop fan (or just a preteen) in the early '80s, you most likely experienced a moment when you had to make a weighty, serious, life-defining choice: Madonna or Cyndi Lauper?

Though both ladies, who remain two of pop's grandest dames, haven't followed remotely similar career trajectories since, they were subject to many comparisons and contrasts when their respective breakthrough albums were released (Lauper's '83 effort She's So Unusual and Madonna's '84 hit Like a Virgin). But while the Madonna vs. Cyndi debate ultimately didn't make much more sense than Michael Jackson vs. Prince, it did help to codify a moment in pop music history.

By '85, when She's So Unusual and Like a Virgin had become well-established hits, the charts were dominated by both pristinely glamorous pop princesses (e.g. Whitney Houston) and spunky, punky New Wavers and punk chicks who had a way with both a hook and an alterna-snarl (e.g. Annie Lennox). In other words, it was the Material Girls vs. the Unusual Girls (even if the former were often proffering critiques of conventional femininity, and the latter were sometimes just after a big mainstream hit).

In other words, it was the '80s. Enjoy.

Listen along with our Senior Year, 2003: Down in the Dirty South playlist.

You could sum up 2003 hip-hop in two words: Lil Jon. (Okay, 50 Cent and Jay-Z had a good year, too.) While the Atlanta producer wasn't an unknown quantity -- in 2001, he released Put Yo Hood Up, with its controversial Confederate flag cover -- he exploded into the pop mainstream with his crunk music, from hits with The Eastside Boyz ("Get Low") to productions for Ying Yang Twins ("Salt Shaker") and Youngbloodz ("Damn"). He put the world on notice that the Dirty South was here to stay.

This was a problem for those of us who had previously dismissed Southern rap as simple and ignorant. Lil Jon was easy to ridicule as a novelty with his long dreadlocks, a "pimp cup" festooned with diamonds and jewels, a pair of sidemen named Sam and Bo (whose names Mos Def hilariously claimed were an unintentional amalgamation of the noxious Sambo racial stereotype), and the way he screamed "Yeahhh!" on every song. But Lil Jon had serious musical skills, too. The slam-dancing, elbow-swinging mashers he produced for protégés Trillville ("Neva Eva") and Lil Scrappy ("Head Bussa") drew plaudits from hip-hop aesthetes like DJ Shadow.

Then there was Bone Crusher, a massively overweight man who tore off his shirt and waved it like a rally towel on "Never Scared"; David Banner, who brilliantly intellectualized the crunk mentality on his acclaimed Mississippi: The Album; Juvenile, who scored his first No. 1 hit with the strip-club anthem "Slow Motion"; and T.I., whose breakout album, Trap Muzik, had industry observers calling him the next Jay-Z. And everyone likes OutKast, who dropped their biggest achievement to date, the 11-times-platinum Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. But you won't find any radio-baiting "Hey Ya" singles on this playlist. This is for the moments that made us accept the South in all its country beauty and raucous ugliness, whether we liked it or not.

Listen along with our Senior Year, 2002: Electroclash Raverz playlist.

You want to dance. Wait, you need to dance -- like, all the time (and not at that dopey club that plays Top 40 mashups). You own tubs of glitter. You do designer drugs. You worship the '80s. You talk with nothing but irony and innuendo. You mock those who claim raves were so last decade. This is the life of the electroclash raver, circa 2002, when there was even an Electroclash Festival, for cryin' out loud.

This curious party creature bows to the god of hedonism and runs on cold, retro-futuristic beats, humor so dry it chaps your lips (hence all the lipgloss), and a whole lot of sleaze; there's maybe even a bit of punk politics to add to the raging fire. The girlz totally ruled the scene, too, from "F*ck the Pain Away" Peaches to goth chicks Ladytron to Euro-raver Miss Kittin. Still, Felix Da Housecat and Fischerspooner made sure the boyz didn't feel left out of all the sexy fun. So get your party chaps on, because it's time to pop some pills and get down and dirty.

Listen along with our Senior Year, 1982: Trans Am Tunes playlist.

The year 1982 was a great time to be a guy in high school. While your parents may have been consumed by the deepening recession and worried about the Tylenol cyanide poisonings, you were living it up. Disco was dead, Porky's was in theaters and Knight Rider was on TV. And while your Trans Am didn't talk back, it sure made you look cool.

Even cooler were the tunes you had blasting from your car's open windows. Those girly Go-Go's and wimpy Spandau Ballet were banned. Leave those to the goody-goodies with their after-school activities. Instead, you were off campus as soon as school ended, blaring some Cheap Trick, who were back after two years and a few lineup changes. By spring, Loverboy's latest gave you feel-good rock anthems like "Working for the Weekend," and Germany's Scorpions were making their mark. Others like Rush, Van Halen and dearly departed band The Babys helped round out your playlist. While the first CD player would sell in Japan that year, you were happily oblivious, rockin' those cassette tapes and loving every minute of it.

Listen along with our Senior Year, 1999: Country's Year of the Woman playlist.

The year 1999 was a stellar one for country music -- and for the women of the genre in particular. Not only did Faith Hill find phenomenal, multigenre crossover success with "Breathe," she also was seen on the small screen in millions of households as the new Cover Girl spokesperson. Meanwhile, the as-yet drama-free Dixie Chicks were still culling singles from their debut album when they released the follow-up, Fly, which garnered them even more hits. But that's nothing compared to Shania Twain, whose 1997 album, Come on Over, was still mining hit singles two years later, including its title track.

If you were a senior in high school in 1999 (and were also a girl), you probably wanted to be like Faith Hill, but soon realized her leggy physique and natural beauty was an "either you have it, or you don't" proposition. Not surprisingly, you opted for a midriff-revealing little number and/or a leopard-print ensemble like Shania Twain rocked in the "That Don't Impress Me Much" video instead. Back then, you actually might've had the abs to pull it off, too!

Listen along to this post with our Senior Year 2001: Mickey Mouse Club Alumni Reunion at the Top of the Charts playlist.

What if you spent your senior year of high school on the verge of a group-superstar turn in the pop-star spotlight? What if your "senior class" wasn't so much a class as a bunch of mega-talented kids who grew up together on The Mickey Mouse Club? If your name started with "Britney" or ended in "-lake" (J.T., can you hear us?), this was your life as a late teenager. OK, fine, so most of our own senior years were a far cry from teenage superstardom (though being on the Yearbook Committee kind of counts as paparazzi training). Luckily, we got to reap the musical benefits of that atypical youth as, one by one, Disney's former child stars climbed to the top of the charts (or at least somewhere near it) and became pop's next generation. Relive the glory days of Brit, JT, Christina, JSimp, Mandy Moore and more of Walt's little darlings here.

Listen along to this post with our Senior Year, 1977: Anarchy in the Classroom playlist.

The Clash summed it up best: "No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones/ In 1977." That's right: no silly hip-shaking, no mop-top preening and no prima donna posing, at least not for the snarling punks skulking through the bowels of academic prison. No, these kids didn't mourn the death of Elvis; they reveled in the birth of punk rock, donning steel-toed boots, safety pins, studs and spikes as their hopelessly naïve classmates popped in eight-tracks of Rumours, Saturday Night Fever and "Bohemian Rhapsody."

You didn't even have to be in London or New York City to be "authentic," because a punk's primary fight is against authority -- and where else do you feel like a second-class citizen than in high school? But you had to watch out for the poseurs -- the ones who didn't understand DIY or nihilism or anarchism, and especially the ones who started cultivating a Cockney lilt like Johnny Rotten or Joe Strummer. See, the real punks knew the scene was much bigger than The Sex Pistols or The Clash, and in 1977 they had a wealth of freedom jams at their disposal, whether they were into the poppier stuff (The Ramones, Buzzcocks, The Jam); the artier stuff (Iggy Pop, Television, Talking Heads); or the extra snotty stuff (Dead Boys, The Adverts, Richard Hell & the Voidods). Thank god (unless you're an atheist) for punk music.

Listen along to this post with our Senior Year, 1994: Butter Beats and Mad Izm playlist.

Ah, 1994: a great year for rocking butter beats by The Beatnuts and DJ Premier while puffing L's, drinking 40s, and gettin' mad props for kickin' rhymes in a cipher. (But don't front, yo, or someone might pull out their jammy!) This was the peak of the boom-bap era, wherein you had to keep it hardcore at all costs, even if it meant missing out on all the loot the West Coast G-funk gangsters were clockin' (and, increasingly, the Dirty South players, too). A lot of people viewed this as East Coast elitism, but more than a few West Coast underground crews, like Hieroglyphics and Solesides, got down with the realness, too.

The boom-bap tide crested in 1994, and many of the trends that eventually consumed hip-hop emerged during that fateful year. There was Lil Dap intoning, "The world's about to end" on Group Home's classic "Supa Star," an early hint of the full-blown Y2K/Illuminati mania to come. There was Jay-Z's debut single, "In My Lifetime." More than a few tracks criticized hip-hop's fascination with gangsterism, including O.C.'s "Time's Up," Common's "I Used to Love H.E.R." and Jeru the Damaja's "Come Clean." Then there were the twin peaks of Nas' Illmatic and Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die. The first, released in the spring, represented East Coast aesthetics at its creative height, with production contributions from DJ Premier, Large Professor and Q-Tip. But Ready to Die, released in September, was a successful compromise between West Coast funk and East Coast jazz beats, and when it far outsold Illmatic, it signaled a death knell for boom-bap. And that's not counting 2Pac's fateful shooting by robbers in November, which led to accusations that Biggie and Puff Daddy set him up, marking the unofficial beginning of the East Coast-West Coast beef.

Maybe that's why old heads treasure those days so much. It was an era when raw and uncompromised rap dominated the conversation in a way not heard since. That's no knock on West Coast and Southern artists like Snoop Dogg and The Dogg Pound, UGK or OutKast -- just nostalgia. Personally, I don't miss drinking nasty malt liquor or smoking way too many blunts. But the music still sounds lovely.

Grunge dominated the music headlines in 1992, as journalists dissected not just the sound but also the whole Seattle scene, right down to the fashion (if you can call plaid shirts and combat boots "fashion"). But while the boys were making a lot of noise, female artists like Tori Amos, P.J. Harvey and Sophie B. Hawkins were starting a quieter revolution with albums like Little Earthquakes, Dry and Tongues and Tails, respectively.

True, Nirvana's Nevermind would claim the No. 1 spot on the Billboard album chart in early 1992, but at year's end, Madonna's "This Used to Be My Playground" would sit higher on the singles charts than "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (11 spots higher, to be exact). Meanwhile, Hawkins' breakthrough hit, "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover," trailed close behind at no. 34. Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang added a little edge with Never Enough and Ingénue, respectively, and a young Gwen Stefani began making her mark via the perky, ska-inspired pop on No Doubt's self-titled debut album.

Moving beyond the "alternative" sphere, ladies like Vanessa Williams and En Vogue both had singles that beat out Nirvana (and Michael Jackson!) in '92, while Whitney Houston topped the charts and broke records with her version of "I Will Always Love You," which anchored the zillion-selling Bodyguard soundtrack. It was also the year that the future Mrs. Johnny Depp, aka French pop star Vanessa Paradis, first climbed the U.S. charts.

All in all, 1992 may be remembered as the year of grunge, but for girls graduating high school, there were plenty of female role models to be found with a flip of the radio dial. Dig in to my Senior Year, 1992: Girls vs. Grunge playlist.

Headbangers Ball debuted on MTV in April 1987, and by 1988 it was entrenched as required viewing for adolescent and adolescent-at-heart metalheads from sea to poison sea (and eventually beyond), sometimes running three hours long on late Saturday nights. Hair metal still paid MTV's bills at the time, and blow-dried golden-god host Adam Curry (not replaced by seemingly more legit metal dude Riki Rachtman until 1990) looked pretty darn glam (and pretty darn pretty) even when wearing leather, but he had no problem plugging heavier and thrashier stuff as well -- music that wouldn't have come near MTV's regular rotation at a time when even Metallica hadn't yet had a Top 40 single.

Anyway, it may be impossible to verify whether all 40 of this playlist's songs actually got played on the show that year; a couple might conceivably have been deemed too alternative, a couple others maybe too obscure. Or maybe not. Excerpts from the show on YouTube confirm that a lot of them showed up (mostly as videos, though a couple as live performances), and almost all the rest at least had videos ready to go. (Danzig's "Mother" had a video, too, but MTV deemed it too bloody and violent in its pre-1993-hit-version form, so we've bumped that for a different Danzig tune.) Either way, at a bare minimum, all these songs surely would have fit on the show, between head-on train-crash intros and demonic vine-strangulating dungeon animations and Sam Kinison doing that annoying scream of his or whatever.

Headbangers Ball didn't last forever: MTV got rid of it in 1995, brought it back on MTV2 for a few years in 2003, and started acting suspiciously ambivalent about again in 2007, hiding it away in the wee hours of Tuesday morning and eventually on the Web. But in 1988, it still ruled the roost like a cock-rock cock of the walk. Consider this playlist a tribute.

Listen now: Senior Year, 1988: Headbangers Ball

With Rhapsody turning 10 years old next month, let's flash back exactly a decade to salute the class of 2001 -- the generation that brought us, for better or for worse, the hipster.

Now, "hipster," that most desiccated of straw men, is an oft-abused term, and it's also a cipher of sorts: if no one hip enough to be a hipster cops to being one, then who's left to populate the demographic? Nevertheless, their habits are well documented. (Like dark matter, theory confirms their existence even when their actual capture eludes us.) And nowhere is that truer than in their musical tastes.

To understand why the hipster emerged when it did -- the literary journal n+1 locates the contemporary hipster's emergence in 1999, which is good enough for our armchair sociology session -- just look at the musical landscape of the turn of the millennium. Consider a few touchstones from that year: The Strokes' Is This It, Daft Punk's Discovery, Jay-Z's The Blueprint. Epochal albums all, and all from radically different corners of the musical universe, but all contributing, in their way, to the development of what we might call the hipster sensibility.

We're generalizing here, but I think you can describe the hipster's approach to taste as a voracious connoisseurship, a kind of competitive curiosity -- the desire to know more about more different kinds of music before anyone else. The hipster sensibility is a constellation of tastes; rooted in self-aware styles of indie rock and hip-hop, it quickly grew to encompass New Wave, Krautrock, funk carioca, Baltimore club, Chicago house and countless other niche sounds. (In this sense, the contemporary hipster is a walking, talking incarnation of The Rock Snob's Dictionary.)

That sensibility is everywhere in the music of 2001, a pivotal year for many reasons -- from The Avalanches' post-everything sampledelia to Miss Kittin's arch electro, from Yeah Yeah Yeahs' sardonic downtown chronicles to Radiohead's new sincerity. It's a complicated nexus of cool, sincerity, irony, pose, distance, guilty pleasures and unabashed enthusiasms. Untangle its DNA and get in touch with your own inner hipster with our playlist.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Senior Year, 2001: The Proto-Hipster

Motown's indelible impact on pop-music history is a direct result of the talent on the Detroit-born label's roster. Berry Gordy and his team sussed out the most skilled and (equally as important) the most likable kids they could find, often plucking actual kids out of obscurity (and high school), turning them into polished, professional pop stars. But Motown's success was also undoubtedly due to the well-oiled, machine-like way the studio ran, taking ridiculously young diamonds in the rough and putting them through the label's "factory" system, which included training in everything from music and dance to, yes, fashion and manners.

Mrs. Maxine Powell was the label's charm-school mistress, responsible for teaching all those young artists how to behave (and perform) like ladies and gentlemen -- specifically, ladies and gentlemen who could appeal to the widest cross-section of Americans. It's a complicated part of Motown's history, one that's been criticized for everything from its gender politics to its "Fordist" strategy of music-making (in which artists were "designed" to be somewhat anonymous and interchangeable) to its emphasis on mainstreaming in a musical era of stringent racial stratification.

On the other hand, Motown not only produced some of the most significant and beloved songs in pop history, it also helped change the landscape of American music, breaking down decades-old demographic barriers. (And while labels today don't typically employ a Ms. Manners type, teams of stylists and image consultants are commonplace.) Mull over the politics while you immerse yourself in some of the pop riches bestowed upon us by Motown's young charm-school grads.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Senior Year, 1965: Motown Charm-School Graduates

In the early 1970s, decades before sexuality and gender in high school life became a CNN news bite, a music trend came along that slyly packaged these issues inside a lot of killer rock 'n' roll. I'm talking about glam — or, as that legendary arbiter of pop fad Dick Clark disturbingly called it back in 1973, the "fag-drag crazy transsexual rock scene."

Glam is best remembered for its camp: platform shoes and glitzy makeup. But make no mistake, it possessed a very real revolutionary component (which is a big reason why this short-lived moment in pop music history exerted such a profound influence on punk and New Wave). Glam spoke to outsider youth, in particular those who all too often secretly suffered from oppression and confusion when it came to sex and gender identity. Not only that, it offered them a kind of cosmic escapism — a shimmering mix of sci-fi mysticism and a surreal conflation of 1950s rock and Tinseltown nostalgia (all of which has its roots in The Cockettes, psychedelic drag queens and communal anarchists who emerged from late-'60s San Francisco).

Then again, glam also proved to be brutal and real. "You're a prima ballerina on a spring afternoon/ Change on into the wolf man howlin' at the moon," cried the New York Dolls. "All about that personality crisis, you got it while it was hot/ But now frustration and heartache is what you got."

Then there were The Pink Fairies, who cut right to the chase: "I wish I was a girl."

Glam came in many shapes and sizes in the early 1970s: bubblegum fun, pretentious art rock, heavy metal stomp, wispy space-folk balladry, retro rockabilly and so on. What's somewhat forgotten is how the trend played out quite differently in the United States and the United Kingdom. Over there, glam was teen pop, more or less. But here in the States the music took on a decidedly underground edge. T. Rex are the perfect example. Between 1970 and '73, the band's first four albums cracked the Top 20 of Britain's album chart; three of them wormed their way into the Top 5. In America only one made the Billboard's top 20: The Slider in 1972. Meanwhile, two of them never climbed passed 100.

Also telling is how Suzi Quatro and Sparks, both American acts, found far greater acceptance across the pond. Maybe we Yanks were just too macho to accept glam as a purely mainstream phenomenon. We're surely not like our English counterparts, who, as Mick Jagger pointed out in the documentary 25x5: The Continuing Adventures of the Rolling Stones, don't need much convincing to dress up like women and head down to the pub for a few.

Please raid your mom's closet before checking out my Senior Year, 1973: Yesterday a Quarterback, Today a Glam Queen playlist.

With this installment of Rhapsody's Senior Year series, I attempt to construct an alternative to Dazed & Confused's depiction of mid-'70s America. Imagine this: while all of Lee High's jocks, stoners and make-the-scene wannabes partied in the woods to the sounds of Foghat and Aerosmith, the school's introverted smarty-pants types — many of whom tutored all them lunkheads in shoulder pads during the school year — retreated to their parents' basements. There, they spent the night tinkering with their Radio Shack 150-in-One Electronic Project Kits while exploring rock's outer limits: art rock, ambient music, the more cerebral end of glam, fusion and Krautrock.

Nowadays, it feels absurd to tag all these myriad movements prog, but that's only because the term is a caricature of its former self. Back then prog wasn't a genre per se, the one we think of now that specifically refers to Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Jethro Tull and dozens of other pretentious British bands. Instead, it was a collective and open-minded belief among certain musicians that serious art could result from the merging of post-psychedelic rock music, philosophical thought, science fiction, state-of-the-art electronics and both contemporary and older forms of classical music. As an application, this progressive mindset wormed its way into myriad styles: folk-rock, avant-garde jazz, early heavy metal, glam and even power pop (key elements later popped up in disco and post-punk).

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Back in 1997, the coffeehouse music scene managed to thrive despite the incessant barrage of grunge that was still going strong some six years after the release of Nirvana's Nevermind. Modern singer-songwriters such as Jewel, Duncan Sheik and Fiona Apple were introducing themselves to new fans by playing in coffeehouses across America — and the exposure they got on television shows such as Beverly Hills, 90210 and Ally McBeal and Buffy the Vampire Slayer didn't hurt either.

If you were a senior in high school back then, chances are you were drinking in the vibe — not to mention the coffee — at some mom-and-pop cafe where live music and a strong cuppa joe was the order of the day. Wi-Fi wasn't around yet, but between the caffeine and the tunes, you were definitely buzzing.

Click here to listen to the playlist: Senior Year, 1997: Hanging Out At the Coffee Shop.

A pair of Technics turntable decks will cost you around $800 — maybe cheaper if you can get them used (or if you opt for a lesser brand like Numark). A DJ mixer will set you back another $300. A copy of the Turntablist's Super Duck Breaks costs around $10, and you'll need two copies. But the ability to scratch like DJ Q-Bert? That would be priceless.

In 1998, there was real value to being a DJ who could scratch, mix and cut records. Crews like the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, The X-Men (who changed their name to X-ecutioners to avoid a Marvel Comics lawsuit), the World Famous Beat Junkies and the Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters roamed the earth. Turntablism, a term coined by Beat Junkie DJ Babu, came into vogue as DJs attempted to create a furiously abstract style of music built around turntable exercises attempted during OM Records-sponsored Deep Concentration tours and SF-based Future Primitive Soundsessions. The mania spread from the compilation series Return of the DJ to the Beastie Boys (who adopted the Piklz' Mix Master Mike as a DJ and honorary "fourth Beastie" for 1998's multiplatinum Hello Nasty) to DJ Shadow's 1996 masterpiece Endtroducing to DJ Q-Bert's Wave Twisters, another '98 release billed as "the first all-skratching album."

But you can't talk about turntablism without noting all the teens at home scratching away on custom-made vinyl like Bionic Booger Breaks and Sqratch Fetishes of the Third Kind. These records usually included several two-minute sound loops (aka "breaks"), along with seconds-long sound snippets that you could cut back and forth, most famously the simple exclamation "Fressshh!" When they weren't practicing how to be a DJ, these young turntablists were studying old-school classics like Public Enemy's "Rebel Without a Pause" and Terminator X's infamous Transformer Scratch, or partying to "real hip-hop" anthems like Gang Starr's "You Know My Steez," Black Star's "Definition," and KRS-One's "Rapture's Delight." But did they listen to any Jay-Z, Puff Daddy or DMX? No way — that stuff was wack and too mainstream! It's funny how times change.

Click here to listen to my entire playlist, Senior Year, 1998: Time 4 Skratch Practice.

It's 1983. MTV's still all foofy fake New Wave pop crap from England, and you're stuck in the middle of nowhere in your acid-washed jeans and Quiet Riot-patched denim jacket and greasy zits and hockey hair, bored out of your teenaged mind behind a locked door in your mom's house, and you just wanna rock \m/!! These are lonely times to be a hesher — decent AC/DC and Alice Cooper and Van Halen albums are already seeming like a distant memory (Diver Down?? Who the heck were they fooling with that one?), and speed metal and hair metal have barely even started to stir, much less split the world in two. So if you want good metal, you'll have to hunt for it — and maybe even settle for the occasional Journey or Night Ranger (or Pat Benatar or Joan Jett, for that matter) song. Which is cool, 'cause they kinda rock too, right? At this point, Survivor's not that far from Dokken! But what you really crave is the real stuff, and you're gonna find it even if you have to spend paper-route money on a Kerrang subscription to learn what "NWOBHM" spells. Today's your lucky day, 'cause we're here to help. This playlist piles on 50 — count 'em, 50 — tunes from the era: couple AOR ringers, maybe, but mainly heavy Chevy Novas to boost your metal health. Metal on metal, as Anvil put it. Because dudester, your mullet deserves to bang.

Click here to listen to our entire playlist: Senior Year, 1983: Fast Times at Hesher High.

When you listen to jazz sessions from 1967, the genre's wild transformation is immediately evident. Jazz heads at the time had their work cut out for them trying to keep up: Coltrane, whose death from liver cancer shocked audiences in the summer of that year, had pushed things into an apocalyptic, free jazz frenzy, while other icons of the past decade were splintering into a modern, far-out free-for-all that wove together ideas begged, borrowed and stolen from bop, atonal modernism, and rhythmic and sonic elements from Latin America, Asia and Africa.

This powerful, fragmented, exploratory energy is all over the recently issued recordings of Miles Davis' gigs in Europe with the so-called "second great quartet," which included Herbie Hancock,Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams. They're all young, headstrong and virtuosic -- putting their performance to tape must've been like trying to bottle a hurricane.

The other recordings of that period -- from Coltrane's last recorded live session and Expression to the inspired Strayhorn/Ellington collaborations of the Far East Suite and Wayne Shorter's aptly named Schizophrenia -- are not for the faint of heart. But this challenging music offers big rewards, and helped make 1967 a year of particularly amazing sounds.

Click here to listen to the playlist: Senior Year, 1967: Jazz From the Far-Out Edge of the World

Beck's self-deprecating "Loser" was arguably the anthem of 1994. But he wasn't the only one hatin' on himself. A lot of people seemed pretty down by the time the mid-'90s started rolling in, and no doubt the death of Kurt Cobain in April of '94 only made things dimmer. By then, alternative rock may have been losing some of its cool factor. It had become a mainstream force, after all (rather than the "alternative"), so maybe that had something to do with everyone's moody resignation.

You couldn't switch on MTV without watching Soundgarden's faces melting, or VH1 without seeing a bespectacled Lisa Loeb coyly begging you to stay. And a lot of other folks were pretty bummed out, too. Blind Melon only liked the rain. Radiohead were creeps. Stone Temple Pilots were feeling the big empty. Green Day were basket cases. Jeff Buckley was giving a "Last Goodbye." Weezer were coming undone. Bush were yelping something about glycerine. Even Tom Petty made it pretty damn clear you have no idea how it feels to be him. So this playlist goes out to all the misfits, mopers, loners and Debbie Downers of 1994 — or any year, really. After all, you wouldn't be a true high school student if you didn't feel like a loser at some point.

Click here to listen to the playlist: Senior Year, 1994: I'm a Loser, Baby.

Once upon a time, concerts happened in concert halls and auditoriums and stadiums and clubs. OK, they still do, but in the late '80s, young pop stars started tapping the power of their rabid teenage fan base directly at its source: the mall. Phenoms like Debbie Gibson and Tiffany not only marketed the heck out of their own images (T-shirts! Watches! Perfume! Dolls!), they also showed up at the mall in person and played actual shows. So on any given Saturday, a hip young teen might be found making her (or, um, his) way down to the mall to catch a concert by a prominent Teen Beat Dream Machine with a few hundred (or a few thousand) fellow screaming, hysterical fans. Relive those memories with our Senior Year, 1988: Teen Beat Dream Machines playlist.

It's a bit late to celebrate Juneteenth. After all, the annual holiday commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States doesn't take place in the middle of September, but at the beginning of summer, on June 19. Perhaps it's the onset of fall, though, that makes our thoughts turn to warmer months and memories of park jams, barbecue and family reunions.

If you've ever been to a Juneteenth festival, then you know it's the kind of neighborhood gathering where hundreds of kids run wild in a park, half-crazed on sugar and sensory overload, while parents gossip, dance to the music, and hopefully get some much-needed alone time. Onstage there's usually an earnest activist or two, a few city councilpersons reaching out to the constituents, and a lineup of local singers and bands using the day as a stepping stone to wider fame. Back in 1979, that means you would have gotten a lot of funk and disco with your chicken and ribs. While we can only guess what the actual soundtrack would be, we know it would undoubtedly include the latest hits from Chic, P-Funk and The O'Jays — perhaps not in the flesh, but definitely via a party-rocking DJ's selections.

So why focus on 1979? Why not? The end of the '70s was a fantastic time for black music, and although the omnipresent disco beat could get a little annoying (see the Village People and Amii Stewart's "Knock on Wood"), it also led to incredible singles like Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" and McFadden & Whitehead's "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now." It's easy to imagine how these songs evoked feelings of pride and accomplishment because, decades later, they remain a part of any community celebration. Rest in peace, Minnie Riperton, whose "Memory Lane" is included in this playlist; she died shortly after the song's release on July 12, 1979.

Click here to listen to my playlist: Senior Year, 1979: Juneteenth Festival.

In the immortal words of Olivia Newton-John, have you never been mellow? Have you never tried to find a comfort from inside you? Have you never been happy just to hear your song? Have you never let someone else be strong?

For this installment of Senior Year, I constructed the ultimate soundtrack to an imaginary high school, one swimming in soft-rock fantasy. The lush and spotless suburbia depicted here is not unlike Haddonfield from John Carpenter's Halloween, only there's no psychopath in a mask stabbing all the little darlings rocking high-waisted jeans and feathered hair. Speaking of bad vibes, heavy metal and punk also have no truck here. Hell, the teenagers are so smooth they don't even spin The Doobies. And you can forget about Foreigner. For them, life is smooth: Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp, Bread, Paul Simon and The Hollies (their 1970s incarnation, of course).

Now, those well versed in pop music history will notice that more than a few songs in the playlist actually predate 1977, some by as many as three years. There's good reason for this. Because life in this imaginary high school is so incredibly mellow, time actually moves slower. The light is different, too. From sun-up to sun-down, it's deliciously hazy and diffused, like the soft-focus photography favored by Penthouse back in the day.

Oh, and before I forget: all the dads are hairy and well-groomed like vintage James Brolin, and every home has a glistening white baby-grand piano in the living room.

Groovy.

Click here to listen to my playlist: Senior Year, 1977: We're Living in a World of Rumours.

Life seemed so much simpler in the '80s, and for me at least, our music and how we listened to it reflected that. The day after my senior prom, my friends and I gathered at a local beach and cranked up our boom boxes. Let me be clear: the music that came flooding out of those speakers is nothing I'm proud of. I know some of my teen counterparts were exploring edgy underground bands, but my suburban friends and I were happy not to stray too far beyond the constraints of straight-up pop and rock. We listened to what was on the radio and what the local DJs spun at school dances. We didn't know any different, and now those songs are part of our collective memories, like it or not.

You didn't need to look beyond tracks like "Footloose," "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and "Let's Hear It for the Boy" to understand the depths of our naïvete. Meanwhile, Van Halen, Billy Idol, Madonna and Duran Duran represented teen rebellion, 1984-style — at least to us. Pop stars were more like friends back then and it was easy enough to imagine hanging out with Huey Lewis, Pat Benatar, Lionel Richie or The Go-Go's.

But even in this sheltered, whitewashed world, there was a cutting edge. Acts like Prince, The Thompson Twins, The Eurythmics and Culture Club left us dumbfounded by what we thought of as their outrageous looks, but it didn't stop us from buying their albums and singing along.

Even those reluctant to jump on the nostalgia bandwagon have to admit there's something to be said for a time when Michael Jackson was cool (as opposed to creepy), and talk of a Police reunion was just that (the trio's hiatus was only weeks old at that point). Sure, we played ballads like Night Ranger's "Sister Christian" with a straight face, but we were 17. We also thought the careers of Corey Hart and Wang Chung were on the rise. Ah, youth!


Listen to the entire playlist here: Senior Year, 1984: Post-Prom Beach Party Mix.

Trip-hop was certainly not immune to urban pretensions: the graffiti strokes of DJ Krush's logo, faux-"hard" titles like DJ Cam's "Gangsta Sh*t." But really, was there ever a genre better suited for the suburbs than trip-hop's brand of soporific Barcalounge music? They called them "blunted" beats, but there weren't many Swishers being split and relicked around these joints; more like bong hits in the basement and endless (and, we should add, ill-advised, under said conditions) cruising in the Subaru.

So it's 1996, and our recent grad whiles away his days behind the counter at the local coffee shop, and spends his evenings sprawled on a picnic table in the park, brown-bagged beer and boom-box each within arm's reach. The lifestyle (and possibly the facial hair) is straight out of Richard Linklater's Slacker. But the soundtrack couldn't have been further from the alt rock staples of just five years earlier. (Poi Dog Pondering?!) By '96, armed with college radio and a dial-up modem, your humble layabout, restless in his tastes, had hit upon trip-hop's studied cool: the snatch of jazz, the alien synth, the hiss of vinyl, already nostalgic.

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So first off, welcome to the '90s! Even if it still kind of feels more like the last gasp of the '80s: hair metal is almost over but doesn't know it yet, so it's still all over MTV, with songs about cherry pie (RIP Jani Lane) and unskinny bopping and staying up all night and sleeping all day and living in a house of pain, about girls named Michelle and Janie and Jayne. Then there's Jane's Addiction and Faith No More (with their exploding piano and flopping fish) and that new band King's X, whose singer is black and Christian and 40 years old -- if you think about it, loud rock's starting to get a little odd and arty again. Maybe everyone's just weirded out that Nelson have the best hair.

Unless Vanilla Ice does, that is, with his rag-top down so his hair can blow. (Except not really -- that pompadour's at a standstill!) But take heed, 'cause he's a lyrical poet, killing your brain like a poisonous mushroom and neck-and-neck with MC Hammer in the contest for America's Favorite Rapper. (Hammer's definitely the better dancer, though.) Worst Hair honors may actually go to Sinéad O'Connor, who doesn't have any, and dances sorta clumsy, to boot. As for who has the better smash ballad named "Hold On," Wilson Phillips or En Vogue -- it's a toss-up.

But either way, the decision's in your hands. Every weekday, just call your votes in to 1-800-DIAL-MTV toll-free on your parents' landline, then sit down with a New Coke and watch the Top 10 requests. Who's it gonna be? Bell Biv Devoe? Jane Child? Roxette? Snap? Enuf Z'Nuff? You gotta tune in to find out. Most songs in the playlist below probably placed sometime during the year, for better or worse. It's in your face but you can't grab it. U can't touch this, but nothing compares 2 U.

Click here to listen to our entire playlist: Senior Year, 1990: Dial MTV After School.

To honor the passing of Soul Train star Don Cornelius, here's a recent playlist tribute we built to honor the iconic show's insurmountable peak. Listen along with our Senior Year 1974-1975: Practicing Your Soul Train Moves playlist.

Dance variety shows that targeted younger fans had long been a staple of pop music by the time Chicago DJ and concert promoter Don Cornelius premiered Soul Train in 1970. But with the first howl of "Soooooul Train!" the beloved result irrevocably transformed the heavily whitewashed model of such earlier programs as American Bandstand. The focus on African-American artists and, well, soul music -- Motown, funk, classic R&B, Philly soul, and, later, disco and hip-hop -- made the show a cultural hub for African-American audiences, and brought that culture to the white mainstream, introducing viewers across the United States to new fashions, dances and music.

By the 1974-5 season, the now nationally syndicated Soul Train was a well-established cultural beacon, with kids and young adults alike gathering in living rooms across America to hear new music, watch those dancers seriously shake it, and practice a few moves of their own. The show's guest artists offer a retrospective glimpse into the state of pop culture, music and even politics at the time: as the initial theme song, Gamble and Huff's "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" (as recorded by MFSB) pointed to the prominence of Philly soul, a path that eventually led to disco's preeminence. Boundaries blurred as '60s R&B and earlier, lighter Motown gave way to funk, grittier '70s Motown, and constantly evolving dance music, all heard in the wide range of artists Cornelius showcased.

And while Soul Train could be slightly musically conservative and was certainly trying to cater to a pop audience, that guest-star curation also spoke to African-American politics of the day, from the soft-hued frustration of Philly soul to Curtis Mayfield's angrier attacks on post-Civil Rights-era reality, as well as the dance-your-cares-away, lose-yourself-in-the-beat dystopianism that came to dominate pop music in the 1970s. So strap on your dancing shoes and your thinking cap, and get ready to bust a move like it was a party in front of the TV at your best friend's house with our Senior Year playlist of 1974-1975 Soul Train guest-stars.

Some high school memories aren't so good.

Woodstock '99 was supposed to be a grand kiss-off to the 20th century, a golden opportunity for America's suburban youth to usher in a new era with four straight days of sweaty (and often naked) partying alongisde the biggest names in hip-hop and modern rock: Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Roots, Creed, Ice Cube, Limp Bizkit, Godsmack, Chemical Brothers, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Fatboy Slim, DMX, Bush and a whole lot more.

Sadly, what the festival ultimately turned out to be was one of the darkest and most violent moments in the history of American pop music. Taking place at the former Griffiss Air Force Base, a fortress-like Superfund site located in Rome, N.Y., the festival just so happened to coincide with a pernicious heat wave then hovering over the state's central region. Yet 100-degree temperatures fail to explain fully the brutality and violence that erupted between Thursday, July 22nd and Sunday the 25th. At one point, MTV used the phrase "Apocalypse Woodstock" to describe the rash of looting, arrests, mass dehydration, vandalism and arson. There were even multiple reports of rape and assault going down in the ultra-violent mosh pits. So yeah, we're talking seriously dark vibes.

Justifiably, a ton of blame made the rounds in the aftermath. Many pointed fingers at the bands, particularly the Red Hot Chili Peppers (who unleashed the Jimi Hendrix classic "Fire" while their fans set just about everything around them ablaze) and Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, whose onstage persona has always been about bad-boy aggression and inciting mayhem. Far more onlookers, however, criticized promoters for poor planning and a disregard for providing the necessary medical and security support. Regardless of culpability, Woodstock '99 is an event the kids who were there will most surely never forget.

To hear all the music that was in the eye of the storm during that fateful weekend, check out my Senior Year, 1999: Naked Bonfire Dances at Woodstock playlist.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Senior Year, 1991/'92: Seattle Wishes & Flannel Dreams.

Oh, to be in Seattle in the early '90s. It was the dream of many disaffected youth who watched MTV transform from a place where C+C Music Factory could safely "go hmmmm" to a mainstream hub for the Great American Grunge Conquest. Oversized flannel replaced Hammer pants as the national uniform, and Kurt Cobain was suddenly (and unwittingly) an icon, a hero, a spokesperson for Generation X.

If you attended high school during these years, you may have witnessed girls shopping in the men's department, boys growing out their hair (and not washing it), and spontaneous mosh pits erupting during school assemblies. You may have religiously watched Cameron Crowe's Singles upon its 1992 release, and wore out the soundtrack on your new CD player. You may have even been inspired to pick up a guitar, some drumsticks or a bass to expel your own stories of teenage torment.

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The year 1983 must have been a crazy time to be a black teenager. Michael Jackson was blowing up big time, whether it was rocking that ultra-fresh red zipper jacket in the "Beat It" video or slaying millions of Americans with his "Billie Jean" performance on the Motown 25 broadcast. Prince was creepin' up, too, thanks to his coyly suggestive "Little Red Corvette" and 1999. Lionel Richie got love, too, even if "All Night Long (All Night)" was kinda corny. Luther Vandross was still making post-disco hits with a fury, from his own "I'll Let You Slide" to producing Aretha Franklin's "Get It Right." The funk was still strong, whether it was George Clinton's massive "Atomic Dog" or The Gap Band's nonstop "Party Train."

In retrospect, the year seems so exhilarating and confusing. Yes, the synthesizer ruled the charts, leading critics like Nelson George to declare it "the death of rhythm and blues." But what about electro stars like Afrika Bambaataa and the Jonzun Crew? Hell, what about David Bowie's "Let's Dance," The Human League's "(Keep Feeling) Fascination" and Madonna's "Holiday"? Incredibly, all this stuff found a home on Billboard's Black Singles chart (which wasn't retitled R&B/Hip-Hop Singles until years later). There was even space for the odd novelty jam like Sexual Harrassment's "I Need a Freak."

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Before the Glee gang started spreading the word about chastity clubs, before the Southern Baptists launched the True Love Waits campaign, before the Jonas Brothers slipped on those purity rings, well-intentioned girls (and boys) who vowed to pursue purity instead of partying had to find their own inspiration. The Bible covered the "thou shalt not" of premarital sex, but music helped to pass the time while they waited till their wedding nights. Ballads like "Sister Christian," cautionary tales like "Careless Whisper," empowering anthems like "Better Be Good to Me" and even sexy diversions like Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax" (which suggests, uh, alternate activities) gave '80s teens encouragement when their hormones sent their resolve plummeting. So keep your legs crossed and your hands to yourself as you crank this up.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Senior Year, 1984: Chastity Club

It's 1995. Your kid cousin just turned 15. And now your whole family — and your neighborhood, and your church, and, well, pretty much everyone you know — is getting together for a fiesta of fabulous proportions. So what's going on the stereo? Well, you've got to have a few conjuntos for the old folks. Plenty of norteño hits and red-hot Latin pop. Some ballads for slow dances. And, por supuesto, a LOT of Selena. The young Tejana singer was already dominating Latin music (not to mention on her way to really crossing over big time) when she was tragically murdered on March 31, 1995. Her death was an immense loss to the musical world, as evidenced by the sheer magnitude of her presence on the Latin charts for the rest of the year. That might sound like kind of a dour scene in which to stage a party, but so much of Selena's music was filled with joy and celebration, and of course, the show must go on. Just as Latin artists worked to adapt and fill the gap Selena left, so, too, does our quinceañara soundtrack flesh out the musical world she left behind, featuring such celebrated artists as Elsa Garcia, Mazz, Ana Barbara and more.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Senior Year, 1995: DJ'ing Your Cousin's Quinceañara

The 1995 film Party Girl stars Parker Posey as Mary, a club-hopping, party-throwing firestarter with plenty of street smarts, but not enough common sense.

A downtown New Yorker through and through, she lives the nightlife to the hilt; when she discovers a love for library sciences, she throws herself into the subject with the same gusto, going so far as to re-organize her roommate's records according to the Dewey Decimal System. Her system is so inspired, it bears reproducing in detail:

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If you grew up in the Midwest, you know what the 4-H Club stands for. I mean, what it really stands for — not just the "head, heart, hands and health" motto that makes up the four H's. The idea is simple: teach young people and their families the skills they need to be proactive forces in their communities, and develop ideas for a more innovative economy. The program revolutionized the way science was taught outside the classroom; in 100+ years of active service, more than 60 million youth have used the program, from elementary school kids to high school seniors.

With its emphasis on agriculture, livestock and community, the 4-H is a natural fit for rural youth growing up in small towns and on farms. Naturally, these kids prefer country music, a style with lyrics reflecting both the charm and the claustrophobia of small-town living. If any song understood the need to pick up and run away, it was Sara Evans' "Suds in the Bucket." If any song reflected the joys of simple small-town living, it was Darryl Worley's "Awful Beautiful Life." And certainly, no one tapped into the heartbreak of sending former 4-H participants off to war better than John Michael Montgomery's poignant heartbreaker "Letters from Home."

All of these songs hit the country charts in 2004. If you were a senior in high school and 4-H member back then, chances are this playlist was the soundtrack to your life some seven years ago.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Senior Year 2004: Sounds From the 4-H Club

Earnest high school Anglophiles prefer to keep a low profile, ya know, because they're just a little cooler than you are, and also usually just a bit down and out. (It is always cold and rainy in their world.) But in reality, they're quite an easy lot to spot. They'll likely be decked out in a pair of skinny jeans, Doc Martens and a Joy Division T-shirt (recently bought online, but thoroughly tattered for authenticity's sake). They probably have the current issue of NME peeking out of their backpack at just the right angle. They're likely finding a way to slip in a reference to 24 Hour Party People at all social gatherings. And they're almost always blasting the latest British imports from their Mini Cooper's stereo.

For such lads and lasses who roamed the halls in the mid-'00s, there was plenty of great music to chat over tea about. Post-punk revivalists, Britpoppers and dance-punks dominated the airwaves, including some stars who weren't even from the U.K.; bands from New York City to Vegas crossed the pond in their own musical, metaphorical ways.

Click here to listen to Senior Year, 2004-5: The Earnest Anglophiles.

Ready? OK! Picture it: it's 2002-ish. You're a senior and totally, like, the hottest girl in school. Oh, and you're a cheerleader. Duh! Life is pretty sweet: you get to wear super-short skirts to school, you're dating the point guard, and Bring It On (and the sequel!) just came out, so everyone is, like, totally into cheerleaders right now. (As if they weren't already!) And? Bonus! The pop music of the day is totally awesome for killer floor routines: big, dance-pop beats (perfect for pom ripples!), and sexy (but not too sexy) lyrics performed by hot boys and girls who look like (or at least as good as) cheerleaders. (Britney! Beyonce! JT!) And don't forget the remixes! Imagine each massive pop hit like it was sandwiched into one of those Starburst-filled, basket-toss-friendly, completely obnoxious mega-mixes. Bring. It. On! Whether you were a cheerleader or just dreamed about being (or dating) one — or even if you, like, totally loathed the pom-pom zombies — you're gonna want to practice your spread-eagle for this one. S-E-N-I-O-R-S! Seniors! Seniors! Are the Best!


Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Senior Year 2002: Cheerleader Floor Routine Soundtracks.

A bunch of punk kids form their own adult-scaring, mainstream-baiting subculture with a unique style, slang and sound. Sound familiar? That's the recipe for basically every pop music style ever, but the particular concoction we're talking about here resulted in the Latin-laden R&B and swing genre known as pachuco boogie, which came to life in the '40s and '50s.

It started when disenfranchised Chicano youth in the Southwest and California created an alternative subculture that combined Mexican, Afro-Caribbean and African American elements. Known as pachucos and pachucas, these hipsters had their own dress code (zoot suits were preferred), their own slang (known as caló), and very defined musical tastes: big-band swing mixed with a blues-based style that blended jazz, boogie woogie, early R&B, rock 'n' roll and rumba rhythms. Their Spanish and caló lyrics addressed the scene, its penchant for dancing and partying, and the joint alienation from and appreciation for American (popular) culture these kids felt. And people absolutely loved it: Don Tosti's genre-defining (and -naming!) 1948 hit "Pachuco Boogie" was the first Latin song to sell a million copies! Take a listen to original hipsters like Tosti, Lalo Guerrero and more with our Senior Year 1950: Bailar with the Zoot-Suited "Hooligans" of Pachuco Boogie playlist.

Do a little dance y'all! (Like this y'all, like that y'all!) Feel the groove! (I feel it, I feel it now!) Make a little love now! (Ooh, aah, ooh ooh, aah!) This party's at the funhouse, we're rocking high-top fades, Cross Colours tees and high-top Jordans, and the sound is the New Jack Swing.

It's been here since 1987, ever since Teddy Riley dropped a bomb on us with Keith Sweat's "I Want Her" and Kool Moe Dee's "How Ya Like Me Now." And it ain't going nowhere; as Guy's second album title put it, it's The Future. So what if G-funk and boom-bap lie just around the corner, and dudes were about to keep it too real and hardcore to have fun anymore, and soul music was about to get so horny it would make Digital Underground's "Freaks of the Industry" seem as G-rated as Disney's Beauty and the Beast? For now, U can't touch this, even if you rocked a pair of MC Hammer's yellow parachute pants.

And don't even get us started on New Edition. They're straight running things in 1990, whether it's Johnny Gill, Ralph Tresvant or Bell Biv Devoe, who had us on lock with "Poison." And don't forget Bobby Brown ... Cool used to do her, too. Yeah, buddy, you better heed EPMD's warning and watch out for those fly honeys: they might be a "Gold Digger," or may leave you thinking "I Thought It Was Me?!!" like B.B.D. But hey, every guy wants an "Around the Way Girl" like Uncle L, while the ladies just want to "Hold On" to their love like En Vogue. We're conscious enough to keep it Afrocentric, work out the battles between the sexes and build a true Rhythm Nation.

So swing your black medallions and get busy to the sounds of Janet Jackson and Father MC, and an era when R&B and hip-hop still seemed innocent and carefree.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Senior Year, 1990: New Jack House Party.

You had a job waitin' after your graduation — 50 thou a year would buy a lot of beer. You were doin' all right, gettin' good grades; future was so bright, you had to wear shades! A growing economy, inflation down, employment up, Reagan midway through his second term, Top Gun in theaters — triumphalism all around! The music biz's future looked slightly less certain, but there was hope in new technology: "Annual record sales continue to fall," noted a 1986 Detroit Free Press piece, "while CD sales climb faster than the industry expected." The future wasn't punk kids buying Metallica/Beastie Boys/Run-D.M.C. vinyl, no way: it was upwardly mobile grown-ups who could afford shiny discs by Dire Straits or Robert Palmer, or Paul Simon's Graceland. So the music got super tasteful, almost always using the same antiseptic cocaine-studio drum pulse, even in Van Hagar's hard rock. "With CD production due to catch up to consumer demand in 1987, and with hardware prices continuing to drop," Richard Harrington wrote in the Washington Post, "just about anybody can be a yuppie, at least in terms of sound." Or, to put it another way, "Pick a habit, we got plenty to go around," as L.A. duo David and David sang in "Welcome to the Boomtown," their era-defining, lone Top 40 hit. "All that money makes such a succulent sound."


So here's a playlist full of truly succulent sounds for the young 1986 Distributive Education Clubs of America marketer, entrepreneur and/or middle manager on the rise. Your MBA is mere years away, and it might require a couple all-night cram sessions between frat parties, but like Billy Ocean says, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." Or, for even more inspiration, recall Peter Gabriel in "Big Time": "I'm on my way to making it ... I'll be a big noise with all the big boys/ There's so much stuff I will own." It's a highway to the danger zone, and we don't need another hero, but we're livin' in America and lovin' every minute of it. So be good to yourself. And above all, don't forget to heed the Pet Shop Boys' excellent advice: "You've got the brawn/ I've got the brains/ Let's make lots of money."


Click here to listen to our entire playlist: Senior Year, 1986: Junior Yuppie Business Club.

The phrase "DEAD FREAKS UNITE" appeared in the liner notes to the 1971 live album Grateful Dead, aka Skull & Roses. It was one of the earliest acknowledgements made by the band -- and its extended family of footloose handlers and hippie roadies -- that a swiftly growing number of fans was beginning to follow them, like a wandering pack of teenaged Bedouins, from concert to concert. It was also around this time that rock writers and critics began using the phrase "Deadhead" to denote a resident of this wonderfully transient community.

Interestingly enough, it was on the cold and blustery East Coast, and not that mythical land of golden sun and prehistoric trees known as California, where Deadhead culture fully developed. There was, as author Blair Jackson points out in his book Garcia: An American Life, a practical reason for this: population density. In the "BosWash" corridor in particular, where The Dead traditionally barnstormed a slew of venues and college campuses that were no more than a five-hour drive from one another, it was far more feasible for hardcore fans, many of whom held jobs or went to school, to spend a three-day weekend following the band. Out West, in stark contrast, the trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles was no less than six hours in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, the trek from the Bay Area to Portland, Ore., was a whopping 11 hours or more. As for Denver, another Dead stronghold -- forget about it.

Musically speaking, the early Deadheads didn't listen to their heroes exclusively. Just as the band themselves were busy in this period exploring everything from boogie rock and psychedelia to fusion and bluegrass, their fans also freaked for a wide array of sounds, including New Riders of the Purple Sage, a group that started life as a Dead spin-off in certain respects; the mighty Allman Brothers Band, who shared more than a few stages with The Dead around this time; the avant-funk sounds with which Miles Davis was then pummeling rock audiences; and of course, fellow Californians Santana and Hot Tuna. The dawn of the '70s is also when the first solo albums by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart appeared.

Instead of me typing a few more silly words, the best way to transport yourself back to those magical days is to simply crank this groovy playlist: Senior Year, 1973: Dead Freaks Unite.

While there probably weren't too many high school seniors that made it past the velvet ropes, in 1978, Studio 54 shone like a beacon to kids dreaming of bright lights in the big city. Just a few years before, disco had been a resolutely underground thing, but by 1978 and Saturday Night Fever, it exploded out of the gay community and into pop consciousness, where it was promptly mobbed with celebrities, wannabes and hangers-on. (For a contemporary equivalent, look to the backstage areas at Coachella, or any tabloid-ready hangout where there's a VIP within the VIP.)

Our Class of '78 may never have rubbed elbows inside with Halton and Bianca Jagger, or feasted their own eyes on Gilbert Lesser's infamous wall sign of a man in the moon sniffing sparkly crystals from a silver spoon. But these songs were the soundtrack to the fantasy. Check out 1978 as it sounded from the inside with our Senior Year playlist.

London truly was swinging back in 1991. With a little help (read: hype) from music weeklies such as NME, Melody Maker and Sounds, new stars were being made at clubs such as Syndrome and Blow Up, while Camden-area pubs such as The Good Mixer overflowed with young Brit-pop stars nightly. It didn't take long before the music -- and the legendary, drunken stories of those of those who made it -- made its way to America. And although the release of Nirvana's Nevermind later that year would put a severe dent in Brit pop's popularity, its bright light never faded for the hardcore anglophiles.

You saw them everywhere around school -- they stood out with their long, fringy haircuts, stripey T's and oversized anoraks (heavily adorned with badges of bands such as the Charlatans, Lush and Suede), but if you really wanted to find Brit-pop lovers and pop kids, you went to the local mom-and-pop record shop. Here, anglophiles could happily engage in the Blur vs. Oasis debate -- daily. They would tell you Jesus Jones were a bunch of sellouts, but those crusty-loving travelers, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, ruled! They loved Primal Scream and the Happy Mondays for embracing Madchester's rave culture while deriding fluffy pop rip-offs such as Soho and Candyflip.

The girls loved their unisex look, and "regular" guys wished they knew as much about music. Wear your union jack with pride, and welcome to high school, circa 1991.

Click here to listen to the complete playlist: Senior Year, 1991: Too Cool for School - The Britpoppers