Your (Almost) Daily Playlist: 12-2-23

According to my Spotify Wrapped, pop was my top genre of 2023, thanks to the many hits I jammed to this year. But did you know I almost missed one of the greatest pop songs ever? Back in 1999, I barely heard Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time” when it was a chart-topper. It was only when the song was descending on the charts and I joined Jive Records, her label, as their head of Licensing that I discovered this masterpiece. I’ve been a loyal fan ever since, even after I left the company. 

We had a party at Jive when Britney turned 18. It’s hard to believe that today she turns 42. A few of her hits are on today’s playlist.

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Your (Almost) Daily Playlist: 1-6-23

In his excellent autobiography Le Freak, Chic’s Nile Rodgers writes how his group’s record label wanted to capture the magic Rodgers and his music partner Bernard Edwards brought to their group to other acts on the Atlantic Records roster, such as The Rolling Stones and Bette Midler. Nile turned down the acts that were firmly established, as with them less attention would be paid to the song’s writers and producers. He wanted to work with a lesser known act. Atlantic Records president Jerry Greenberg suggested a group of sisters who “stick together like birds of a feather,” and so it came to be that Rodgers and Edwards wrote and produced the We Are Family album for Sister Sledge. I think you know what happened next.

Today’s playlist celebrates the birthday of Sister Sledge lead vocalist Kathy Sledge by including several tracks from that classic album.

Throwback Thursday: 1999

The music of 1999 shows the century coming to a close in grand style, as if to say the next year the party will be over, oops, out of time, so this year we better party. Latinx artists were crossing over to the mainstream pop chart. Cher and Santana, who first charted in the 1960s, scored the biggest hits of their careers. Artists who made their chart debuts include Eminem and Britney Spears. Pure pop exploded, though the charts made room for country, hip hop, electronica, and big beat. As one who values diversity, I loved hearing all these different genres and styles bump up against each other on the radio. Here are 30 prime examples of the music that hit in 1999.

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