Music Taste
Ted maintains a carefully ranked list of 200+ favorite songs, exported from Spotify. The list reveals deep, specific taste — this is not a casual playlist but a deliberate ranking.
Top 10
| Rank | Song | Artist | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pink Moon | Nick Drake | 1972 |
| 2 | September Gurls | Big Star | 1972 |
| 3 | Maria's Theme | The Limiñanas | 2018 |
| 4 | You Must Be out of Your Mind | The Magnetic Fields | 2010 |
| 5 | Driver 8 | R.E.M. | 1985 |
| 6 | Mondo '77 | Looper | 2000 |
| 7 | Fake Plastic Trees | Radiohead | 1994 |
| 8 | Slow Down | The Feelies | 1986 |
| 9 | White Girl | X | 1981 |
| 10 | I'm Dead | The Limiñanas | 2014 |
Profile
Core genres: Indie rock, post-punk, art rock, literate alternative, dream pop, Britpop
Most represented artists: - R.E.M. (6 songs) — Driver 8, Pretty Persuasion, Maps And Legends, Cuyahoga, Fall On Me, Swan Swan H. Heavily IRS-era (Fables, Lifes Rich Pageant) - Radiohead (7 songs) — Fake Plastic Trees, No Surprises, Exit Music, Subterranean Homesick Alien, Let Down, Morning Bell/Amnesiac, Bloom. Spans Bends through King of Limbs - Nick Drake (3 entries) — Pink Moon, Things Behind The Sun (appears 3 times). Clearly a foundational artist - The Limiñanas (3 songs) — Maria's Theme, I'm Dead, Calentita. French garage/psych — a deep cut favorite - The Magnetic Fields (3 songs) — spanning Realism, 69 Love Songs, Holiday - Guided By Voices (3 songs) — Motor Away, Glad Girls, As We Go Up We Go Down - Genesis (4 songs) — Carpet Crawlers, Lamb Lies Down, Afterglow, Musical Box, Cinema Show. All Peter Gabriel / prog era - The Feelies (3 songs) — Slow Down (twice), Crazy Rhythms, The High Road - Wire (3 songs) — Ex Lion Tamer, Mannequin, Fragile. All from Pink Flag - Galaxie 500 (3 songs) — Blue Thunder, Tugboat, Oblivious
Eras: The list spans 1969 (The Stooges) to 2020 (Dirty Projectors), with heavy concentration in 1977–2012. The sweet spot is the late '70s post-punk through '00s indie rock.
Emotional signature: Melancholic, cerebral, atmospheric. Very few upbeat pop songs. Even the "accessible" picks (Pumped Up Kicks, Bohemian Rhapsody, Fix You) are surrounded by deep cuts that suggest they're included for specific personal reasons, not mainstream appeal.
Telling picks: - Scala & Kolacny Brothers' choral version of Creep over the Radiohead original - Peter Gabriel covering Arcade Fire ("My Body Is A Cage") and Bon Iver ("Mirrorball") - Flight of the Conchords' "Not Crying" — the humor thread - "This Is Halloween" from Nightmare Before Christmas at #154 - Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" and Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" — unapologetic about beauty
What's absent: Almost no hip-hop, R&B, country, jazz, blues, classical, or electronic (beyond Lemon Jelly and Propellerheads). This is an indie rock person through and through.
Curation timeline: Most songs were added August 29–30, 2011 (the initial Spotify import) with a second wave December 2012 and a third in December 2022, suggesting periodic revisiting and expansion.