The Soundtrack of Your Lifetime
Find out how old you are in songs! Enter the year you were born below and get the 10 songs each year since you were born. Click the add year button. Then share your list
Scroll through time with the radio time machine.
Community Sonic Archives
If you'd like to feature your sonic archive here, send me your top ten per year using the contact form at the bottom of this page. It doesn't need to be for 100 years! Any time period is fine. But 10 a year only!
UK 1952-2025
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Connections to Camden.
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Connections to Lewisham
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100 years.
1000 songs.
10 songs a year.
An alternative, ear-crafted, sonic archive of 10 songs a year from 1930-2030.
A Reminder of time // self // sound.
What are the songs the year you were born?
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The Albums
Please here for some album selections.
Sister Project
Finished exploring the 1000 songs? Dive into our interactive, map-based oral history archive of personal stories, gigs, and memories.
The Journey of Sound: 1930 – 2030
Do you really want to know? This 100-year music timeline is my curated ear-crafted sonic archive. It follows a strict 10 songs per year rule. You could say it's a folk art celebration of human discovery and experience of music. Or you could not. But it's much more fun to measure time in songs than hours, minutes, seconds etc! It came about as a way of orientating myself in the present. I thought a good way of doing that was making lists while listening to Monkey Magic.
This isn’t just my archive, it’s a template for yours. you can update the site with any songs. The site can be downloaded and used completely offline. In create collection you can add any songs. The site can then be downloaded and can be kept forever as a standalone file (obviously the song lookups don't work unless you are connected to the internet). I have also added in a few fun things where you can scroll through time using the radio or find songs from your lifetime. If you want your ten songs a year added let me know and I can add them to the main site.
Songs are selected based on ones I like. If I hear a song I like more than another on the list. I'll take it out and add the new one. I am aiming for a release year. I don't mind what country the songs is released in. I have typed all the info manually. So there will be some mistakes (please let me know! I check stuff against Wikipedia and Discogs). I keep coming across Library of Congress, the Alan Lomax Archive, and historical catalogs from record labels including Vocolion, Decca, HMV, Columbia, Polydor,Blue Note and 4AD
This project was built by listening to songs. It's just songs I like. 10 a year for 100 years. I can like things for a number of reasons, memories, the reaction I get to the songs, remembering how I first heard it. Each song I pick generally represents something bigger than just the song itself. Also I am deliberately not using the word playlist. For me this is more a break in case of emergency list, a reminder of something different. Playing songs too much can spoil them! Genrefying can spoil them. Just enjoy them for what they are or were or what they become! These things can't necessarily be captured quantified or translated.
Do you like the Beatles? Great. There will be something for your here. But basically this is my attempt at trying to work out my taste. And the story about how that came about through movements, including the birth of Rock & Roll, the evolution of Folk, and the global spread of Jazz. You can explore these specifically in my Genres Journey section. It's all about interconnected links and anchor points. Something like that.
No. It's songs I like ordered by year. But start at 1996. You'll find that from that point all of these songs interconnect forwards and backwards. They all interelate and hope to tell that story with this selection! This site is dedicated to human ways of discovering music, reading, friends, family and radio. Nick Grimshaw on BBC 6 Music kindly spoke to me about the initial incarnation of this idea. That conversation inspired me to further expand the idea. But also you'll find choices I discovered from the BBC John Peel, Lauren Laverne, Steve Lamaq, Deb Grant, Mark Radcliffe and Marc Riley. Also from watching BBC shows in the past and KEXP and NPR Tiny Desk in lockdown. With a special mention for John Kennedy (Xfm).
You won't find much classical, mainstream pop, or hip hop in my archive. This is just what I like 10 songs a year! I'd listen to these styles outside of this project. Same with bands. I am missing a lot of the greats. Sometimes you hear songs too many times! Also it is my taste so even when I thought new music had passed me by I scratched the surface and found stuff I liked. I am hoping others will add their sonic archives to the site which will explore the evolution of their taste and make the project richer.
Once you've built a list, click the Export CSV button. To easily move these tracks to Spotify, I recommend using TuneMyMusic's CSV to Spotify tool. Just upload your downloaded CSV file, connect your streaming account, and it will generate the playlist for you automatically.
Use all the features with any songs!
Paste in your songs as below, upload a file, check a song or use the artist generator:
1. Year, Artist, Track (Instant import, bypasses lookup)
2. Artist, Track (Slower, looks up the release year automatically at 20 tracks a minute)
You can then temporarily use all the features of the site with these songs! Scroll to the bottom of the page to download permanently.
Artists Discography Finder
Type an artist name to pull 10 songs a year from their MusicBrainz discography into the site, by year.
Year Checker
Type an artist and track to instantly get an audio preview and fetch official release details from Discogs.
Public Registry Board
Discuss the 100-year archive, suggest alternative tracks, or share the eras that define your sonic lifetime.
Updates and Community Thoughts
Leave a comment, suggest a track, or read the latest site updates. (Comments are moderated and will appear after I review them).
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