I’m back again…finally! I’ve been away from the website for a few months due to a combination of being busy at home during the summer and a hectic life since arriving back in Spain (more on that in a minute). I’ve (somewhat temporarily) settled back into a routine schedule, so I’m hoping to find more time to catch up on posts I’ve promised months ago, and I’ve still got some cool ideas still on what the future has in store for this website.

If you’re just here for the playlist and don’t care about reading about the rest, click here to be taken straight to the music!

Current status in life

As many of you know, I had reapplied for my job in Spain to teach another year, and was placed in a new school and ready to go. Upon leaving Spain in June, I was looking forward to returning and going back to the awesome life I’ve had here, but as I spent more and more time home this summer I was unsure if it was the right direction for my life. I didn’t feel excited about teaching another year, and a combination of other personal reasons made me convicted that teaching just wasn’t what I should be doing. I nevertheless returned to Spain, but after a rough first week back, I formally made the decision to quit my job. I wanted to stay in Spain a bit longer, however, so I decided to attempt to be an Au Pair with a family here in Madrid. I found an awesome family not too far out of Madrid where I’m taking care of their two adorable children, 5 year-old Nieves and 7 year-old Mario, and have just finished my second week here with them. I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying here, but it looks like the family will only need me for another month or two, so after that I’ll have to decide if I want to try finding something else in Spain or if I want to come home.

(Hopefully) upcoming material

There’s still lots of ideas and posts I’ve yet to accomplish with this website, but I spent a lot of this summer unplugged from this site, instead reading lots of books, running and riding my bike, taking trips and visiting friends, and so on – a trend that’s continued since I’ve gotten back to Spain. My Au Pair job gives me mornings and early afternoons free, so I’ll try to spend a day each week working on the website again. Old posts I’ve still not yet written include my trip to Miami/Orlando in June, my second trip to Valencia in May, and some small things I’ve done since returning to Spain. I also wanted to start branching out with new posts about topics like books, more topics on music, and other random musings I want to expand upon. We’ll see how much of that gets written, however…

End of Summer playlist

The moment all the music fans have been waiting for! I’ve not been super involved in exploring music this summer as I was home with limited access to Spotify, but I did find lots of new playlists regarding different genres and moods that have given me some decent songs the put together. To make up for the lack of music this summer I made a 50-song playlist for you all, consisting (as usual) of a mix of my favorite songs, both English and Spanish songs. A few of them might be repeated from the summer 2017 playlist I posted last, but most should be completely new! Without further ado…

The playlist starts off with many of my current favorite songs, all newly-released singles by some of my favorite bands. “One Foot” (1), “The Last of The Real Ones” (2), and “Walk on Water” (3) are from three of my favorite bands and all are singles from upcoming albums: Walk the Moon’s untitled-as-of-yet third album is due in October, Fall Out Boys’ Mania in January 2018, and Thirty Seconds to Mars’  fifth album is upcoming with date and title unknown. Songs “Don’t Matter Now” (4), “Genevieve, Come Out Tonight” (5) and “24/7” (7) also new singles from artists I like, and Kygo’s “Stargazing” (6) is off his new EP with the same title.

Next up I’ve got a few tracks from Bleachers’ second album Gone Now, which was released in early June. It’s easily been my favorite album of the summer (no surprise, as I absolutely love Bleachers and their synth-pop/indie vibe of music), so I included here “Dream Of Mickey Mantle” (8), “I Miss Those Days” (9), “All My Heroes” (10), and “Hate That You Know Me” (11) on the playlist.

Speaking of favorite bands releasing new albums, I’ve included here “Adeline” (12) off of alt-j’s new album Relaxer. I included their first two singles “3WW” and “In Cold Blood” in my April/May 2017 playlist, but unfortunately the rest of the album was not nearly as good as these two songs led me to hope. “Adeline” is the only other song I really like, but it’s an amazing slow-building, symphonic saga of love that evokes a wide variety of emotions.

The next couple tracks are a few random songs released this summer that I’ve really liked: Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Cut To The Feeling” (13), OneRepublic and Seeb’s collaboration “Rich Love” (14), and NEIKED’s “Call Me” (15).

Directly afterwards are a few songs by The xx, a band I recently discovered for the first time. While I haven’t had a chance to dig deeply into all three of their albums, I included three of the songs I’ve really liked so far. “I Dare You” (16) is off their third and most recent studio album I See You, and is the first song I heard of the theirs that got me interested in their music. I also included “VCR” (17) and “Crystallized” (18) as two songs off their first self-titled album that I’ve listened to the most thus far. Hopefully in future playlists I can include more of their music once I’ve explored it all fully.

We now move into a section of lots of folk and acoustic music that I’ve found recently. Songs 19-26 all fit into this section. Through some of Spotify’s explore playlists (like ‘Your Favorite Coffeehouse’, ‘Fresh Folk’, and ‘Folk Pop’ I’ve been able to find songs and artists to relax to at night or when I want to read. The only one I want to specifically mention is “Portland, Maine” (20) by Donovan Woods. This has been one of two or three favorite songs all summer, and is a folk perfection song that makes me think of getting lost in the backwoods camping, canoeing, and fishing.

Another section of similar music follows with songs 27-30, all jazz songs with female singers. Recently I was grabbing a coffee here in Madrid with a friend and was loving the music, so I asked the barista and found the music was coming from a Spotify playlist titled ‘Women of Jazz’, which I promptly located, saved, and have been going through recently. Finally, the last English song in the playlist is a Peter Hollens and Tim Foust acappella duet of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” (31) that features some amazingly beautiful and haunting harmonies.

We now change languages and move into the Spanish music of the playlist! I’ve got quite a variety of Spanish music in this playlist, unlike the usual reggaeton that’s always in my playlists. Within songs 32-47 you find lots of acoustic music, folk music, pop music, and some classic rock. Both Taburete and Pereza are Spanish rock bands from Madrid. Some of their biggest hits include Taburete’s “Sirenas” (33) and Pereza’s “Princesas” (35), and I included a few more Taburete songs as well.

Another Spanish group I absolutely LOVE this summer has been Arnau Grisau, an acoustic duet from the north of Spain. They only have four songs total released right now, but the three I included are all extremely amazing. The best of the three, “Para que el mundo lo vea” (34) has been alongside aforementioned “Portland, Maine” as a summer favorite. It’s a critique on the current generation and their obsession with social media and trying to look perfect online and has some amazingly insightful, witty, and truthful lyrics. There’s also the band Morat with two songs in the playlist, a band I jokingly call the “Colombian Mumford & Sons”. Their 2016 hit “Cómo Te Atreves” made it into a previous playlist, but this summer I started listening to more of their music and realized I love a lot of their songs.

Outside of these groups, the remaining music is lots of random songs, such as some famous Spanish rock bands, a couple latin pop songs, some fusion (salsa/merengue/bachata), and a few popular reggaeton songs, all that I’ve discovered throughout the last month here in Spain.

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