This is going to get personal.

A workout playlist represents the core of what motivates each of us. When you’re 3 minutes from the end of your time limit, and your legs are shaking and your knees are wavering, and you’re pretty sure you’ve just slung sweat on the pretty girl on the elliptical next to yours… you NEED to be in a happy place.

With that said, I lost my iPod connector cord a long time ago. In fact, according to it, the last song added was “Golden Skans” by the Klaxons on October 19th, 2007. So when the GF said that she had one of the first generation iPod cords, my heart skipped a beat. The prospect of updating the workout playlist for the first time in 17 months… well, I realized quickly I had to get my act together.

I’d venture to say a workout playlist is like a mixtape to yourself, so you should take as much care in choosing the tracks. A general tip: I like songs that start slow and end in crescendo and make you feel like you are the protagonist in your own “Rudy” or “Rocky”. See “The Adventure” by Angels & Airwaves, “Tusk” by Fleetwood Mac (try to keep up with that beat), from Elton’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” to Sia’s “Breathe Me” and on the outset even Snow Patrol’s “Make This Go On Forever”.

On to the update:

First things first: what to keep & delete from the current list. I quickly identified the songs I’m always skipping: “Crocodile” by Underworld (turns out just because it’s dance/trace/whatever and has the beat doesn’t mean it’s good workout music), “Knocked Up” by Kings of Leon (what was I thinking), “The Pretender” by Foo Fighters (played out), a latin version of Coldplay’s “Clocks” leftover from Salsa lessons, Lindsay Loha- whaaaa? How’d that get in there? and many more.

The favorites stay: a little George Michael with “Freedom”, “Here (In Your Arms)” by Hellogoodbye, “Over and Over” by Hot Chip, AFI’s “37mm”, “In The Morning” by Junior Boys, “Intertiatic E.S.P.” by The Mars Volta, Lady Sov’s “Gatheration”, etc. etc.

And being the musical pack rat that I am, turns out I can’t let go of songs that I rarely even let play like “Rest My Chemistry” by Interpol, “New Day” by Kate Havnevik (I have to skip to 3:45 to make it work), or anything by Royksopp: “Only This Moment”, “Beautiful Day Without You”, “Circuit Breaker”.

Then comes the exciting third act… new additions. Some additions were just old songs I hadn’t had at the time before that should have been on the list long ago, like “Midnight Show” by Killers, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” and Snow Patrol’s “Open Your Eyes” (which I’ve been wanting on the list since I signed up for Bally’s).

But most were all new songs: “Pogo” by Digitalism, the MSTRKRFT remix of The Gossip’s “Listen Up”, “Gamma Ray” by Beck, too much Paramore to even list (shameful, Dan, just shameful), C.S.S.’s “Jager Yoga”, Franz Ferdinand’s “Ulysses”, and one of my new favorites, “Someone Great” by LCD Soundsystem.

All of this might strike you as a very strange workout list. “But Dan, wherever is the pumping Black-Eyed Peas, the energetic Spears, or other top 40 favs?” But it’s my list; the one that generates some semblance of MY happy place when I’m pretending I can’t smell the combined odor of armpits, unbrushed teeth and two-week unwashed sweat rags.

Besides, I would never admit that I have a remix of Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind” in there …because I don’t. That would just be homosexual.

Hellogoodbye – “Here (In Your Arms)”
Snow Patrol – “Open Your Eyes”
Franz Ferdinand – “Ulysses”
LCD Soundsystem – “Someone Great”

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