Alphabet Soup Week 50: The Y Tracks

This week’s Y Tracks playlist draws heavily on my greatest hits compilations as well as featuring one of my favorite songs of all time.

Dec 16, 2024

Welcome to week 50 of Alphabet Soup! My wife and I have made it back home to Bermuda and this series has now made it to the Y Tracks. Somehow, despite a couple days off in London, I didn't manage to make much progress on this week's installment. I'd hoped to grind it out on yesterday's 8+ hour flight from Heathrow to JFK but the WiFi on the flight was intermittent and pretty sketchy and I didn't get as far as I'd hoped. So I find myself pulling this all together at 10 pm on a Sunday night, which feels like 2 am to me, on about six hours sleep. Awesome!

As I'm a little punch drunk at this point, I'm gonna keep this week's intro brief. Several classic tracks from greatest hits compilation share space with deeper cuts from a couple of my favorite albums and one of my favorite songs of all time makes an appearance. A fairly eclectic batch of songs this week and hopefully most people will find something that appeals.

Once you've had a chance to read and listen, please head over to the comments and let me know your thoughts. I'd love to hear what resonated with you. Any of your old favorites on here? What did I miss? Go ahead and throw out some of your favorite Y Tracks!

Until next week, happy listening!!

ALPHABET SOUP WEEK 50: The Y Tracks

This week’s selections:

TRACK: "You're Too Young" from April (2007)

ARTIST: VAST

Another selection from my favorite VAST album, this time going with one of my favorite songs of all time, You're Too Young. Despite being released way back in 2007, I remember really falling in love with this album in April 2013 as my wife and I hiked the GR70 long distance trail in France. We spent a couple weeks tackling the 167-mile trail that follows the route taken by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his donkey Modestine in 1878, later documented in the imaginatively titled "Travels With a Donkey in the Cevennes". The album soundtracked just about every night on that trip, which frequently comes to mind when I hear this song.

TRACK: "Your Latest Trick" from Brothers In Arms (1985)

ARTIST: Dire Straits

Surprisingly this is the first time I've featured the 1985 album Brothers In Arms, the fifth studio album by Dire Straits. The album saw mixed, but mostly negative critical reviews, particularly from the British Music press, but has since grown in stature. In 2000, Q Magazine ranked the album at number 51 on the list of Greatest British Albums Ever and Rolling Stone Magazine has included the album in three iterations of its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, most recently placing it at number 417 in 2020. Commercially the album was a massive success—it became the first album in history to sell one million copies in the CD format and has sold over 30 million copies worldwide. Your Latest Trick, the fifth and final single from the album, enjoyed limited commercial success, peaking at number 26 on the UK Singles chart and failing to chart in the US.

TRACK: "You Got Me" from Things Fall Apart (1999)

ARTIST: The Roots

Things Fall Apart, the fourth album from US hip hop band The Roots, was recorded at Electric Lady Studios in 1997 and 1998 and released in 1999. Recording coincided with a period of activity by the Solquarians, a loosely knit collaborative including artists such as D'Angelo, Erykah Badu and Common. Many of the artists would perform on each other's records and several stunning and influential albums would be released in subsequent years, including D'Angelo's Voodoo (2000), Badu's Mama's Gun (2001) and Common's Like Water For Chocolate (2000). You Got Me, featuring vocals by Erykah Badu and Eve, was the first single released from the album; it reached number 39 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.

As you make your way through this week’s playlist, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do any of these tracks really stand out for you? What do you like? What don’t you like?

Please click the button below to leave a comment.

TRACK: "Youthless" from Modern Guilt (2008)

ARTIST: Beck

Created with producer Danger Mouse, the original concept for Beck's 2008 album Modern Guilt was to comprise ten tracks of two minutes each. While Beck later decided to eliminate the shorter tracks, this still remains the shortest of his entire catalog with a runtime of only 33:33. The album received generally positive reviews although The Guardian was particularly harsh, with critic Rob Fitzpatrick calling it "a vanity project" and closing his review with, "Perhaps this is a good time to say goodbye" (ouch!). Thankfully Beck soldiered on, releasing the phenomenal and universally acclaimed Morning Phase six years later. Modern Guilt peaked at number 4 in the US and Canada and reached number 9 in the UK, representing Beck's first top ten album across the pond.

TRACK: "You Might" from The Riddle (1984)

ARTIST: Nik Kershaw

The third appearance on Alphabet Soup for Nik Kershaw as Know How and Roses from 1984's The Riddle appeared back in weeks 22 and 27 respectively. This is one of those albums I absolutely loved as a kid—I remember damn near wearing out the cassette in my Walkman—but then almost completely forgot about for the better part of a decade. Of course, I knew, loved, and remembered the bigger hits like The Riddle, Wide Boy and Don Quixote. But at some point in the early 2000s I bought the CD and fell in love with the album all over again. I consciously decided not to feature those hits on Alphabet Soup and You Might is another one of the deeper cuts I’ve always enjoyed.

TRACK: "You Make My Dreams" from Best of Hall & Oates: Starting All Over Again (1997)

ARTIST: Hall & Oates

I don't believe I'd ever heard a Hall & Oates album in its entirety until Kevin Alexander featured 1973's Abandoned Luncheonette on its 50th anniversary back in November 2023. I remember being shocked to discover that the duo had been around that long. I'd always assumed that they were primarily an 80s act, perhaps one that originated in the late 70s, but certainly not as early as 1973. For much of my life I'd only ever known Hall & Oates by their radio hits, a knowledge that was reinforced and somewhat expanded with the release of their 1997 double CD best of compilation Starting All Over Again. You Make My Dreams, which peaked at number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, was the fourth and final single from the 1980 album Voices which spent 100 weeks on the Billboard 200 album chart.

TRACK: "You Can Do Magic" from Encore: More Greatest Hits (1991)

ARTIST: America

The second of four tracks from artists that I primarily interacted with through their greatest hits compilations. In 1991 America released Encore, their second greatest hits collection which is, quite frankly, one of the weakest "hits" compilations I've ever owned. With only two tracks that I'd consider hits, The Border from 1983's Your Move and this track, You Can Do Magic, from 1982's View From the Ground, this release smacks of a money grab and I quickly regretted purchasing it. When it was released, You Can Do Magic represented a comeback for the band and was their first top 40 hit since 1976's Today's the Day (which I suppose I must begrudgingly accept as the technical definition of a "hit" despite kind of hating it).

TRACK: "You'll Accomp'ny Me" from Greatest Hits (1994)

ARTIST: Bob Seger

Bob Seger's 1994 Greatest Hits compilation is chock full of amazing songs—all killer, no filler as they say—and would likely sit in my top 20 best of comps. Yet another artist only ever represented in my CD library by a hits collection, Bob Seger has sold over 75 million records worldwide over his six decade career. The 1994 compilation on which You'll Accomp'ny Me appears, reached number 8 on the US Billboard 200 chart, peaked at number 4 and 6 in Canada and the UK respectively, and would become Seeger's best selling album, moving close to nine million units and attaining RIAA diamond certification. The track, which originally appeared on Seeger's eleventh studio album, 1980's Against The Wind, peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and helped propel the album to number one, displacing Pink Floyd's The Wall in the process and holding on to the top spot for six weeks.

TRACK: "You Don't Have To Cry" from Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969)

ARTIST: Crosby, Stills & Nash

In a 2014 interview with Dan Rather, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash recalled coming together over this track, You Don't Have To Cry from the band's 1969 self-titled debut. It was, by all accounts, a transcendental moment and launched a partnership that would lead to eight studio albums, including three with Canadian legend Neil Young. While 1970's Déjà Vu is my favorite from the supergroup, the self-titled debut is a close second, with this particular track comfortably sitting within my top ten of theirs.

TRACK: "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" from The Essential Neil Diamond (2001)

ARTIST: Neil Diamond, Barbara Streisand

I've previously mentioned my early love affair with Neil Diamond's music, driven by my dad's multi-hour reel to reel party mix tape on which Neil featured heavily, along with healthy doses of ABBA and The Bee Gees. Diamond's 1978 album You Don't Bring Me Flowers was actually one of the first two records I ever bought with my own money, the other being The Bee Gees' Spirits Having Flown. Almost 45 years later, my memories remain vivid and crystal clear—peeling off the shrink wrap, pulling the album out of its sleeve, placing it on the turntable at my grandmother's house in Reading, and putting the needle on the record. The album, which was released to capitalize on the success of the duet with Streisand (a solo version appeared on Diamond's previous album), peaked at number 4 on the Billboard 200 and went on to sell over 2 million units in the US.

Christmas in Prague

By the time we hit Prague, our fourth city in a little over a week, we were a little worn out and kinda “done” with the city tours (lessons learned for the future). And while Prague was gorgeous (probably our second favorite city after Copenhagen), Vienna totally ruined us for Christmas Markets. But we did manage to get out to a couple of markets during our time in the city and here's a sampling of what we saw:

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Here’s the link to the running playlist which is updated on a weekly basis as each new installment is published:

ALPHABET SOUP RUNNING PLAYLIST

Tracks missing from the Spotify playlist:

Allegory by Murray Attaway (Week 02)
Face Me and Smile by The Lover Speaks (Week 12)
From Your Mouth by God Lives Underwater (Week 13)
This Can’t Go On! by The Lover Speaks (Week 23)
Two for the Show by Trooper (Week 40)
Twenty One by Marry Me Jane (Week 40)
Slow by 13 Engines (Week 47)

Thank you for reading Joy in the Journey, I appreciate you being here! If there’s someone in your life you think may enjoy this post, feel free to share it.