Ten Years of Birthday Playlists

Ten years. Ten Playlists. Ten favorite songs.

Author

Marcus Baker
May 09, 2025

Each year I keep a playlist of all the songs I love and/or listen to the most. I’ve done this since I was 21. Songs can be from any time or year, they just have to be music I listened to a significant amount over the 12 month period I was a certain age.

I’m turning 32 this year (on the 17th, in case you’re wondering), which means that this past year’s playlist (31) marks ten years of making these playlists. Over the years, it’s become a fun way to track the different stages and passages of my life. Major life changes, breakups, new friendships- all those memories are contained on these playlists. As are records of my shifting tastes, the people who’ve influenced me, and the films whose music burrowed into my core.

I thought it might be fun to look back at each playlist and pick a single song that I feel best describes the playlist and to some extent, the era of my life. A marker of who I was at the time, who I am now, and my continuing relationship to the artist’s work. Given that each of the playlists tend to be 50-60 songs deep, it was understandably a little tricky to narrow it down to just one, so I’ve included a few honorable mentions as well.

While I would encourage you to read through the list (I worked hard on this!), you’re also welcome to listen to the playlist version here.

Age 21 -  “Two” - The Antlers

My best friend and I saw The Antlers last year when they came to Seattle. I had long wanted to see them live, if only because of how much “Two” (and their album “Hospice”) meant to me over the years. The record uses the analogy of a hospice worker taking care of a difficult patient as a metaphor for an abusive relationship, something I had an unfortunately close understanding of at the time. “Two” is the album’s centerpiece and it’s one of the few times I have cried listening to an album, particularly with the lyrics of the final verse:

Two people living in one small room

Two half families tearing at you

Two ways to tell the story no one worries

Two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry

Two people talking inside your brain

Two believe believing that I’m the one to blame

Two different voices coming out of your mouth

While I’m too cold to care and too sick to shout

It’s a clear, succinct description for an experience many of us are too familiar with, and one that has stuck with me since the first time I heard it nearly ten years ago.

Age 22 - “The Medic” - Foxing

This is the playlist I had the toughest time narrowing down to a single song. I was going through a lot at that age (who isn’t) and my tastes were all over the place. At the same time, I was winding my way out of my Tumblr phase and an old tumblr pal who was similarly into midwest emo shared this song with me. I immediately latched on to this and their barnburner “Rory”, which ended up kick starting my ongoing love affair with Foxing’s work (see: later in this list)

Age 23 - “Sprained Ankle” -Julien Baker

It takes a lot to knock off heavy hitters like “Nikes” and “Creeks” for me, especially as both come from such seminal albums that I continue to spin to this day. But Baker’s first record arrived at a critical juncture in my life. My mother passed away in November 2016 and Baker’s sparse, warm arrangements coupled with her musings on depression, hopelessness, and self loathing were a balm to me at one of the lowest points in my life.

Isn’t this weather nice

Are you okay?

Should I go somewhere else

And hide my face?

Lines like these got me through the worst of the worst weeks, and helped me find a way forward when it seemed like there was no hope to be found.

Age 24 - “Lovely Rita” -The Beatles / ”Same Logic/Teeth” -Brand New

I’m going to take this opportunity to acknowledge two things:

1) I was a devoted, obsessive Brand New fan growing up (pre-Jesse allegations).

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2) I had a year-long Beatles phase in my mid-20’s.

As far as BN goes, those first four records meant a lot to me as a young man. Gratefully, I didn’t go through with the tattoo I’d long considered getting to immortalize my love for them. But sonically and thematically, Brand New was it for me. So when Science Fiction dropped in Summer 2017, I was all over it.

On the other end of the spectrum, this was the age when I picked up Peter Doggett’s excellent book You Never Give Me Your Money, which covers the waning years of the Fab Four and the accompanying insults and recriminations and got totally wrapped up in it. The book humanized four icons and brought them down to the level of four twenty-something boys who didn’t understand how to communicate, let alone manage the power they’d seemingly tripped and fallen into. I could pick any number of their songs, but I’m going with “Lovely Rita” because it’s the one I loved the most at the time. I’m more of an Abbey Road guy these days, but Sgt. Pepper will always have a special place in my heart. 

Age 25 - “Eden (Harlem) -Nicholas Britell

The If Beale Street Could Talk score is the single greatest film score ever recorded in my opinion. It’s also the score that made me aware of film scoring as an artform unto itself.

I often like to say that I don’t feel like I watched any movies until I was 25, and coincidentally, my 25 playlist is when film scores and music from films start to really make their presence felt. I was living in LA at the time and really starting to eat/drink/breathe filmmaking, so in some ways, it’s a fond reminder of that time frame when I was just starting to figure out the direction I wanted to move in. Britell’s Beale Street score has always held a special place in my heart as a reminder of this time. With its lush, intricate arrangements, his use of horns and strings - it evokes something both old and new. The anxiety and excitement of a moment not yet defined.

Age 26 - “The Lion King (2020)” -Blank Check with Griffin and David

Yes, it’s kind of a cheat but once that’s very much warranted I feel.

For as much as I will go to bat for “Sweetest Taboo” as one of the great songs ever recorded, and Sleigh Bells cover of the seminal Led Belly tune (which soundtracks the trailer for “The Rhythm Section”), I can’t pick against The Two Friends. 2020 was a weird year for a lot of reasons, but getting into Blank Check was the best thing to come out of it for me. The Lion King episode in particular covers a lot of ground I love to hear them cover- behind the scenes drama, anthropological explorations, and of course, the strange journey collaborative artforms can take on their path to a very strange sort of success.

Age 27 - “Pyotr” -Bad Books

I am, at my very core, a doomed romantic. From Dylan’s “Twist of Fate” and “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” to the umpteen million emo songs covering doomed love affairs, I cannot get enough of love stories where it all falls apart.

I’m not usually one for storytelling in songs but I can’t get enough of Andy Hull’s sparse, plainspoken retelling of the story of Russian Tsar Peter the Great, who discovered his wife, Catherine, cheating on him with her personal secretary, Willem Mon. Given the gnarly ending the song arrives at, Hull’s marvelously deft touch is the key to driving home the song’s tragedy without allowing the particulars to paint the events in an extreme light. Speaking as someone who is very biased (I listened to it non-stop for three days after I first heard it), I think it’s one of the greatest songs ever recorded

And I tell you in the heat of the scuffle

Nobody ever takes my eyes off of you

Age 28 - “All Eyes On Me” -Bo Burnham

What is left to be said about this song that has not already been said? Bo and I are roughly the same age so I’ve been aware of his work since we were both in High School. But it wasn’t until his 2016 special Make Happy that I started to really clock what Bo was really on about. “Can’t Handle This” was a regular revisit for years prior to just about everything from Inside. But “All Eyes on Me” takes everything he fused together with Make Happy and dives so far down the depressive wormhole that it somehow comes out the other side with a sense of manic, warped, paper-thin hope. It’s the perfect post-Covid document for a country that, in the years since, has done what it does best: Deny and bury our collective trauma. 

Age 29 - “Running Red Lights” -The Avalanches ft. Rivers Cuomo

Music that my best friend has shown me has made multiple appearances on this list, but perhaps none more so than this song.

I am not someone who gets stoned very often- nothing against it, just not my thing- but in recent years, my best friend and I have begun occasionally getting high and listening to records together. My friend, who is a master of crafting a vibe, had the perfect lineup of records picked out for the first time we did this, which included this album and the J Dilla classic Donuts. I, on the other hand, took three too many edibles and ended up being stoned for the better part of three days. My favorite memory of those days though was being stoned and listening to this record with my best friend. And then going home and listening to it in my headphones the entire next day because somehow I could feel Rivers Cuomo’s voice in my feet. 

Age 30 - “October Song” -Wendell

“October Song” reminds me of several overlapping stages in my life. Wendell is the stage name of… Wendell… whose last name I don’t recall but worked at The Grand Cinema at the time of the 2023 Tacoma Film Festival. This song was used as intro music for the TFF’s pre-show trailer that played before each film and each of the short film blocks, including the local shorts block where my short “One Hundred” played. I remembered going to TFF growing up and having friends play it as I got more into the Seattle film scene. At the time it seemed like an impossible goal to play there, so getting to play TFF felt like a huge milestone for me.

At the time, the first flickers of the Seattle Film Society were just starting to kick up as well. We were planning our first Locals Only screening and I wanted SFS to have a cool intro trailer before the films. “October Song” was very much in my mind when putting that together, and continues to be a song I love to throw on when I want a chill vibe.

Age 31 -  “Secret History” -Foxing

I was 25 when I decided to fully commit to a career as a filmmaker. I told myself that I didn’t care if I was broke, I didn’t care what I had to do, I was going to chase this dream with abandon for as long as I possibly could. Most artists don’t “make it.” Most die broke and miserable and alone. To pursue this at the level I want to pursue it, is to be painfully conscious of that fact every second of every day. You have to put up with countless indignities, near-constant failure, and still be able to tell yourself that it’s either “going well” or “part of the process”, for years and years on end. 

I haven’t consistently had more than $1000 in my bank account since I was 24. I made a conscious choice when I was 25 to leave freelancing in film behind because the pay wasn’t worth it if I didn’t have time to write and focus on my craft. I got a job at Starbucks, which barely paid enough, but allowed me the time to hone my craft. When I left that and got a slightly better paying job with more consistent hours, I did so with the intent to continue focusing on my craft and improving as a filmmaker. Making movies is all I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember, and I have sacrificed greatly to pursue it. I don’t say any of this to garner sympathy. I say it because it’s fact, and it’s been the primary context of my life for the past decade.

I started crying the first time I heard Conor Murphy scream “Sold” at the 1:38 mark of “Secret History”. It’s a song about the sacrifices and indignities and impossibilities of trying to make a living as an artist, and it’s also a song about doing it despite these things. No one will know everything that the pursuit has cost you, nor should they. Entertainment is an art not a pulpit. You sacrifice to hone the craft, to chase the dream, and above all else, to put on a show. Everything else is secondary.

Sharpen those dead dreams

Pay them violently

Write them quietly

Secret history

Thank you for reading! Got a question or comment? Shoot me an email at [email protected].