Best of 2011: Songs from August

I said when I started this list that many of these songs were not from 2011, and August's playlist really proves that. Two important things happened in my music-listening life back in August.  The first was that I finally got Spotify, after waiting for years for it to make it to this side of the Atlantic.  Spotify doesn't take the place of Pandora, but it does have some advantages, like listening to songs when you want to, instead of waiting for them to randomly show up.  The other advantage is the ability to make playlists and share them with friends, so if you've got a little Bill Withers obsession, like I do, you can share songs with other like-minded music fans.



The second thing happened, oddly enough, in a Starbucks, where I ran to get out of a storm.  I sat down, had a cup of coffee, and "Cry to Me" started playing.  And any child of the 80s knows exactly where they know this song from. So I took advantage of my newfound technology to set a retro playlist that kept me, well, grooving, as it were, through a very large stack of work. Here are a couple more songs from that Spotify playlist.





And in case you haven't figured out what playlists are good for, here's your final hint.