““Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.”
George Eliot
I could probably count my life story, as a train of songs I have loved.
A great song can transport you back to the first time you heard it, or to a period of your life when you were often listening to it. This not only allows me to enjoy the songs I like even more, but also to be always searching for the next one I will love. For me, few things in life beat that feeling you get when you hear a great song for the first time. I guess meeting the love of your life qualifies, but that would probably be the full list.
And that’s the reason why I’m always visiting obscure music portals/blogs or listening to Spotify/Apple Music recommendations, trying to spot that great song I hadn’t heard before, kind of a white whale if you like. The thing I find frustrating though is that most of those blogs and playlists are full of uninspiring songs I find tolerable at best. You have to listen to 40 tracks in order to find one you more or less like, let alone one you really love. I think this happens because the people creating those lists only care about finding songs that match a certain criteria: being considered from a certain genre (which in itself can be very broad), recently released, and/or from certain artists. As they try to please as many people as possible with their playlists, they end up being too inconsistent.
Anyway, over the years, I’ve managed to build a decent library of songs I like. Whenever I’m not searching for new music, I listen to my own playlists, and on those occasions when friends happen to listen to one of them, they usually compliment the songs and ask for their details. Friends ask for my recommendations quite often as well.
This is why I came up with the idea to document the little new gems I happened to find on my constant search for great songs. The Alternative Mixtapes purpose is to share them with you. The plan wasn’t to retrospectively add all of my favorite songs to this website (that would take me forever), but I do include old ones from time to time in addition to the newer tunes. I try to stay away from songs that are already very well known, but the only criterion I really have for featuring songs here is that I have to like them.
Of course, this means that in order to enjoy my recommendations, you need to be into the same musical genres I’m into. Therefore, I hope you enjoy Alternative Rock, Indie, Pop-Punk, Ambient/Chill Out, and occasionally a pop or trance track; because that’s what you will find here.
If you are an artist and would like to be featured here, I’m happy to listen to your songs (in which case please get in touch through the Contact page or social media), but I cannot make any promise about adding your song to my mixtapes (playlists). As mentioned above, I have to genuinely like your songs.
That being said, I hope you like my mixtapes and come back often.
Sincerely,
H.G.O.
Header image by Eric Nopanen.