Weekend Kickoff - May 2017
Thirty-five tracks for the third Friday of May 2017, the late-spring edition leaning hard into the dance-and-house-revival peaks of the year. Built for the friend group’s standing tradition, with the seasonal-spring adjustment that the rotation always made every May — more dance-floor pulls, fewer interior-rotation moody anchors.
Erick Morillo with Eddie Thoneick and Angel Taylor “Lost In You” opens. Morillo had been making pop-house since the early ’90s — “I Like to Move It” was his catalog-defining moment in 1994 — and the late-period catalog was in a quiet renaissance through the mid-2010s. The Thoneick collaboration with Taylor’s vocal is the cut where his late-period work crossed into the broader pop-house audience. The bass-and-vocal arrangement is the structural moment of the track.
Bob Sinclar with Daddy’s Groove “Burning” follows. Sinclar has been the French-house tradition’s most visible exponent for twenty-five years and the Daddy’s Groove collaboration is one of his better late-period cuts. The placement is the rotation’s acknowledgment of the deeper-house side of the year’s catalog.
Toby Green “Move” is the wildcard pull from the year’s emerging-producer rotation. Green’s catalog is the kind of late-2010s European house that the streaming-era working-rotation tends to overlook — solid productions, no real crossover hits, but a deep catalog that rewards the listener who finds it.
Sam Feldt “What About The Love” sits in the front quarter as the slick-pop-house anchor. The Dutch producer’s catalog had been on the alt-radio rotation since 2015 and “What About The Love” was the cut where his work crossed into the broader audience. The track is built around a vocal-and-piano hook that the genre’s working tradition has been refining for years.
LP “Lost on You” is the deliberate-melancholy-pop pull that the rotation absolutely commits to. The track had been a hit in Greece in 2016 and worked its way west through 2017, crossing into the broader pop-radio context by spring. The vocal-and-whistle hook is the structural moment and the placement in the middle of the rotation is doing the work of providing the cross-mood counterpoint to the dance-floor peaks.
Tiësto with Diplo and M A E S T R O “C’mon” — the Maestro Harrell 2016 Remix — is the EDM-festival-radio anchor. The original is from 2010, and the Maestro Harrell remix is the version where the cut crosses out of the festival-circuit context and into the broader pop-house rotation. The remix takes the original’s harder edge and softens it into a more melodic register that the late-spring porch context rewards.
Zara Larsson with R3HAB “I Would Like” — the R3hab Remix — is the late-night dance-pop crossover. Larsson’s solo catalog had been working in the European pop charts for years; the R3hab Remix is the version where the cut sits in the dance-floor rotation rather than the pop-radio rotation. The placement late in the front half is sequencing the dance-floor block toward its peak.
Pegboard Nerds “Melodymania” is the deep-cut placement that elevates the rotation past radio-friendly. The Norwegian-Danish duo’s catalog has been working in the trance-and-progressive-house adjacent space for years and the streaming-era working-rotation has criminally undervalued them. The placement is the rotation’s deliberate-deep-cut acknowledgment.
The back half leans into the slower-tempo deeper-house cuts — Maya Jane Coles tracks, Kerri Chandler’s late-period work, a couple of Henrik Schwarz singles that the year’s deep-rotation absolutely committed to. The closing block is built around the slower-tempo work that the late-spring porch context rewards — the kind of tracks you can leave running for an hour and not feel the rotation losing the room.
Thirty-five tracks lands at about two hours. The right length for the standing Friday-evening rotation in the late-spring season. Built for the friend group’s audience, with the seasonal adjustment that the May edition always made. Sequenced for the post-dinner porch-open stretch when the music has to do the work of being the room’s actual entertainment. First playback usually started before dinner. Always made it past. The pre-dinner-to-past-dinner runtime is the metric I use.
The May edition was always the one where the rotation pivoted toward the deeper house tradition that the year was producing in volume. Pre-dinner, dinner, after-dinner — three different listening modes and the playlist had to handle all three. The transition between modes was where the sequencing decisions actually paid off.
