Themed Playlists

I am the queen of playlists, especially themed playlists. I counted all up all of the playlists on my iPod, and I currently have 35. THIRTY FIVE. That seems like a lot, but I love me a good playlist.

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My specialty is themed playlists.

Take this summer one for example. It has all of my favorite summer songs on it. I can't listen to this playlist and not feel like it's summer. I also listen to this one all year round. Sometimes you just need a little taste of summer in February, am I right?

But I don't just have a summer playlist, because that's pretty easy to put together. Kind of a no brainer - everyone needs a summer playlist.

One of my other favorite playlists is my Road Trip playlist, filled with all driving themed songs. Life Is A Highway? Check! Highway Don't Care? Of course! Shut Up and Drive? Duh! There is nothing better than driving down the highway listening to this playlist.

Another one of my favorite themed playlists is called Home. I made this at the end of April when I was going on my Montreal trip. I started thinking about all of the songs that have to do with being home, and I realized that they would make a pretty awesome playlist. This is the perfect one to listen to on your way home from a trip!

Even though I absolutely love my summer, driving, home, and many other playlists, my all time favorite ones to put together are for a trip or vacation. Pretty much every single trip I go on has to have an accompanying playlist. I love to make trip themed ones because I always listen to them while on vacation, but then I'll continue to listen to them afterwards and every time I do, it reminds me a fabulous trip!

I usually try to find songs that have to do with the place I'm going. That was super easy for my California playlist because there are a TON of songs about California! (Funny story about this playlist - I made it right before I was going to book a flight out there, and then the trip fell through. So I don't listen to this one a ton because I'm still a little bitter about not going to Cali - ha!).

When I went to the Dominican Republic last year, I made this playlist. I can't think of a song that has anything to do with the Dominican, so I went for a summer/flying theme since we were obviously flying there. This is probably my most favorite playlist because I listen to it all the time - it turned out so good!

I also really like this playlist from my New York trip. Again, it was super easy to find songs about New York, but I also went in December, so I included some Christmas songs as well.

I do have a couple of more random playlists, but my themed ones are my favorite. And not to brag, but I think I'm pretty good at coming up with a themed playlist ;)

Here's some of my tips to come up with a themed playlist of your own:

1. Come up with a theme. It can be broad or more detailed, but think about events in your life that other people tend to write songs about as well.

2. Start looking through your iTunes library for songs that fit the theme. You may be able to just think of some off the top of your head. Otherwise, think of some keywords that you can use to search for related songs. For example, when I was creating my "Road Trip" playlist, I searched "road", "car", "highway", etc. I have a big enough library that I can usually find a couple good songs that I hadn't initially thought of.

3. Do a search on Google for "songs about ________". Google is always a good place to start if you're having a hard time coming up with some ideas.

4. Search iTunes! For pretty much all of my themed playlists, I usually end up buying a few songs off of iTunes if they seem perfect.

5. If you need some filler songs to make your playlist a little longer, I usually download a few songs off the iTunes Top 100 list and add those in as well.

And that's it! Like I said before, I love making my vacation themed playlists because even if I listen to them years later, they always take me right back to my trip.