"Rock Hits 1991" is a modern-day mix-tape to treasure
It has been almost five years since Apple Music debuted at the World Wide Developer Conference in June 2015.
There, Jimmy Iovine assured music fans that he and the Apple overlords had assembled a team of experts at Beats 1 Headquarters to curate playlists with "good music" for subscribers.
Hardly a new concept, but this moment was for sure a milestone in music technology history —Apple's biggest since Steve Jobs introduced the iPod in 2001.
The war with Spotify had officially begun.
For months thereafter, Apple Music was plagued by clunky user experience issues and a dearth of "good" playlists that Spotify had long since perfected.
But by Christmas of 2015, iOS 9 had unleashed a much easier user interface, as well as heap of well-curated playlists.
And now, five years later, there's one particular playlist remains as powerful as the day it was released: Rock Hits 1991.
Again, there is nothing groundbreaking about making a list per-se, but this particular list hits all the right buttons for fans of late 1980s and early 1990s rock music:
THE ORIGINAL ROCK HITS 1991 ON MUSIC
"Hey Stoopid" — Alice Cooper
"Bring the Noise" — Anthrax & Public Enemy
"Man In the Box" — Alice in Chains
"Jet City Woman" —Queensrÿche
"Learning to Fly" — Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
"Winds of Change" — Scorpions
"Primal Scream" — Mötley Crüe
"Losing My Religion" — R.E.M.
"Unforgiven" — Metallica
"Don't Cry" — Guns N' Roses
"She Talks to Angels" — The Black Crowes
"Signs" (Live) — Tesla
"Hole Hearted" — Extreme
"In Bloom" – Nirvana
"Give It Away" — Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Poundcake" — Van Halen
"I Saw Red" — Warrant
"High Enough" — Damn Yankees
"Show Me the Way" — Styx
"Don't Treat Me Bad" — FireHouse
"The Show Must Go On" — Queen
"More Than Words" — Extreme
There's a beauty to the art of arranging existing masterpieces.
This is much in the same way that George Carlin took the "seven words you cannot say on television" and lined them up in a comedy bit that was so legendary that the U.S. Supreme Court had to acknowledge so.
Like any great art exhibition, other songs have been added to the Apple Music Rock Hits 1991 playlist (and they are listed below).
But the original playlist above is the reason I pay $10 every month to access to this beautiful art gallery of rock music.
ROCK HITS 1991 ON APPLE MUSIC (B-SIDES)
"Silent Lucidity" —Queensrÿche
"Suck My Kiss" — Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Lithium" (Live & Loud) — Nirvana
"All This Time — Sting
"Top of the World" — Van Halen
"You Could Be Mine" — Guns N' Roses
"Rusty Cage" — Soundgarden
"Out in the Cold" — Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
"Runaround" Van Halen
"Love of a Lifetime" — FireHouse
"Highwire" — The Rolling Stones
"Dreamline" — Rush
"My Head's in Mississippi" — ZZ Top
"Seeing Things" — The Black Crowes
"It's Love" — King's X
"Breaking the Girl" — Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Jesus Christ Pose" — Soundgarden
"Disappear" — INXS
"Can't Stop This Thing We Started" — Bryan Adams
"The Sky Is Crying" — Stevie Ray Vaughan & The Double Trouble
"Roll the Bones" — Rush
"Runaway" — Damn Yankees
"The Real Love" — Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band
"A Lil' Ain't Enough" — David Lee Roth
"Girlfriend" — Matthew Sweet