Can you believe it’s 2019? I can’t! The tides of time seem to shift and be stuck all at once, and we find ourselves with nearly a decade slipped into the rearview mirror as we launch headlong into a future. What can we count on? What can we trust?

I always find grounding in music, and found myself looking for songs that seemed to answer with a sense of belonging, purpose, understanding and caring for the first mix I’ve compiled in 2019. We’re constantly carving out an existence that’s finding the rose growing up through the concrete.

With that, I used the circumstances that informed one of our Standards of the 1960’s to look at urban life and love that informs that breaking through the rigidity to grow new and healthier roots, to dream, to expand in a world that asks us to contract and conform.

I hope that you can kiss your own flesh and thank yourself for the surviving that you’ve done through what was a tumultuous year that’s capping off one helluva decade of being alive. I hope these tunes inspire you to be thankful for yourself, and what you have and not to fear asking calling in what you need to move further into the person you wish to be.

Happy New Year, 2019 y’all.

1. Chuck Jackson – Look Over Your Shoulder
2. Tammi Terrell – Baby Dontcha Worry
3. Joe Bataan – Ordinary Guy
4. The Avons – Got To Get Used To You
5. The Light Drivers – Dreams Of A Shoeshine Boy
6. The Sapphires – You’ll Never Stop Me From Loving You
7. The Fantastic Four – I’m Gonna Live Up To What She Thinks
8. Gene McDaniels – Walk With A Winner
9. Lesley Gore – A Girl In Love
10. Arthur Alexander – Show Me The Road
11. Bill Medley – I Can’t Make It Alone
12. Gay Jamison – Stay Another Day
13. Brenda Holloway – You Can Cry On My Shoulder
14. The Charades – You’re With Me All The Way
15. Freddie Scott – A Brand New World
16. Georgia Gibbs – Let Me Dream
17. Pat Sands & The Pebbles – Loving Him
18. Keith – Our Love Started All Over Again
19. Malcolm Hayes – I Gotta Be With You
20. The Spinners – Head Over Heels
21. Sheila Anthony – Living In Love
22. Margaret Mandolph – Something Beautiful
23. Patti & The Emblems – It’s The Little Things You Do
24. Mitch Ryder – Blessing In Disguise
25. The Olympics – Baby I’m Yours
26. Lenny Welch – Please Help Me (I’m Falling)
27. The Philharmonics – Will You Marry Me, Girl?
28. The Paper Dolls – You’re The Boy I Want To Marry
29. Sonji Clay – Here I Am And Here I Stay
30. The Dells – Open Up My Heart
31. La Brenda Ben – Just Be Yourself
32. Kim Weston – Just Call Me
33. Lorraine Ellison – Don’t Let It Go To Your Head
34. The Hesitations – Love Is Everywhere
35. Merry Clayton – This Is My Dream