I obviously approached this completely differently than most, and I have very different musical tastes than most.
@shuke asked why all the John Mayer, well it's pretty simple. I tend to find and stick with certain artists or genres with not much overlap, I actively avoid pop music because 95.753% of the time I hate and to me it sucks. If it was a mainstay on the radio and wasn't a band I was listening to prior to being on the radio, it won't be in my rotation period. I am a bit of against the grain for the sake of it kind of person, so I find something that isn't popular or I actively seek out unique things vs mainstream. I love the fact that no one got into the "I can't believe you listen to that ****ty music," that seems to happen whenever I hear people discuss music.
A little history about when I started cutting my musical teeth so to speak. The first record I ever owned was a 45 single of Mr Roboto by Styx, but that quickly went heavier when I got into Iron Maiden, Metallica, Black Sabbath etc. That morphed into Hair Metal, with a quick turn to grunge for about a year or two. Dabbled with country for a bit in the early 90s but then found DMB and well that was that pretty much. There was a period of about 10-15 years where I listened to other artists than DMB. That was another dabble with country, discovering JM with Continuum, Jack Johnson, rediscovering early Aerosmith, and a few others. Right about when the pandemic started I got heavily back into DMB again, and I'm not sure that'll change anytime soon. As per my guiding principle for my list, I'd rather listen to a live DMB show than anything else.
I didn't comment on most of my selections but overall those are the artists that made it into the rotation during the last 10-15 years, some have very personal connections, and some don't.
Love on the Weekend is an incredibly important song to me, I traveled regularly for work for a year and only got to see my wife and kids on Friday. That song was on repeat on the flight home Thus night every week and still chokes me up.
Constellations is a great story about the innocence of children and imagination, plus this version with Eddie on it adds more emotion to it.
Colors is a song I heard them perform on the Grammys, my wife wanted to watch it during the pandemic, and I was blown away by these three guys. Really love this entire record but they need some new material soon.
Walt Grace's Submarine Test is just a great story and indicative of JM's storytelling ability.
My Mind is For Sale, can't really talk about as we can't talk about that here anymore but suffice it to say it aligns with my thoughts very well on the subject.
I killed Robert Johnson was my introduction to The Stone Foxes. I'm not sure where I heard this first but when I looked them up I was surprised that this was a modern band. Not many 70s style rock bands around anymore.