V-Day Playlist 🎶

♥️💜♥️💜♥️💃🏽💜♥️💜♥️💜

Happy Valentine’s Day, gang! Yeah, we know it’s kind of a fake holiday, coaxed into being by Big Chocolate and the flower lobby. All the more reason to bend it to your purposes, using it as an excuse to DANCE.

Us DJing Karen's birthday party, and Karen telling someone (probably) how good we are at it.

Today we bring you a super-stacked playlist from one of our friends who’s most adept at stacking, Ms. Karen Ruttner. We met Karen roughtly twenty years ago, when she did PR for bands like ours by day, and DJed half of the good New York parties at night. In later years she’s graduated to management and international marketing, but hasn’t lost her knack at the tables. (The turn-tables, that is — she’s only a passable coroner!) According to her dating profile, Karen loves “rock 'n' roll, New York Knicks basketball, New York Mets baseball, New York Rangers hockey, masochism,” and she hates “liars, humidity, the smell of cigar smoke, pants.” Yes, she’s the full package.

Yesterday we started making a Valentine’s Day playlist, then realized there was someone much better suited to the job. Over to Karen:

I've been friends with Chris and Keith for almost 20 years now, and in that time I think I've had maybe one serious boyfriend and a whole lot of bad ideas — so of course they would ask me to curate a Valentine's playlist! In honor of Taylor Swift winning the Super Bowl and Tracy Chapman winning the Grammys, I decided to start with them and keep my selections to lady-only singers (sorry Chris and Keith!), while taking you all on a fairly nostalgic (for some) journey through #emotions.

Here’s the recipe if you’d like to assemble it at home:

Love Story - Taylor Swift
Fast Car - Tracy Chapman
Dreams - The Cranberries
Crush - Jennifer Paige
Heaven is a Place on Earth - Belinda Carlisle
Always Be My Baby - Mariah Carey
I'm With You - Avril Lavigne
I'll Stand By You - The Pretenders
Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinead O'Connor
Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper
Eternal Flame - The Bangles
I Love You Always Forever - Donna Lewis
Lovefool - The Cardigans
Torn - Natalie Imbruglia
Love is a Battlefield - Pat Benatar
Don't Speak - No Doubt
It Must Have Been Love - Roxette
Alone - Heart
You Oughta Know - Alanis Morissette
Say It Right - Nelly Furtado
Stronger - Britney Spears
Here's Where the Story Ends - The Sundays

Good behind most tables, actually, our Karen! 😍

Hope you wore the right shoes,

🕺🏼&🕺🏻