Make a soundtrack for the 4AM ride home

It's been a long night, and maybe you're a little cracked out, happy not to be driving, aching for bed but knowing you won't be able to sleep right away... This mix is fondly dedicated to Mister Gates, who inspired it by describing 'Sunday' in more or less those terms when I first played it for him this past summer.

1. Love & Rockets - 'Haunted when the minutes drag'
2. Dead Can Dance - 'Advent'
3. Dif Juz - 'No motion'
4. Chameleons - 'Second skin'
5. Bloc Party - 'Sunday'
6. Bat For Lashes - 'Sarah'
7. Kate Bush - 'Nocturn'
8. Madonna with Massive Attack - 'I want you'
9. Depeche Mode - 'Stripped (highland mix)'
10. Cocteau Twins - 'The spangle maker'
11. Concrete Blonde - 'Lullabye'
12. Eurythmics - 'This city never sleeps'
13. Cure - 'All cats are grey'
14. Ryan Adams - 'Wonderwall'
15. Tori Amos - 'Smells like teen spirit'
16. Blue Nile - 'From a late night train'
17. Art Of Noise - 'A nation rejects (ambient)'

Make a soundtrack for a holiday season without cliches

I wrote a while back about my discomfort with how holiday music choices inevitably mire down in predictable, wearying ruts, and I promised to take a stab at a mixtape recipe that, while it might approach the holiday season more obliquely, would at least feel a little fresher. I will concede now that it's a more difficult proposition than I anticipated - I had to resist my own urges to fall back on classical, showtunes, singer-songwriter... My challenge stands, though: consider how some new music might revitalize the holiday obligations you may be dreading.

1. Pipettes - In the bleak midwinter
2. Dream Academy - Twelve-eight angel
3. Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas
4. Kate Bush - December will be magic again
5. Feist - Mushaboom
6. Weepies - Stars
7. Delerium - Innocent
8. Lisa Gerrard - Largo
9. Ennio Morricone - Gabriel's oboe (2:14 version)
10. Dead Can Dance - The arrival and the reunion
11. Bjork - Vokuro
12. Kirsty MacColl - Please go to sleep
13. Book Of Love - With a little love
14. Roxy Music - More than this
15. Peter Gabriel - Bread and wine
16. Tori Amos - Winter
17. Elizabeth Leonskaja - Shostakovich piano concerto no 2, andante

Make a soundtrack for the beach in winter

1. This Mortal Coil - Song to the siren
2. Siouxsie & The Banshees - Lullaby
3. Ride - Vapour trail
4. Ikon - Ashes of blue
5. Cocteau Twins - Serpentskirt
6. Team Sleep - Ever (foreign flag)
7. U2 - Bad
8. All About Eve - Martha's harbour
9. Smiths - Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me
10. Craig Armstrong - Glasgow
11. Wang Chung - Devoted friends
12. Donna Lewis - Nothing ever changes
13. Annie Lennox - Why
14. Lisa Gerrard & Pieter Bourke - Liquid moon
15. Tegan Northwood - Close
16. Sisters Of Mercy - untitled [b-side to Dominion]
17. Cure - The same deep water as you

Make a soundtrack for a seance

Beloved, we bring you gifts from life into death. Commune with us, and move among us...

1. Bryan Ferry - Zamba
2. Gustavo Santoallala - Iguazu
3. Cranes - K56
4. Scala & Kolacny Brothers - Smells like teen spirit
5. Camouflage - Pompeji
6. Sarah McLachlan - Black (X-Files version)
7. Harold Budd - Algebra of darkness
8. Clan Of Xymox - Theme II
9. Craig Armstrong - Hymn 2
10. Eurythmics - Winston's diary
11. Knife - The captain
12. Massive Attack - Group four
13. Peter Gabriel - In doubt
14. Creatures - Prettiest thing
15. Mahogany - Domino ladder beta
16. This Mortal Coil - At first, and then
17. Siouxsie & The Banshees - An execution
18. Dead Can Dance - Ascension
19. Patrick O'Hearn - Upon the wings of night
20. Ennio Morricone - Miserere

Make a soundtrack for a Rothko exhibition

There is a very important reason to see most of Mark Rothko's paintings in person. The canvases are large enough to fill your focused vision when you stand in front of them, and when they do, they have an impact you won't feel with a reproduction. Each Rothko possesses an emotional identity too complex to capture in a phrase, but you will feel that emotion if you stand there with it. Somewhere in the luminous wash, free of edges and even surface, is an inchoate essence of the human condition. If you don't believe me, go see for yourself. The biggest reason I would ever go to Houston would be to see the Rothko Chapel.

1. Peter Murphy - 'Marlene Dietrich's favourite poem'
2. Suzanne Vega - 'Language'
3. Mazzy Star - 'Into dust'
4. David Darling - 'Minor blue (Hearts Of Space version)'
5. Sade - 'Haunt me'
6. Smiths - 'Asleep'
7. Toni Childs - 'Where's the ocean'
8. Sundays - 'Folk song'
9. Eurythmics - 'Julia'
10. U2 - 'MLK'
11. Andrea Gabrieli - 'Communion: o sacrum convivium a 5'
12. Kristine W - 'Prairie day'
13. Graeme Revell - 'I'm alone on this'
14. This Mortal Coil - 'Ivy and neet'
15. Ofra Haza - 'Love song'
16. Cocteau Twins - 'Alice'
17. Stars - 'Tonight'
18. Antony & The Johnsons - 'Hope there's someone'
19. Oleta Adams - 'Wash, O God, our sons and daughters'

Make a soundtrack for a John Hughes film

It is as easy for an adult to convince a teenager that her or she empathizes with the younger one's experience as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. When auteur John Hughes convinced an entire generation of teens that he did, it was loaves and fishes. In Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink and Some Kind Of Wonderful, we middle and high schoolers saw our self-centered selves made miraculously universal in characters and situations that embodied the new archetypes of our age.

To accompany those films, Mr. Hughes compiled soundtracks that outdid one another with achingly beautiful music by new and established alternative artists. Bless him, too, for giving some of those artists the biggest pushes of their careers in the States: Simple Minds, Psychedelic Furs, OMD. The soundtracks were such a priority for him that he was personally involved in the music supervision, and for a time he even maintained his own imprint (Hughes Music) in association with I.R.S. Records.

I cherish those films and their music today as an expression of nostalgia, but Hughes's influence is still alive: today it's commonplace for music supervisors to scour the indie labels for music. Occasionally I hear a new song and think how it could be a refugee from a lost John Hughes soundtrack. Here is a sampler of those tracks, in case Mr. Hughes decides to make a new movie that universalizes the lives of us grown-up teenagers. (And Molly Ringwald had better be in it...)

1. Van She - Kelly
2. Placebo - This picture
3. Sounds - Rock 'n roll
4. Ivy - Tess don't tell
5. Pipettes - It hurts to see you dance so well
6. Ladytron - He took her to a movie
7. Melody Club - Play me in stereo
8. Dandy Warhols - The last high
9. Umbrellas - Angel or demon
10. Gwen Stefani - Cool
11. Stills - Still in love song
12. Bravery - An honest mistake
13. Rock Kills Kid - Hideaway
14. Tribeca - Teenage
15. Hot Hot Heat - No, not now
16. stellastarr* - Love and longing
17. Iris - In spite
18. Shout Out Louds - Impossible
19. Hellogoodbye - Here (in your arms)
20. My Favorite - Homeless club kids

Make a soundtrack for a curiosity shop

[When you go to Paris, you must visit my favorite: L'Eclaireur at 10 Rue Herold - the other locations are fine, but Rue Herold will raise the bar for the most jaded consumer. L'Eclaireur is primarily a demi-couture store, but be polite, and they will likely grant you admission to the inner sanctum of curiosities, objets trouvés, and objets d'art. You will not be the same. The folks at L'Eclaireur do quite a fine job selecting their music; this is how I would score the movie that takes place there...]

1. Bat For Lashes - Prescilla
2. Death Vessel - Deep in the Horchata
3. Ani Difranco - 32 flavors
4. Le Tigre - Tell you now
5. Young Marble Giants - Brand-new-life
6. A Certain Ratio - Flight
7. Stranglers - Strange little girl
8. Dr Calculus - Full of love
9. Nightcrawlers - Push the feeling on (dub of doom)
10. !!! - Shit sheisse merde pt 2
11. Dali's Car - His box
12. Portishead - Numb
13. Roisin Murphy - Sow into you
14. Broadcast - Michael A Grammar
15. Vive La Fête - Touche pas
16. Soviet - Circuit love
17. Kraftwerk - Boing boom tschak
18. A Guy Called Gerald - Voodoo Ray (24 Hour Party People edit)
19. Art Of Noise - Paranoimia

Make a soundtrack for the fireflies under the elms

1. Lightning Seeds - Pure
2. Church - Under the Milky Way
3. Beth Orton - Stars all seem to weep
4. Delays - Wanderlust
5. Smiths - Golden lights
6. Depeche Mode - It doesn't matter
7. Bjork - Venus as a boy
8. Feist - Leisure suite
9. Dream Academy - Please please please let me get what I want
10. Nouvelle Vague - A forest
11. Olivia Newton John and Cliff Richards - Suddenly
12. Sade - Love is stronger than pride
13. Air - All I need
14. Art Of Noise - Camilla (ambient)
15. Durutti Column - Otis
16. Hem - Sailor
17. This Mortal Coil - Meniscus
18. Vangelis - The oracle of Apollo