For any milestone birthday, the music selection is supposed to be straightforward: pick a hit from the person's birth year and work forward to the present. However, some years are unlucky—like 1973, which apparently produced no good songs worldwide. Generally, this approach works well because early songs appeal to parents' tastes, and later songs play when guests are too tired to care.
But crafting a playlist for a 60-year-old friend is a different beast. Even Claude AI complained about the dataset size. The parents prefer a quiet tea the day before and skip the party, leaving the first two decades of music unheard. While everyone likes the Beatles, many years feature forgettable hits like 'Ernie the Fastest Milkman in the West.'
Realistically, most favourite songs were released in 1989. After about 20 years, one loses touch with the charts and can't distinguish early from late Beyoncé. The songs you genuinely like probably never charted, and expecting others to know the lyrics is antisocial. For crowd-pleasers, there's a middle segment that sounds like Magic FM.
A wedding DJ once advised: just play Chic on a loop. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist.
