Yourselfish
A Spotify Playlist from January 2026
Entering this year, thinking about the difference between selfishness, self-centeredness and being oneself, I found music serving lyrics and soulful chord progressions that were darts to my heart.
In quieter, harder-to-spot moments, I’d be minding my own business and suddenly a line would pierce me, “If you know what I’m about to say / you just cut me off. / You just set me straight.”
Taking stock, in this fairly harsh winter–by any measure–it has been my mission to get back to elements of my routine which have been absent, by–yes–compiling semi-monthly mix tapes, but also through re-engaging my senses: recalibrating a palate that has become rather staid, embracing the gentle smokiness the wind dregs upon the bluffs in these late winter days of my lakeside town, draping myself in comfortable clothing which makes me feel the most like myself, seeing the world around me again through the eyes of a photographer and filmmaker, listening to the every day conversations of passersby with the ears of a writer.
I do not view these as resolutions, rather they’re a return to form, a reimagining of the self I once knew, better prepared for that which may come and take me off course. In the same breath, I’ve wondered…
“Can I return to myself without it feeling selfish?”
This is a mix founded in soul, a genre that has imprinted itself on me to such a degree that a small part of me—the part that entertains the idea of past lives—wonders if I might have been a crooner in an earlier incarnation.
I was raised a Middle American boy who was given a cowboy hat before a baseball cap. I can still feel the knotty polyester of an F-150 bench seat beneath my toddling thighs, bouncing along to the shuffling snare and snarling guitars on my uncles’ country and western cassette tapes.
I was also raised on the pastiche myths of sports, and on voices that sound like they’ve lived long enough to know better, and maybe still don’t. Songs that aren’t in a rush to tell us anything, but are willing to sit with us long enough for us to figure it out ourselves
In recent years, I’ve skewered myself, hoping to find in the separation and examination a version that combines the best parts of me, emerging into a space exemplified in the tongue-in-cheek portmanteau Yourselfish.
If you listen to the tunes in order, the middle of the playlist sees a shift. The music stops speaking and starts watching. I step far enough outside myself to notice patterns: the ways I tend to over-explain things, justify them, and carry them forward.
As with many of us, I’ve allowed Spotify to curate my listening in much the same way I’ve allowed AI to overtake much of my creative process: programmed for pleasure, optimized for outcomes, clean, clear, controlled. Resolution on demand.
This isn’t that.
As for its cover, I’ve been grappling with what All Plaidout means to me anymore. I never loved the idea of plastering the world in plaid. It was more so a playful double entendre, a way to express my designs on trend escape hatches. I made this plaid cover to look like one of those thematic compilations I would’ve found in a truck stop bargain bin—the kind of disposable, accidental impulse buy whose tunes would’ve hit like kismet on one of the dozens of searching road trips of my well-spent youth.
Maybe that’s the point of this venture. Maybe that’s the point of this life. The things that end up mattering most to me rarely arrive with much ceremony.
These songs aren’t interested in impressing. They’re filled with hope that you’ll listen a little more closely, sit with them a little longer than, and see the moments in life when you’ve been right—and also where you haven’t.
I don’t know if I’ve come to a clean answer, but I’ve found that when I listen closely, I can usually tell the difference between taking care and taking advantage.
This is a playlist for practicing that.
APO America Records, January 2026. In stereo, where available.
Originally published in The All Plaidout Almanac on Substack, March 23, 2026.