On the order of a playlist

When I sequence a playlist, the first track is easy. Establish the room without explaining it. Something that says, plainly, this is the kind of place you're in now. Most candidate tracks audition well for the first slot.

The second track is the hardest one. The second track is where the playlist tells you what it really is. Pick something too similar to the first and the playlist starts to feel locked in. Pick something too different and the room you just built falls apart. The second track has to broaden the room without leaving it.

The middle of a playlist should dip, not rise. The temptation is to push energy up across forty minutes, but most listening doesn't want that arc. A small valley around track five — quieter, slower, less event — gives the rest of the playlist somewhere to breathe.

The last track is the one nobody thinks about. It should let the listener leave, not cliff them off. A long fade, or a piece that ends on a held tone instead of a resolution, or a track that's an obvious closer. Otherwise the playlist just stops, which is a different feeling and almost always wrong.