In 1991, Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine spent three years making their second record, held up by perfectionism and his visionary sound—thousands of pedals to make the guitars shimmer, a mirage of pitch-bent tremolo effects.

She and I stood face-to-face—cheeks rolling as we chewed in calculated fury—in a bathroom flooded so many times you could see from peeling paint the location of each waterline. Moments ago, we’d scoured the concrete for bright strips of green between the rippling sheet of the Mississippi River and the faded auditorium where we now conspired.

At 11:59 p.m. on the first day of 1971, families watching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson witnessed the last ad for cigarettes ever broadcast on television. 60 seconds dedicated to Virginia Slims. Those who preferred CBS’s Merv Griffin saw the same but for a different pack—Marlboros. Dick Cavett fans got Benson & Hedges.

1961 was what MAD Magazine called an Upside-Up year. It’s strobogrammatic, rotationally symmetric—flip it upside-down while no one’s looking and the number appears to have remained the same. If 1969 is the year that changed everything, we ought to christen 1961 as the year the world flipped upside-down, unnoticed; no one seemed to be paying any attention.

The real reason I had no time to write was I got so sucked in to making the damn playlist. It had to be longer this time, both because I had so much material (it was the year of my musical awakening) and because we could all use a longer escape.

This Valentine's Day, Hulu released a new TV version of High Fidelity. I told myself I wouldn't watch it. Its existence felt like a trick, its timing too convenient. It only took me two nights to cave. I set down the movie to watch the whole thing twice; some will disagree, but I think it's fantastic.

1990 was the year that the Pale Blue Dot photo was beamed back to Earth by Voyager 1—as it left the Solar System, Carl Sagan told NASA to have the craft turn its camera around and take one last photo of the Earth against the black canvas of space. In the shot, our planet is barely bigger than a pixel.

In 1980, a Japanese manufacturer of electronic instruments launched its first line of drum machines. Instead of pre-recorded samples, this machine made its own sounds—particularly, a booming bass drum that sounded like Flubber hitting a trampoline.

Ten years is as far as you can stretch in time while still holding your sense of self. Walk back through each week, however, and it's exhausting to see just how far time's canyon will reach. The decade is the standard unit of change.

In 1960, America was adjusting to being the empire. Our version of love was designed to support structures of power, and myths of supremacy reigned. Threatened by a liberated woman, male culture doubled down and curdled into the mess it is today.

2009: the last good year, or the first bad one? Less depends on the events of the past, and more on how young you are when they happen.

We narrowly avoided this being the single worst playlist I've ever put together, just by how crazy pop music had become in 1999. Maybe Y2K had us losing more of a grip than we thought; whatever the reason, it was a year that a lot of the lamest songs of all time were released.

Let me bring you back to 1989: the number, another summer, sound of a funky drummer. Ten years after "Rapper's Delight," hip hop was in full-roaring-force ramping up to the Golden Age of the 1990's, and one of the biggest works of art that year was Spike Lee's incendiary Do the Right Thing.

A surprising amount of iconic albums came out in 1979, and it's hard to say anything about them that they couldn't absolutely say for themselves. It was the year of London Calling and The Wall and Unknown Pleasures—yep, everyone's favorite t-shirt design is now forty years old. In fact, Hot Topic's entire aesthetic might be traced back to 1979.

This year was a fulcrum point in American turmoil, and it feels like all 21st century malaise can somehow be traced back to 1969. If the early part of the century saw the spreading of existentialism and nihilism, the events of 1969 nailed them into our collective consciousness.