September Spotify- here for the FAVORITES

Let’s talk favorites.  But not music. People.  In the spirit of September being my birthday month, I wanted to use the playlist as a chance to appreciate mine.

In my own personal hierarchy of disappointment (fun exercise, message me if you want instructions), “people who work for me” rank only below myself, my husband and my kid of people I’m willing to disappoint. They rank above my parents.  Judge me if you want, but my work is a huge part of who I am. I love what I do. The chance to make change, to advocate for equity, and be a voice for rural spaces is my purpose.  I couldn’t do that, not even a quarter as well, if it weren’t for Sam, Kelsey and Rochelle.  Each of them came to SJVCEO on non-traditional paths and I do believe that those chances of synchronicity made all the difference on my own path.  If I hadn’t stayed late one day…if I hadn’t taken my kid for bagels…if Pottery Barn hadn’t lost my runner table, I’d never have this team and I don’t even know what that life would look like!  Nor do I want to.   

Thank you, ladies!  You three really are my favorites and I am so very fortunate to work alongside you. --CK

Click HERE to access
September’s FAVORITES playlist!

Courtney’s Picks

Listen, we can’t all flex like Dave here and have our favorite band play our favorite song, but we can all appreciate how lucky he is, yes? Yes.  My biggest flex is taking over this month’s playlist theme and making the team super uncomfortable trying to choose ONLY four of their favorite songs.  Truth is, my favorites have been slipped in throughout all our playlists, and a few saved for future ones.  I recently heard, ‘art decorates spaces; music decorates time’, and damnit if that isn’t true!  So perhaps the choices below aren’t necessarily my all-time favorite songs, rather my favorite times.  Times that made me, and as I stare down my 41st birthday this month I can appreciate more than usual. 

Purple Rain, Prince
Everlong, Foo Fighters
Suspicious Minds, Elvis Presley
Southern Cross, Jimmy Buffett
*My actual favorite song is Drawn from Memory, by Heavy Young Heathens, but I cry every.single.time. I hear it, so that just doesn’t belong on a playlist like this!

Sam’s Picks:
Choosing only four songs as favorites was a challenge. My approach to limiting my choices was ‘what songs come to my mind that I have not heard in awhile and that I can start singing in my head’.  AH HAH! These four were that list. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

I Want to Break Free, Queen
Roses, OutKast
Drive, Incubus
Closing Time, Semisonic

Kelsey’s Picks:
While I was initially very confident about my intuition of favorite song choices, I was proven wrong in the days leading up to my final selection. “But what about this one! And that one! Oh, I CANNOT leave this one off the list” were the statements flooding my mind on a daily basis. My first two choices were the OG two but the rest had to be narrowed as per usual. Special thanks to Courtney for choosing this theme with hope and optimism that it would be the easiest for us when in fact it may have been the most difficult.

Yellow, Coldplay
No Church in the Wild, Kanye West, Jay-Z, The Dream, and Frank Ocean
Sweet Disposition, The Temper Trap
Mother, We Just Can’t Get Enough, New Radicals

Rochelle’s Picks:
Hands down, I can listen to any of these songs time and again and they never get old!

Fu-Gee-La, The Fugees
The Sweetest Taboo, Sade
It Was A Good Day, Ice Cube
Heartbreaker [Remix], Da Brat/Mariah Carey/Missy Elliott