A to Z Music Challenge

On the podcast 1000 Greatest Misses, co-host Chris and I submitted the following music challenge to our listeners: you’re sent to a desert island and are allowed to take with you the recordings of only 26 artists - one for each letter of the alphabet. Who do you choose? This challenge comes courtesy of my daughter and her partner who needed to kill some time while driving through Indiana last Thanksgiving. And what a great time suck it was!

Chris and I were delighted by the number of responses we received from listeners, further proving the point that although people aren’t always willing to tackle the pressing issues of our times, they will happily piss away a few hours on a completely frivolous endeavor! We thought it would be helpful to include everyone’s picks in one place so that they might inspire further investigation. There are tons of choices of artists I’ve never even heard of, much less listened to, and I hope to check some of them out in the days ahead.

For me, I stuck to rock and pop and didn’t go down the jazz or classical rabbit holes. Some letters - B, C, J, P, S - were exceptionally difficult, while others - G, N, O, Q, U, Y - were absolute no-brainers.

Consider coming up with your own choices before perusing the lists below. Please ignore misspelling, and please don’t shoot the messenger when it comes to entries that should have been disqualified (Elvis Costello as an E entry, for example); Chris and I didn’t catch some of these as they came pouring in toward the end of our podcast challenge. Also, consider checking out author S.W. Lauden’s Substack where he addresses the same music challenge. And yes, I am aware than Ken was messing with us when he chose acts like USA for Africa and Pia Zadora. All good!