This is something I do every year where I ask my friends to add their Top 10 Favorite Songs of the Year to a collaborative playlist so we all have something to listen to as we drive home on our holiday breaks.

To kick off this month of Top 10 Countdowns, I wanted to share the ten best movies of the year. They're more my favorites than the objective best, which is true of all lists, but of this one especially because I didn't get time to see many movies during the tumult of the year.

I now have an audience for whom I can lay down the final ranking of the Best Christmas Songs, so we can settle the debate that's been keeping us up at night for years, and we can finally stop sacrificing our children at the altar of the War on Christmas.

I love listening to other people's music recommendations, often much more than my own, which is one reason it's so crazy that I do this every week when in reality it hits almost everything that spikes my anxiety, i.e. talking, or demanding people's time, or pretending I have authority over anything at all.

What I love about country, when it's good, is that it's not afraid to be vulnerable, to be heartbroken, to be sobbing drunk on the bathroom floor every once in a while.

The piano is our hand-drawn map to the musical scale, at least here in the West. It's our graphic representation of the aural world, and it's the size of a small sedan. All the notes that float around our ears, the different frequencies of our thrumming atmosphere, it lassos them each and lays them flat.

You don't have to be in a relationship to use it, but I will warn you that some of the songs are a little precious because, as you know, I tend to be a little precious. If you're willing to drown yourself in the L-word every once in a while, this will be perfect for you.

This week's playlist isn't really a playlist, it's more of an album showcase. It's my favorite Halloween album ever made. It's called Dead Man's Bones, by a band called Dead Man's Bones.

Boris Pickett, mad scientist and host of the Monster Mash: The beginning, I would say, is clearest to me—I was working in the lab late one night when my eyes beheld an eerie sight.

True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The desire to party had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them.

It's finally here: the smell of fallen leaves; stepping over pumpkins; browns and reds and golds; driving around pumpkins; hay-rack rides; pumpkins in the bathroom; sweaters and jeans; swim through pumpkins to unlock your door. Fall shit.

The house’s biggest strength, though, is the music itself. Chelsea Wolfe, Depeche Mode, Portishead, Kavinsky, House of Balloons-era The Weeknd

It's serendipity that we get to celebrate Ravenclaw on this astronomical equilibrium. Ravenclaw is the house that's the hardest to elaborate upon, as they're simplest in attribute (smart), even as they're most complex in their pursuits (getting smarter).

So here we are: The House that No One Wanted. For twenty years, every first-year who gets the Puff has scrambled for self-worth when they take off the Sorting Hat, no matter how strong their self-esteem once was.

Since the 1st was the 20th anniversary of Harry's U.S. release, September for Earwyrms is now officially Pottermonth. Every Friday in September, I'll be highlighting a new House Commons playlist, and we'll be discussing our favorite fictional personality test.

It's been almost three months since the night you took a ride in that flying car. None of your friends will believe your story — to be fair, you're not entirely sure it happened either.

In music, darkness rules — plunking synths, echoing reverb, spectral vocals. These are songs full of creaks and groans, phrases that circle and swirl, the soundtrack of streetlamps. The Halloween playlist is still a ways away, but here's an early taste.

These are songs to play as you jump from the mountain. It's always scary to throw yourself into the unfamiliar — it's hard to trust that you can fly — but I watch others take the leap all the time, and right now I can name a dozen who are better off for it.

This week, I was just throwing some songs into a pot to see what kind of stew came out, and I accidentally made a playlist about burning desire. All the songs started circling the vague image of some second person, a "you" that maybe loved us back, maybe not - in the end, that was irrelevant.

I was feeling nostalgic, so I made a playlist for what I would listen to at a pool party in 2009. This first included all the embarrassing things I listened to back then, but then I thought I'd just focus on what still holds up. I wanted to re-evaluate it all, and see what still sticks.