You wake up at the weekend and the weather has turned from relatively calm to violent and frenzied. The winds have picked up and are making your windows hum just loudly enough to initiate some kind of anxiety within you. The rain is pouring down, and you can hear it hitting the windows, the roof, the ground. You watch out the window as the people disappear and the trees struggle to cope with the furious conditions. Everything is shades of grey and blue. However, inside is different. Inside has warm lighting, warm clothing, warm bedding. There's a hot drink by your side and a cat is curled up at the end of your bed trying to get some sleep with the noise from outside preventing this from occurring.
This is the situation that the playlist below is curated for.
This weekend in England, there's been Storm Ciara floating around. Admittedly it doesn't seem like a full-blown hurricane, the rain hasn't come yet and thunder is nowhere to be seen. However, the winds are ferocious, and it's just loud enough that you want something to block it out.
Personally, when the weather is crappy outside, I like something peaceful and calming to listen to. Obviously, other people probably blast the loudest music they have and others probably don't listen to anything and enjoy the wind. However, with my rainy day music, I just like to be reminded of how calm and cozy it is inside - sitting on my duvet with a candle lit and often with a book to read to.
The thing I I do find about a lot of other playlists that are curated for listening to in the rain or stormy weather or just generally feel calm to is that a lot of them are just instrumental. They don't feature any vocals. I really struggle listening to music without any vocals in it. I don't know whether it's a focus thing or just a taste thing, but I've made sure there are only one or two instrumentals in this playlist for that reason. It's completely understandable how many people much prefer to have just instrumentals as it does make it easier to focus on other things. However, when I'm in the situation where I want to avoid the blustering and pouring that's going on outside, then the best way is with vocals that my focus can really grip onto and become enveloped in.
There's a couple of artists repeated, such as Bon Iver and Khalid, and that's because the tone of their voices fits so perfectly with the mood that the playlist tries to create. This seems odd as the two artists are so dissimilar, but they both have the 'calming with a little bit of soul' vibe that really does work well when you want the music to contrast the wild goings-on outside.
So, if you're like me, and want to separate yourself from the weather going on outside or perhaps even a metaphorical storm going on in your mind, then hopefully this playlist will give you some sort of the peace you need, at least for 1 hour 44 minutes at least.
Enjoy!