The 30 for 60 Project

I’m building my dream record collection.

30 albums from each year between 1960 and 2020.

I want to build a personal music collection like a small library of modern art, one in which the album is the medium. To me, the process of thinking through how to put that together is as interesting and fun as actually having it, so I want to talk through that process in case others might find it compelling. I hope eventually others might suggest what I am missing or overlooking or underrating or overrating, in the context of this context. So, please, don’t hesitate to share your thoughts.

I’ll be covering a year a month broken into ~~four~~ seven posts (I started shrinking each post to five albums per rather than 10 per in May 2025, so more posts per month, but now they fit in your inbox better!). If you are looking to fill out your own collection, into music discovery, enjoy learning about the context of albums, like reading prose with too many adjectives and adverbs, or want to point out all of the obvious records I am overlooking, this is the place for you.

Why spend five years on this project?

I’ve been thinking about record collecting. Or, to be a bit more precise, more record collecting. What I always valued most about both record collecting and record stores was the serendipity of time and place inserting itself. You are, or were, at the whim of fate as much as taste on building a collection. You could only buy what happened to be in the store that day. So your collection reflected proximity to folks who knew how to stock or buy used product as much as it did with what resonated with your ears.

Today is different, obviously. You get what you want, wherever, whenever. So, what do you get? For me—and this is also a reflection on the turning of corners on particular age milestones that I don’t really want to get into—is improving the collection to have the quote-unquote important stuff. I’ve spent most of my record collecting years focusing on the arbitrage aspects, i.e. what is underpriced or how many can I buy in budget that day. Now, I want to focus on quality.

This is partly because of how I listen to music. The paradox of plenty kicks in, and I get selection anxiety. So, I like to choose what I listen to next at random. (The Discogs shake-and-a-random-record-from-your-collection-pops-up-app-thing is great for this.) I want that selection pool to be as strong as possible. Upping the quality of what I purchase does that.

It is also because I’ve been thinking a lot about the LP resurgence of the last 15 years. I was working in a record store when the first digital download code was included in an LP sleeve. Since then, it feels like it has only been an upward trajectory of sales, reissues, and sociocultural value. So, in the mid-2020s, then, in an era when vinyl is of better quality, more interesting production, and readily available, what do you invest in? Both in a personal listening sense—the tactile process of listening to a side, flipping, and listening to the other side. And in a projection sense—the vibes you want to emit, which is of course part of the art of collecting.

Thus! It is time for nerdy deep-diving! And, even better, list-making! If that resonates, your endorphins are already flowing. Or flashing. Not sure exactly how the endorphin science magic works. Going forward, I am identifying 30 albums for each year between 1960-2020 for my to-buy list. This is a platform for sharing, and I figured some of you might find this useful and/or fun.

30 albums seems like an arbitrary number…

Why 30 albums? Because my first instinct was 15 but that was too hard. 30 seems an arbitrarily big enough number where you can balance a good amount of factors.

Why 1960-2020? Because 60 years is twice 30? That is kind of it. Also, you can roughly think about 1960 as the start of the modern music industry, especially in the United States. And it is a round number. And stuff before 1960 is increasingly hard to date accurately. So, 1960. You also need a few years to assess an album’s place in the broader context of all the things. So, 2020 seems as late as you can do that. And it is also a round number. So, 2020.

Talk to me about your organization.

I’ll organize albums by their actual first release date, as best I can tell and using the crowd-sourcing of Discogs as a guide. This is harder during the 60s but gets increasingly easier. If an album is of a 1963 recording date but was only released in 1967, it is filed under 1967.

I am also sticking with a loose definition of “album.” Compilations will probably sneak in. So will live albums. Maybe even EPs. Singles won’t. I am interested in the artistic statement of an album rather than a single. “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum is a great single. Is it strong enough to warrant taking one of those sacred 30 slots seeing as the rest of the album of the same name is pretty forgettable? Not really.

Who gives you the right!?

It is the hardest of all of the questions. The answer is obviously no one. I like albums. I like thinking about albums in the context of other albums and culture in general. So, I do it a lot. And this is fun. If it is fun for you, awesome! If it helps you discover more music you grow to love, even better! It certainly has for me in making all these lists. I/You always miss something.

Sure, I guess. How will you judge then?

Second hardest question. My mystical formula weighs critical consensus, popularity, representation, and personal tastes. I value gatekeepers, and I will use them. These gatekeepers, like myself, have blindspots and overly lit spots. This is part of the fun though. There is always differing opinion and more to consider. If enough of a community forms around this project, it would be awesome to make mirror reader-voted lists. Or add a community champion consensus prize. Or something.

Also, rules are made to be broken. And I have a feeling revisions might happen along the way.

Yeah, buuuuuuuuuut…

I agree, there are a million reasons to not do this. Nearly any argument you want to make on why these lists are flawed is valid. In the end, it is opinion, and a narrow one. 30,000 people could do this same exercise and come up with 30,000 different lists. There is a super-important argument that could be made to look forward rather than to the past… or to direct your capital toward currently working bands… or to stop giving so much attention to artifacts that have already received an outsized amount of our mindspace. Yup, you are right there too. You're a smart, conscientious, warm-hearted person with agency; do what feels right to you. Certainly won’t get an argument here.

Fine. How does this fit into the Substack ecosystem?

This work is indeed my own, and I am putting many a-hour into it. That said, it is built on not only the work of musicians and the countless others it takes to put together and release a record into the world, but also the thought leadership of many professional critics. I did not exist for the first half of this list and didn’t have the ability to think about music critically for another 15-20 years after the fateful day when that all changed. So, feels weird to charge money for it. Not like I am out here making the world better with my own art. But! I am hopefully creating and moderating a community around this idea, and that does indeed take concerted effort. If you want to support my labor of love, then become a paid subscriber. You will receive infinite warm thoughts from me at all times of day.

Final thoughts?

My hope is at the end of this process, I, and perhaps you, will have a resource for putting together a record collection that is interesting, diverse, and conversant with the history of the broadly defined modern pop music canon (through an American’s lens). We’ll see. Happy music discovery and appreciation and collecting!