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Yesterday on Twitter I declared that my day needed chocolate. 

Jenny replied that she was sending me mental chocolate, and that hers was David Tennant. 

I decided that Mental Chocolate needs to be a playlist. 

So I have assembled a playlist of 16 songs that are floating my boat right now. It’s available in three formats:

Spotify Playlist - I can’t tell if all these songs are available on the public playlist because Spotify makes that completely difficult. If all 16 aren’t there, try:

YouTube video playlist - When available, I tried to select the official video for each song. Which means sometimes there’s additional artsy nonsense, and in the case of “Zor Ka Jhatka,” the quick cuts are nearly seizure-inducing, plus the verses seem to be rearranged. But all the songs are here and you can certainly hide the browser tab that contains YouTube.

iTunes Ping playlist - I’ve replaced the second song, Mika’s “Elle Me Dit,” because it isn’t available officially in the US yet. But I found a track that seems to be some weird tribute/cover thing. I haven’t listened to it yet, but since the original was only released in France a couple of months ago, I am entertained that it already has a tribute.

And behind the cut, an annotated list! 

1. “Dil Luteya” - Jazzy B & Apache Indian - The song is in Punjabi, but the title roughly means “Stolen Heart” or “You Stole My Heart.” We used this as a warmup in dance class for a long time and it’s very relaxed and accessible to Western listeners. (Jazzy B lives in Canada, and Apache Indian (which is a total misnomer) lives in the UK, I believe. So the Western influence definitely shows.

2. “Elle Me Dit” - MIKA - This is off the upcoming album, and was released in France like, the week after he finished recording it. He introduces it in concerts as “about all the things a mother says to her son to get him the fuck out of her house.” As it happens, he moved out of the basement apartment of his parents’ house this year. There’s video floating around YouTube of him performing it in English as well, and when I heard that version, I winced a little and thought, “Oh, that’s still fresh for him…”

3. “Satisfied” - Cee Lo Green - It’s adorable and retro and I love it so much. I always imagine him doing some Four Tops style dance moves while a Supremes-style girl ensemble backs him up.

4. “Say Hey (I Love You)” - Michael Franti & Spearhead - This is one of those songs that gets used in all kinds of unrelated media, but I took notice of it in a flash mob dance sequence in an episode of “Weeds.”

5. “Carry On” - Alana Davis - It’s a cover of the Crosby, Stills, & Nash (& Young?) song. It was used in a Sony commercial years ago, and it kind of falls in and out of my regular rotation, but every time I rediscover it in my library I am delighted anew by it. Yeah, I know, the original is a classic, but whatever. I like her voice.

6. “Smiley Faces” - Gnarls Barkley - “Crazy” got all the attention on the first Gnarls Barkley album, but this is the one I find myself singing when I think no one is listening.

7. “Your Woman” - White Town - I don’t care what you say. My love for this song borders on the unhealthy. And it doesn’t hurt that the horn line is, shall we say, familiar.

8. “As If By Magic” - La Roux - I think it was my friend Brittany who suggested this band to me, based on my emergent interest in sparkly British pop. She was right.

9. “Zor Ka Jhatka” - Daler Mehndi, Richa Sharma, & Pritam - From the movie “Action Replayy,” which is sort of like a Bollywood “Back to the Future” with a solid dose of commitment-phobic love story. This song is all about how marriage is awful and how we should go back in time to find the guy who first got married and kick his ass for screwing over the rest of us. I don’t happen to agree, but this song is catchy as hell.

10. “Tell Me When” - Human League - Who doesn’t love a little 80s in their day? No one I want to know…

11. “I Want to Break Free” - Queen - It’s actually not my favorite Queen song ever, but it always improves my mood when I hear it.

12. “We Get On” - Kate Nash - One of the things I appreciate about Kate Nash, aside from her general ass-kicking grrrl attitude, is how narrative her songwriting is, and how vibrant they are. This is one of the cleverest, I think.

13. “She’s My Man” - Scissor Sisters - Something about this band always makes me want to jump up and shake my ass. This song doubly so. Which is a problem when I’m at work…

14. “No One’s Gonna Love You” - Cee Lo Green - Okay, I know, this list is Cee Lo heavy, but he’s covering Band of Horses here and I think he absolutely schools them here. 

15. “Runaway Train” - Brandon Boyd - Boyd is the lead singer of Incubus. I could listen to him sing the phonebook. I love his voice. And unfortunately, his solo album is full of weird overmodulation that gets all static-y and I can’t stand listening to that. But this one is relatively pristine. *swoon*

16. “Who’d Have Known” - Lily Allen - It’s a really lovely, sweet, hopeful song about the beginning of a relationship. It also makes me think a little bit about how pop culture dates itself- we used to have songs about sitting at home and waiting for the phone to ring. Now there are people who can’t imagine why you would need to sit at home and wait for a call, but they’ll sing about how “when you flash up on my phone, I no longer feel alone.” The video for this song is hilarious and casts Lily as a deranged stalker who kidnaps Elton John, which gives the whole song rather a different spin.