This playlist contains the songs that made it to the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1975. The Hot 100 ranks singles based on both sales and airplay, so it's a good measure of the music that was the most popular for a moment in time. If you were alive in 1975 you should be very familiar with of all the tracks in this playlist.  (Please note: this is a list of number one songs, not albums)

As you reminisce about 1975 with the help of this playlist you may remember some of the following key events of said year:

-The Vietnam war ends

-The game show Wheel of Fortune debuts on NBC

-The domestic terrorist group The Weather Underground bombs the US state department

-Pink Floyd releases the album Wish You Were Here

-Queen releases the album A Night At The Opera featuring the biggest hit of their career, "Bohemian Rhapsody"

-Bill Gates founds a company called Microsoft

-NASA launches the Viking 1 Mars probe

-Bruce Springsteen releases the album Born To Run

-Peter Gabriel

The 1980s was a big decade for music. It kicked off with people being fed up with disco and ended after giving birth to hip hop, new wave, pop metal, alternative rock, synth pop, thrash metal, house music and MTV.

MTV became an incredible vehicle for artists to get their music out to the masses in the 80s and ended up making and/or breaking the careers of many. When people think about the music of this decade they undoubtedly think of bands that were played on MTV.

And while much of the spotlight was taken by male-centric bands who dressed like girls, female artists made gigantic contributions to popular music during the decade.

For this playlist I wanted to focus on some of the most influential female musicians to make a mark in the 1980's. So you won't find Michael Jackson, Poison or Run DMC, but you will find 40 artists whose contributions are critically important -- and every one is a female solo artist or a band with a female member.

Hopefully this playlist brings back some

A couple of years ago I asked knowledgeable friends involved with he music business what they felt was "the best cover song ever recorded." Responses came in from music blogs, radio DJs and publicists. This is the resulting playlist -- a compilation of the selections received for the very best cover songs ever recorded. Please add your own picks to the comments.

Please note: Many of the cover versions are not available online for streaming, so the playlist consists of the original versions, but DO check out the cover versions if you get a chance.

The Best Cover Songs Ever

Artist: Rikki Lee Jones
Song: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
Album: It's Like This
Originally performed by: Traffic
Rikki Lee Jones takes one of the best Jam songs ever written and gives it the acoustic treatment. The result is a matchless interpretation with poetic conviction. Although I would be hard-pressed to say this version is better than the original, it is at a minimum, just as good. It gives the song a new

New York City, officially the "City of New York" is without a doubt, one of the most important, if not THE most important cities in the world. NYC is a leader in both business and culture, and is a place where dreams come true, or where dreams can be destroyed.

As Frank said, "If you can make it here, you'll make it anywhere".

Hip hop culture has a strong connection to the city. After all, the genre was born from the block parties of the South Bronx in the 1970s. The Big Apple is the place where hip hop was forged, developed and fine-tuned, and was the launching pad for what would become one of the most popular forms of popular music in the world.

With over 19.7 million people living in the New York metropolitan area, it's the most populous metropolitan area in the United States and the 4th most populous in the world after Tokyo, Seoul and Mexico City.

I thought it only fitting to create a playlist of hip hop songs that pay homage to the place where the genre was born.

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