SIX AM

What came first—the format or the obsession? Because this playlist operates on a principle I can't stop thinking about: six bands, three songs each, give or take. It's constraint as curation. It's the mathematical approach to emotional chaos.

Spanish Love Songs, Off With Their Heads, The Menzingers—these are the anchors. You hear them cycle through, different songs but same wounded hearts, and you realize this isn't shuffle culture. This is side one/side two thinking applied to running. You're not chasing variety. You're chasing depth. You're asking: what happens when you stay with a voice long enough to hear what they're really saying?

I'm three miles into this on the Lakefront Trail and "Sequels, Remakes, & Adaptations" hits and I'm thinking about how Spanish Love Songs operate—Dylan Slocum writing lyrics like diary entries he shouldn't publish but does anyway. Pure Heart Records put out their early stuff before they jumped to Pure Noise, and you can hear the trajectory: bedroom confessionals turning into anthems for everyone who feels like they're failing at being a functional adult.

Then Off With Their Heads comes in with "Self-Destruction (as a Sensible Career Choice)" and it's Ryan Young doing what he does—turning Midwest misery into three-chord salvation. Epitaph signed them after years of grinding, and that label pedigree matters. This isn't pop punk cosplay. This is the real lineage: Descendents to Jawbreaker to this.

The Menzingers anchor the middle with "After the Party," and look—I know that album is their accessible one, the one that broke through, but Greg Barnett and Tom May write like they've been reading your journal. Scranton bars, failed relationships, getting older and not wiser. It's the song you hear at 30 and think: oh, this is what happens when you don't figure it out in your twenties. You just keep going, tired and honest.

Here's what happens with this format: you start recognizing vocal timbres like old friends. Dylan's rasp, Ryan's bark, Greg and Tom trading lines. By the third rotation, you're not hearing songs—you're hearing conversations. Brand New shows up late with "Seventy Times 7" and "Sic Transit Gloria" and it feels like visiting an ex's Facebook. That drama, Jesse Lacey and John Nolan's friendship implosion turned into Taking Back Sunday vs Brand New, the greatest emo feud ever committed to Epitaph and Drive-Thru Records.

Top 5 Reasons This Format Breaks Your Brain While Running:

1. **Mile 1-2: Pattern Recognition** — You hear Spanish Love Songs, then Off With Their Heads, and your brain starts mapping the sequence. You're looking for the architecture instead of just running.

2. **Mile 2-3: Vocal Intimacy** — Three songs per band means you settle into someone's voice long enough to notice the cracks, the breathiness, the moments where they almost lose it but don't.

3. **Mile 3-4: Tempo Inconsistency as Philosophy** — These aren't all running BPMs. Some are too slow, some too fast. But you adjust your stride to match the feeling, not the tempo. That's the point.

4. **Mile 4-5: The Familiarity Problem** — By the time you hit The Menzingers' third track, you're anticipating the rotation. It's comfort food when your legs are screaming.

5. **Mile 5-6: The Hate5six Effect** — Ending on Misfits' "Some Kinda Hate" recorded in 1978—it's the basement show feeling. Raw, immediate, the thing that started all of this.

The constraint is the point. Barry would call this pretentious—"just make a playlist, Rob"—but Dick would get it. Six bands, three songs. You're not discovering anything new. You're learning something old more deeply. It's the difference between dating everyone on the apps and actually getting to know one person well enough to see their patterns.

By mile five, "Lightbringer" into "Seventy Times 7," I'm thinking about how Brand New made an entire career out of Jesse Lacey's inability to move on. That guitar riff, those lyrics—it's 2002 crystallized. Long Island basements and hurt feelings turned into clarion calls for anyone who's ever written an email they shouldn't send.

The playlist ends with Misfits doing "Some Kinda Hate" live in 1978, Glenn Danzig before he became a cartoon of himself. It's Plan 9 Records era, the horror punk blueprint, recorded on equipment that barely worked. After twenty tracks of melodic hardcore wrestling with adulthood, you get the primordial scream that started punk. It's the reminder: this all comes from the same place. Anger and honesty and three chords and get on with it.