There's a stretch on the Lakefront Trail between Oak and North where you decide if you're actually a runner or just someone who owns running shoes. It's about twelve minutes in when the endorphin lie wears off and you realize, oh right, this still sucks. That's where "It's Strange" by Louis The Child hit me, and I had to reconsider everything I thought I knew about running music.
I'm a record store clerk. I've spent twenty years insisting that real music has guitars and comes on vinyl and was recorded before 2005. I've kicked people out of Championship Vinyl for asking if we carry EDM. And here I am, running to dubstep. What came first, the desperation or the playlist?
Let me tell you what this playlist is: it's electronic music for people who don't trust electronic music. Santigold opens with "Chasing Shadows" because she's the bridge—she's got punk DNA, she worked with Diplo before we all pretended to know who Diplo was. It's safe. It's familiar. You can admit you like this without Barry judging you.
Then Louis The Child shows up with "Big Love" and EARTHGANG, and suddenly you're not listening to soulless button-pushing. You're listening to production that understands dynamics. GRiZ's "supadupakulavibe" has actual funk in it—like, James Brown via synthesizers kind of funk. This is not the EDM that ruined Coachella. This is something else.
Here's what I figured out around mile two: EDM gets a bad rap because we confuse genre with execution. Most EDM is garbage. Most rock is garbage too. We just forgive rock because we grew up with it. But GRiZ knows how to build tension. Louis The Child understands the drop isn't about volume, it's about anticipation. These producers—and I hate that I'm calling them producers instead of musicians, but here we are—they know how to make thirty-two minutes feel like a complete thought.
The Wall Breaker is "All Of It" by Party Favor at track nine. You're twenty-three minutes in, you're deciding whether to quit or push through, and this track comes in with this relentless optimism that feels chemically engineered to make you believe you can do this. It's manipulative. It works. The kick drum pattern matches your cadence exactly, the synth builds like your heart rate, and for three minutes and twenty seconds you're not running away from your problems or toward some fantasy version of yourself. You're just running. It's the only honest moment in the whole playlist.
Sego closes with "Shame" because even electronic playlists need a comedown. It's chillwave, it's got guitars buried in there somewhere, it gives you permission to slow down without admitting defeat.
Top 5 electronic tracks I would've refused to listen to three months ago but now can't run without: 1) "supadupakulavibe" by GRiZ—funk that doesn't apologize for being synthesized, 2) "Big Love" by Louis The Child—EARTHGANG makes it credible, 3) "It's Strange" with K.Flay—her voice cuts through the production like Debbie Harry used to, 4) "All Of It" by Party Favor—the drop at 1:47 is better than any guitar solo I heard this year, 5) "Chasing Shadows" by Santigold—the one that made it safe to admit I might be wrong about electronic music. Honorable mention: "Goodbye" by MELVV because MOONZz's vocals prove you can have soul without a soul band.
I've been wrong about music before. I told someone in 1993 that grunge would be over in six months. I said Napster was a fad. I insisted vinyl would never come back. Being wrong about EDM feels different though. It feels like admitting that music doesn't have to be made the way I think it should be made to matter. It feels like the thing you realize at mile three when you're still running and you thought you'd have quit by now.
This playlist is thirty-two minutes. That's exactly how long it takes to run from my apartment to the Point and back. That's exactly how long it takes to figure out that you're not running to clear your head—you're running because sometimes the only honest conversation you can have is with yourself and a kick drum at 140 BPM. The head never clears. You just get better at running with the noise.
