Tuesday Playlist: Herb Time

Like most people of my generation, my first conscious experience with Herb Alpert's music came courtesy of "Diamonds," the 1987 pop hit he pulled off by virtue of being part owner of Janet Jackson's label, and therefore one of the few people capable of compelling her to lend lead vocals to a song on someone else's album. Of course, Alpert's trumpet was the last reason "Diamonds" went to No. 5 on the Hot 100, but it still ended a lengthy commercial lull for him, and ensured that his next few releases were afforded a far greater degree of mainstream attention than might otherwise have reasonably been expected for a middle-aged jazz artist.

[Kenny G coughs conspicuously, and is ignored]

Of course, even if kids my age didn't know it, Alpert had been putting out albums for 25 years by the time "Diamonds" was released — and we'd absorbed some of that music via cultural osmosis, although we almost certainly weren't aware of it. In some respects, it'd be easy to regard "Diamonds" as a craven attempt to prolong Alpert's commercial relevancy, and perhaps to some extent it was, but if you step back and look at the bigger picture, it's really just one among many examples of his restless artistic spirit, and a general unwillingness to sit still in the musical bracket where the general audience tends to assume he belongs.

If you aren't familiar with Alpert's oeuvre, then that last sentence probably makes him sound adventurous or even experimental, which would be an unfair expectation to set; although he's dabbled in a variety of musical styles, he's always been essentially an easy listening artist, albeit one with an uncommon urge to explore. Taking a trip through his catalog means being gently entertained while listening to vaguely Mexican-themed music, or vaguely Brazilian-adjacent music, or disco, or electro-funk, or hip-hop, or... well, you get the idea. The trappings have frequently changed, but Alpert's sole, soothing mission has not.

Given that we're in the thick of yet another stupidly, frustratingly fraught election season, and there's a thing that'll be on the TV tonight that's stressing a whole bunch of us out, I figured this might be a perfect Tuesday to serve up a little Herb Alpert. Or a whole fuckin' bunch of Herb Alpert, really — just by going through the relatively small portion of his catalog that's available to stream, I rounded up 162 songs worth a recommend, adding up to nearly nine and a half hours in all. So if you're feeling wound up and you could use a warm sonic bath to unwind in, save this playlist, hit shuffle, and dive on in; no matter how crazy the world might get, the A in A&M is always here to help calm you down.

(Do I have an even mellower playlist waiting to drop in November? You bet I do.)