Personalised Collection

How To Stop An Exploding Man
Made for: Tam

Make: Made just before December 28th, 2007, in my computer (Alyssa).

Description: To make this compilation, I was counting on Tam forgetting that earlier on in the
year, I had told him that, unlike previous years, this year I would not be forgetting his birthday (on
January 2nd, after New Years!) and I would be getting him a present. At the time, I immediately knew
making him a compilation would be a great project to work on. It'd been on my mind for several years
and frankly, this was the best excuse to get up off my butt and get to work after a 4 year hiatus on
personal compilations.

Since this was the first compilation that I was making for a guy, the first complication I noticed was
that I didn't want to make it sound gay. Seriously, this is harder than you'd think when you're looking
for the right songs. The second thing I needed was a theme. What I decided on was actually completely
stolen from a popular TV show, which was kind of done on purpose because it made the theme apparent.
How To Stop An Exploding Man is the name of the first season finale of Heroes - which is what
this compilation was all about.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Listing:
1. Tears For Fears - Everybody Wants To Rule The World
2. Aneiki - Superhero
3. Chris Cornell - You Know My Name
4. The Atari's - The Boys Of Summer
5. Celine Dion - I Drove All Night
6. Dido - Here With Me
7. Poets of the Fall - Late Goodbye
8. Colin Hay - Overkill
9. Train - Drops of Jupiter
10. Sixpence None The Richer - Don't Dream It's Over
11. Five For Fighting - Easy Tonight
12. Wilson Phillips - Hold On
13. The Killers - Mr Brightside
14. Tina Dico - Give In
15. KT Tunstall - Another Place To Fall
16. Christine Anu - Ocean Of Regret
17. Filter - Take A Picture
18. Brooke Fraser - Saving The World

What Missed Out: Oh god. The amount of songs I sifted through really is far too massive to
list them all here, so I'll just mention some of the more significant ones. Gavin McGraw's I Don't
Wanna Be and Mr Mister's Broken Wings were two of the first songs that got the chop, as
they didn't get the story running quite the way I wanted it to. Switchfoot's I Dare You To Move
did the same thing, except it was far too slow and repetitive as well. Candice Alley's Falling almost made it, but I felt it was a bit too cheap for this compilation and replaced it with Train's
Drops of Jupiter instead, which was a far superior choice. Nerina Pallot's Learning To
Breathe and Incubus' Drive were both great for the theme, but I found that I could wind
up the last 4 songs in either of those songs - which I didn't want to do, and completely miss my
real point.

This is the first CD I've burned that had one free slot - room for one more song. I usually try
and fill every slot on a CD to get maximum enjoyment for as long as possible, but by the time I got
the order of the songs on this compilation together, it was so perfect that I couldn't find one more
song to include. My choices included Cosima De Vito's What My Heart Says, Madonna's Super
Pop, Matchbox 20's Disease, and a few others that, goddammit, didn't quite fit.