Ten Songs Per Zip Code: Alicia Matthew’s City Soundtrack Ritual
On a gray Tuesday in Minneapolis, Alicia Matthew is not scrolling through set lists. She is standing in a green room with one earbud in, rebuilding a playlist from scratch. Ten songs. No more, no less. The first is a local act she heard about from the venue’s front-of-house engineer. The last is a personal anchor—a song she has carried through every club run since her first tour. The eight slots in between have a very specific job: move her from offstage adrenaline to onstage clarity without letting the room in too early.
That ritual is what she calls the city soundtrack. Every stop on the road gets its own file, its own ten-song sequence, and its own small set of rules. It is not a souvenir playlist for the bus. It is a transition tool, a listening habit, and—if you ask her—one of the most reliable creative practices she has. Here is how it works.
The Ten-Song Rule
Alicia’s first rule is the number itself. Ten tracks is long enough to change her state and short enough to finish before call time. She names each file with the city and the date, then keeps it in a folder sorted by tour. A playlist with 43 songs is a mood. A playlist with ten songs is a plan.
Repeat cities get new files. Minneapolis in November is not Minneapolis in June, and she does not pretend otherwise. The weather, the room, the crowd, and her own energy all change the sequence. The ritual is consistent; the soundtrack is not.
Local Artists Come First
Before she adds anything familiar, Alicia looks for one local doorway. She asks three people: the opener, a venue staffer, and fans who show up early. Her question is always the same: What is one song from this city that feels like walking home?
She is not trying to assemble a complete local music education. She wants a single point of connection, something the room would recognize as its own. That track usually lands in the second or third slot, after the arrival songs but before the deeper work begins.
This is also where fans get involved. Alicia sometimes posts a story asking for city-specific recommendations. She reads them, listens once, and makes a choice. The playlist is not a crowd-sourced project, but it is porous. She likes knowing that a stranger’s recommendation might end up in the room that night.
The Personal Anchors
After the local pick comes the anchor. Alicia thinks of anchors in three types: the reset, the spine, and the exit. The reset is slow and familiar, the song that lowers her heart rate when the hallway gets loud. The spine is a lyric she trusts, usually something that reminds her why she is there. The exit is the song that walks her to the side of the stage.
She does not over-explain these choices, even to her team. Some of the anchors are tied to people she loves. Some are tied to versions of herself she is still trying to leave behind. The playlist holds both without making either one public.
The Pre-Show Sequence
Order matters more than genre. The first three songs are for arrival: low stakes, steady tempo, nothing that asks too much. The middle four are for work: stretching, vocal warmups, a final check of the set list. The last three are for launch. That final stretch is not casual listening. It is choreography.
Alicia does not shuffle. She does not skip ahead. If a song is not working, she changes the order before the next city rather than fighting it in the moment. The playlist is a schedule, and schedules work best when you trust them.
What the Playlists Reveal
Listen to enough of these files and a pattern appears. Alicia is not chasing cool. She is chasing continuity. She wants the first song to meet her where she is, and the last song to push her through the door. The local track keeps her curious. The anchors keep her steady.
The city playlists also reveal the unglamorous part of creativity: repetition, preparation, and a willingness to be a little boring before a show. There is no magic trick in the folder. There is just a person deciding, city by city, what kind of room she wants to walk into.
Build Your Own City Soundtrack
Readers who want to try the ritual do not need a tour bus. They need ten songs and a reason.
- Pick one city and one day. Do not make a playlist for an entire trip. Make it for the moment before something matters.
- Assign jobs, not genres. Choose songs for arrival, focus, and launch instead of labeling them by mood.
- Find one local song through a human. Ask a friend, a bartender, a record store clerk, or a fan online. The recommendation matters more than the research.
- Choose two anchors. One should calm you down. One should remind you why you said yes.
- Keep it at ten and do not shuffle. The limit is the point. So is the order.
- Leave one track private. Not every song needs a caption or a share. Some of the sequence can belong only to you.
Alicia’s playlists are not souvenirs, even if they end up feeling that way later. They are small, repeatable acts of attention. Ten songs, one city, and a clear intention for the room ahead.
