Snicker Apple Salad mix
a playlist, not a potluck
Your AI-free reminder that you can find or create joy while also feeling fear, rage, despair, and other prickly crap.
RECIPE FOR SNICKER APPLE SALAD: a playlist, not a potluck dish
Over here at Iridescent Ordinary, we are big believers in the power of music to bring joy. We love mixes for all occasions. Our first mixes were captured off of the radio. Tape-to-tape boom boxes were state of the art. We practiced precise timing. Having the least amount of blank space at the end of a cassette was a point of pride. Songs cut abruptly short when the tape ends? Never. Anathema, and simply wasn’t done. Not by anyone with any respect for the art form.
I rejoice in the ease and simplicity of making mixes today. Mixes for everything! Allow me to walk you through a simple formula to create your own mix for summer 2026.
Are you familiar with a Snickers Apple Salad? A fave mid-western potluck dish, the recipe is practically in the name: chopped up snickers bars, sliced apples, pudding, and cool whip. That’s the vibe this mix has: Lighthearted. Sweet. Creamy. Designed for maximum fun. Ever-so-slightly nostalgic.
Here’s a link to my version, still a work in progress. I’ve made cover artfor you, because, eew, who wants a default graphic. As for your playlist, don’t deliberate, do the following.
Pick up your phone, open your chosen music app, create a new playlist, and follow this recipe.
Take a handful, or more, of new songs that you’re digging right now.
Add 2-3 songs from the following categories that vibe summer to you.
Beatles, Beach Boys, Buffett
Motown, Doowop, Wall of Sound, old school country, surf rock
Your childhood summer delights
Your teen summer anthems
Soundtracks
Windows down, volume up songs
Reggae
Are jam bands your thing?
Your favorite covers of Under The Boardwalk
Same, but Summertime, (this list doesn’t include Sublime’s version)
Any number of songs from this list of top 100 Summer songs
Your favorite summer songs from the past 5 summers
Feel free to add whatever else moves you
Songs formerly thought of as “Musical Guilty Secrets™”
A quick note about mixes
You’re making a musical snicker apple salad. A blend of crispy, refreshing green apples; smooth and creamy pudding; mellow cool whip; and nutty, gooey, crunchy, salty, sweet Snickers.
If you’re listening and find a song doesn’t vibe: adios my friend. You don’t have to go back to reconfigure, rework, and retape the mix. You click on the song and delete. The end. You deserve better than listening to music that doesn’t thrill you. Keep adding, subtracting. Your mix can grow and evolve.
This is your soundtrack to Summer 2026. Listen while driving, picnicking, licking popsicles in a gas station parking lot, and having impromptu dance parties.
A quick note about Musical Guilty Secrets™
There are no musical guilty secrets. I was obsessed with Michael Jackson during the Thriller era, my bedroom wall a giant collage homage to him. Those pictures came down long before sophomore year in high school I got my “Flock of Seagulls” haircut. Somewhere in there I swore lifetime allegiance to the Culture Club. I was voted “Floor Deadhead” in my college dorm. We contain multitudes. If it brings you joy, listen to it. Fuck the haters.
A quick story about one of my selections:
My infant sister was tucked away in the pediatrics ward of Yale Hospital battling meningitis, my mother never left her side. That left my father to look after his four other children. A football coach who didn’t even know how to make his own coffee, let alone the care and feeding of progeny, he let us bathe in the ocean and snack on whatever was in the house. One afternoon he dragged us along for a hospital visit. Except we couldn’t go inside, so us four kids, aged six to thirteen, sat in the car parked in an emergency zone with the engine running while he went inside. I know, I know. We weren’t even wearing seatbelts. Without phones or screens to occupy ourselves, we did what any children would do. We plucked green grapes off the stem (probably not even washed) and held them aloft, our arms moving so the grapes wiggled and danced, then serenaded them along with the radio:. “You’re the one that I want, ooh ooh ooh, the one I need.” On “Oh, yes indeed,” we popped them in our mouths. Repeat for seven hours, or probably only fifteen minutes, until Dad returned and we left.
That’s it. The memory, however inaccurate it may be, ends there, making that song from the Grease soundtrack the first summer song of my life.
Send me links to your mixes.
I’m always open to ideas, suggestions, shenanigans, tomfoolery, collaborations, cheese, snacks, and field trips.
You can find my art here and here. I offer custom workshops and design. I am the proud guardian/custodian of a 17 3/4 year old cheeseburger named Patty.
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words and images © Rubi McGrory 2021-2026
