Good Workout CD #1

I have (sort of) found the first definitively good workout CD of the collection.

Whatever by Aimee Mann is a good CD to workout to IF you are planning on a 30 minute workout. Unfortunately, I had hoped for a 45 minute workout this evening.

Thirty minutes into the CD you get a very slow, mellow song - Jacob Marley's Chain - that would be perfect if you were trying to cool down, but just takes all the momentum out of your workout. And the next 5 songs are equally mellow and non-inspiring. The last track gets a bit of the energy back, but it's not worth it to skip through the rest of the stuff to get there.

Here's what made it a good workout CD:

• Aimee Mann's got some rocking beats, which really keep you moving
• There's a variety in the tempo of the songs, which keeps it interesting, but not too much of a variety to stall you (well, in the first 7 tracks at least)
• She writes a damn good lyric, so they're interesting songs to listen to.
• Most of her songs have the perfect amount of repetition within the chorus or general structure of the song. So if you don't know the music that well you can still at least pretend to sing along.

So there you have it. There are four more Aimee Mann CD's in the rack, so for the next week or so we'll be determining if she is, empirically, a good artist to work out to or if this CD is an anomaly.