I admit it now, I was once an avid lis­ten­er of the sooth­ing new age music of Enya. At the time, in my musi­cal cir­cles, this was not cool, and at the time I cared about such things. So Enya was my guilty secret. I didn’t need to work that hard to hide my affec­tion. I only lis­tened to Enya at night, as I lay in bed alone and drift­ed off. I used my Enya cas­sette tapes (yes tapes), you see, to put myself to sleep.

I’ve had oth­er sleep favorites. Beethoven, Mozart, Bach… inter­pre­ta­tions of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach by syn­the­siz­er wiz­ard Wendy Car­los…. It may seem dis­parag­ing to say that a cer­tain composer’s music lulls one to sleep, but I think it’s just the oppo­site. So does com­pos­er and musi­cian Max Richter, who has cre­at­ed an eight-hour piece called “Sleep” that is “meant to be slept through,” says Richter. (There’s also a one hour ver­sion that’s more read­i­ly avail­able for pur­chase.) Its gen­tle waves of strings, voice, piano, and synths are like a musi­cal Lethe one floats on into obliv­ion.

Richter has per­formed the piece with oth­er musi­cians, just recent­ly overnight on a Sep­tem­ber 27th BBC Radio 3 broad­cast, “the longest live broad­cast,” writes The New York­er, “of a sin­gle piece of music in the station’s his­to­ry.” The small audi­ence in atten­dance most­ly stayed awake. One mem­ber report­ed­ly hal­lu­ci­nat­ed. The com­po­si­tion con­sists of thir­ty-one themed move­ments (Hear “Dream 3 (in the midst of my life)” above). Lovers of mod­ern min­i­mal­ist com­posers like Philip Glass and William Basin­s­ki will notice sim­i­lar uses of drone notes and rep­e­ti­tion in “Sleep.” You may even hear a touch of Enya….

Richter’s is the per­fect music to accom­pa­ny me into dream­land; even those move­ments that include a vocal­ist use the voice as a word­less, ethe­re­al instru­ment, as so many ambi­ent musi­cians do. I’ve come across more than a few favorite ambi­ent and min­i­mal­ist com­posers late at night, when Spo­ti­fy begins rec­om­mend­ing sleep playlists. “Sleep,” it turns out, “is one of Spotify’s most pop­u­lar cat­e­gories,” accord­ing to Bill­board. How­ev­er, the “world’s favorite choice when choos­ing music to unwind” may sur­prise you: red-head­ed Eng­lish singer/songwriter Ed Sheer­an.

I’m not per­son­al­ly a fan of his music, but even if I were, I can’t imag­ine lis­ten­ing to it as I set­tle down to sleep. Nonethe­less, mil­lions of peo­ple stream Sheer­an’s songs on repeat at bed­time, along with oth­er pop artists like Ellie Gould­ing, John Leg­end, Sam Smith, and Rihan­na. To each their own, I guess. Hear a playlist of the most-streamed “sleep” music on Spo­ti­fy above. (If you don’t have Spotify’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.) If none of these tunes do it for you, con­sid­er giv­ing iTunes’ 27th most pop­u­lar pod­cast, Sleep With Me, a chance. Or, let us know in the com­ments below what music, if any, helps calm your nerves and soothe your tired brain as you climb into bed after a long day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 58 Hours of Free Clas­si­cal Music Select­ed to Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax

Music That Helps You Write: A Free Spo­ti­fy Playlist of Your Selec­tions

Free Audio: Go the F–k to Sleep Nar­rat­ed by Samuel L. Jack­son

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

If you’ve ever had any doubt, for some rea­son or oth­er, that rock and roll descend­ed direct­ly from the blues, the video above, a his­to­ry of the blues in 50 riffs, should con­vince you. And while you might think a blues his­to­ry that ends in rock n roll would start with Robert John­son, this gui­tarist reach­es back to the coun­try blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Black Snake Moan” from 1928 then moves through leg­en­dar­i­ly tune­ful play­ers like Skip James and Rev­erend Gary Davis before we get to the infa­mous Mr. John­son.

Big Bill Broonzy is, as he should be, rep­re­sent­ed. Oth­er coun­try blues greats like soft-spo­ken farmer Mis­sis­sip­pi John Hurt and hard­ened felon Lead Bel­ly, “King of the 12 String Gui­tar,” are not. Say what you will about that. The record­ings these artists made with Okeh Records and Alan Lomax, despite their com­mer­cial fail­ure in the 30s, mid­wifed the blues revival of the fifties and six­ties. Hear Lead Bel­ly’s ver­sion of folk bal­lad “Gal­lows Pole” above, a song Led Zep­pelin made famous. Lead Belly’s acoustic blues inspired every­one from John Foger­ty to Skif­fle King Lon­nie Done­gan, Pete Seeger to Jim­my Page, as did the root­sy coun­try blues of Light­nin’ Hop­kins, who is includ­ed in the 50 riffs. As are John Lee Hook­er, Mud­dy Waters, Howl­in’ Wolf, and BB King’s elec­tric styles—all of them picked up by blues rock revival­ists, includ­ing, of course, Jimi Hen­drix.

Hendrix’s “Red House” riff makes the cut here, as we move slow­ly into rock and roll. But before we get to Hen­drix, we must first check in with two oth­er Kings, Fred­die and Albert—especially Albert. Hen­drix “was star struck,” says Rolling Stone, “when his hero [Albert King] opened for him at the Fill­more in 1967.” For his part, King said, “I taught [Hen­drix] a les­son about the blues. I could have eas­i­ly played his songs, but he couldn’t play mine.” See King play “Born Under a Bad Sign” in 1981, above, and hear why Hen­drix wor­shipped him.

Mis­sis­sip­pi blues moved to Mem­phis, Chica­go, New York and to Texas, where by the 70s and 80s, ZZ Top and Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an added their own south­west road­house swag­ger. (No John­ny Win­ter, alas.) Many peo­ple will be pleased to see Irish rock­er Rory Gal­lagher in the mix, and amused that The Blues Broth­ers get a men­tion. Many more usu­al sus­pects appear, and a few unusu­al picks. I’m very glad to hear a brief R.L. Burn­side riff. The White Stripes, Tedeschi Trucks Band, and Joe Bona­mas­sa round things out into the 2010’s. Every­one will miss their favorite blues play­er. (As usu­al, the pow­er­house gospel blues gui­tarist Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe gets over­looked.) I would love to see includ­ed in any his­to­ry of blues such obscure but bril­liant gui­tarists as Evan Johns (above), whose rock­a­bil­ly blues gui­tar freak­outs sound like noth­ing else. Or John Dee Hole­man, below, whose effort­less, under­stat­ed rhythm play­ing goes unmatched in my book.

Like so many of the blues­men who came before them, these gen­tle­men seem to rep­re­sent a dying breed. And yet the blues lives on and evolves in artists like Gary Clark Jr., The Black Keys, and Alaba­ma Shakes. And of course there’s the prodi­gy Bona­mas­sa, whom you absolute­ly have to see below at age 12, jam­ming with exper­i­men­tal coun­try speed demon Dan­ny Gatton’s band (he gets going around 1:05).

If you’re miss­ing your favorites, give them a shout out below. Who do you think has to be includ­ed in any his­to­ry of the blues—told in riffs or otherwise—and why?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Thrill is Gone: See B.B. King Play in Two Elec­tric Live Per­for­mances

R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Coun­try Fea­tures 114 Illus­tra­tions of the Artist’s Favorite Musi­cians

Watch Rock Pio­neer Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe Wow Audi­ences With Her Gospel Gui­tar

Zep­pelin Took My Blues Away: An Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Zeppelin’s “Copy­right Indis­cre­tions”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In mod­ern times, we don’t regard female musi­cians as in and of them­selves unusu­al. Our ros­ters of favorite rock­ers, pop-stars, solo singer-song­writ­ers, and what have you might well fea­ture as many women as men — or, depend­ing on the sub­genre, many more women than men. But those of us who lis­ten to a great deal of clas­si­cal music might feel a tad sheep­ish about how much more heav­i­ly male our playlists slant, at least in terms of the com­posers. For a vari­ety of his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al rea­sons, the clas­si­cal canon can feel like a man’s world indeed.

But it does­n’t have to! The Spo­ti­fy playlist above, “1200 Years of Women Com­posers: From Hilde­gard To Hig­don,” reveals that women start­ed shap­ing what we now know as clas­si­cal music far longer ago than most of us real­ize. (If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.) The playlist, which con­tains over 900 pieces and will take you days to lis­ten to, begins in medieval times with the Byzan­tine abbess, poet, com­pos­er, and hymno­g­ra­ph­er Kas­sia (shown above) and ends with female com­posers from around the world not only liv­ing but (espe­cial­ly by the stan­dards of those who write orches­tral music) still young, like Mis­ato Mochizu­ki, Hele­na Tul­ve, and Lera Auer­bach.

This comes arranged by Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal Playlists, whose site describes how the playlist offers not just an anthol­o­gy of women com­posers, but also “a brief his­to­ry of west­ern clas­si­cal music. It’s real­ly fas­ci­nat­ing to hear music con­stant­ly rein­vent­ing itself from the mono­phon­ic and deeply spir­i­tu­al medieval chant of Hilde­gard [of Bin­gen] all the way into Hig­don’s lush and ultra-mod­ern per­cus­sion con­cer­to.” And before you begin this epic lis­ten, bear in mind the quote from Faust that appears there: “Das Ewig Weib­liche Zieht ins hinan” — “The eter­nal fem­i­nine leads us upwards.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

Stream 58 Hours of Free Clas­si­cal Music Select­ed to Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax

Hear All of Mozart in a Free 127-Hour Playlist

Hear Clas­si­cal Music Com­posed by Friedrich Niet­zsche: 43 Orig­i­nal Tracks

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.