THIS THREAD DISTURBS ME!
Kudos to the Darkness (they just wanna be Duran Duran..) and old skool dance (Karl - i challenge you to a throwdown - my "forgotten" tape hails from spring 1992, though is likely a bit more softcore/club-soul than ACIIIID).
Nora Jones? Avril Lavigne? Gaz Jools? *runs and hides*
Its... It's.... It's like someone who has the ability to type coherently conciously went out and tuned into Heart FM and enjoyed it for more than two hours, then went and bought all the music that was played there and made a playlist from it. And I sawed the baby and the baby smiled at me.
(I must admit I liked the re-chill of Mad World - until the radio at work shoved it down my throat every half hour, on the quarter hour, just to make sure I was thoroughly sick of it before 2004 even showed its head)
Last few things listened to personally:
Some classical compilation tape I made up for my Nan (just to check that her new Walkman at least works the once before she touches it). Very nice. Has some Cities of Gold and Studio Ghibli backing theme tunes sneaked onto it in places where they blend well. All hail Saban, Levy and Hisaishi.
Cuban Boys - Eastwood, & any single/EP tracks that could be made to fit with it on a C120. Very good for playing very loud. Serious dance meets Silly meets Vocal Trance meets "John Peel likes them, so they wont sell". Very good for maxing the volume too and not caring that you're in traffic, and your speakers are close to blowing but somehow not distorting much.
Joe Jackson's Jumping Jive. Something a bit different. A 1930s-feel brace of Jazz and... well.. Jive tracks that a friend gave me (it's got NWA on the flipside. He's crazy

). Put it on because I thought it had Zoot Suit Riot on there, was wrong, but enjoyed it all the same. Another good car one.
Homemade collection of rock tunes. Tape 2 so it's mainly more modern college-punk, britrawk and soft metal stuff, but still good (T1 was the classic stuff). Put it on in the van. Dad liked it somehow. Thrash time. Muse etc.
Jims Big Ego / Wierd Al Yankovic (C90 split). Top notch serious poetic softrock with a slightly silly vaneer one side, top notch seriously silly accordian rock with a slightly serious soft vaneer on the other. Listen to it for "Stress" and "All about the Pentiums".
A disc I made with lots of old Atari ST chip-tunes on it. The classic Brief History of Time, Xenon 2 and International Karate Plus of course, but rediscovering the sheer mockrock joy of the various Supercars backing tracks rendered in all their 3-puretone-plus-1-noise glory.
Random stuff in Winamp. Old skool dance*, the Rasmus, Cake, Pulp, TV themes, whatever turns up.
Morcheeba - Charango (bonus instrumental disc), Robert Miles - Dreamland, Leftfield - Leftism. I was trying to read up on some job descriptions and write application forms. Silence was too overwhelming, anything vocal too distracting (sing-along time), game tunes too nostalgic and classical stuff too novel and violent. This grouping just seemed to gel - gentle, non vocal, familiar - and made the writing whizz by. Highly reccomended. (Hell, any Morcheeba or Leftfield cannot be reccommended enough)
Lalalala!!!
* not too much at the moment though. I work in a nightclub on friday and saturday. My quality O/S/D, disco, soul and cheese quotas are pretty much filled for the week after 12 hours of our resident DJ's "work" (sitting in the booth with 5 pints of stella and an automatic CD cueing system). We are faaaamily, I got only love can set your sisters free.