But I need your help! I have a major, multi-day driving trip coming up in January. And I want to assemble the Greatest-Ever Driving Playlist, to help me roll through those many miles.

So here’s my challenge to you: Give me your suggested tracks for the Greatest-Ever Driving Playlist. If you suggest five tracks or more, you’ll be eligible to win a limited edition Zune T-shirt. (I’ll post a pic soon but, trust me, it’s cool.)

You can enter as often as you like. The winner will be selected arbitrarily and capriciously by me. Contest closes December 15th!

So, drivers: start your engines and get those playlist suggestions in! My driving companions and I thank you.

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On my run this morning with my Zune 8, I accidentally selected the wrong playlist: ‘Our Songs’ instead of ‘Harvey Workout’.

As a result my pace was a little slower, but it brought back some fun memories.

I always want to add new tracks to ‘Our Songs’, but Carrie (who you know as ZuneWidow) favors the ones that relate to some meaningful time or passing moment in our lives.

Here are a few tracks from Our Songs: (update – added links to track samples on Zune Social)

• Brown-Eyed Girl. I think this was one of the first songs we danced to.
• Something to Talk About. We used to work in an office together, so we can relate to this song.
• Shiny and New. I love every word of this song. If you haven’t heard Late Tuesday, you need to. Zune Marketplace has all of their tracks.
• Someone Like You. Nobody says it like Van Morrisson.
• Ordinary Miracle. Our lives are full of ‘em. We also have another Sarah Mclachlan track, I Will Remember You.
• Forever and For Always. Great lyrics from Shania.
• They Don’t Know. Anybody else remember Katrina?
• Something Good. Veering towards corny here, I know. But we are impelled to do a nose-to-nose version of this every time we watch The Sound of Music.
• Giving You the Best That I’ve Got. Like Anita says, “I bet everything on my wedding ring”.
• The Note Song. One of Carrie’s habits is leaving little notes – in my rollaboard, in our daughters’ lunchboxes, on our bathroom mirror. This is another great track from Late Tuesday.
• Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus. When our twin girls were four, I recorded them singing this. (Sample.) As they get older, it’s fun to be reminded of their toddler voices.

Some newer ones I’ve added are One Sweet Love (Sara Bareilles), Lucky (Jason Mraz), and 1,2,3,4 (Plain White T’s). And yes, I’ve got Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight on there. That goes without saying, right!?

What are some of your ‘Our Songs’? Let me know!

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It’s been one of the more controversial Zune features, as it does away with the conventional 5-star rating system used by iTunes, Windows Media Player, and others.

Well, this post may be for you. This morning Zunerama member ballbagcheese posts a trick to using genres as a customized rating system.

He notes that Zune software lets you create genres by clicking on an album or track. His concept is to set up a separate genre for each “star” rating – for example, Rock 5 *, Rock 4 *, Jazz 5 *, etc.

Another method is to use an unused metatag field – say, “conductor” – and put 5-star rating info into that field. You can then use autoplaylists to pull all of our 5-star tracks automatically.

The downside – you can do this in Zune software, but not from the player itself. Still, for those of you who want a more graduated rating system than Love It / Hate It… it’s one way to work around it!

See more details, and reactions from other Zuners, here.

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Our resident deejay (and Zunerama mod’) Jander has posted a montage playlist of cheesy 80’s inspirational music. As Jander says, it’s good for a laugh and also makes for a “surprisingly motivational workout playlist”.

I believe it, too, with cheeseball classics like Eye of the Tiger, Only the Young (that’s Journey, kiddo), Hearts on Fire, Gonna Fly Now, Danger Zone, Holding Out For a Hero, and the ever popular My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down. For more torture, check out Jander’s playlist – which includes links to YouTube music videos.

Crank it up, and rack up that weight bench bar while you’re at it. Just don’t hurt yourself – you’re not an 80’s kid anymore.

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