Wrapped

what spotify says are my top ten songs of the past year

As the year came to a close, I wanted to do a little introspection. What music did I listen to the most this past year, and how did it affect me? I generally listen to music in three contexts: commuting, exercising, and research for this newsletter. Each of those soundtracks has a different purpose, so I wonder how it blends together?

For commuting, I generally drive between an hour and two hours each day, so I get an opportunity to go deep in a playlist. For context, I default to my Discover Weekly list, available here:

Sometimes I’ll go for my Daylist, which changes every three hours. It’s highly variable, and the playlist title changes with the rotation. For example, as of this writing it’s “fingerstyle classical thursday morning”. This is the one I end up listening to most of all during the week once my Discover Weekly list is exhausted. I also have a repertoire of playlists in my library (available here) that I’ll turn on for a particular setting or mood.

Occasionally I’ll use the Spotify DJ feature, but I’m generally unsatisfied with it. It commits two cardinal sins in my book, but they’re essentially the same: the “disc jockey” (read: LLM-derived AI) is incredibly repetitive, and it almost always features songs I’ve had on heavy rotation recently. My particular brand of neurodivergence relies on “comfortable but novel” to be successful, so I don’t want to hear the same songs on rotation. (I love it when there’s something new in the same vein as I’ve been listening to, but don’t play the same song twice in an hour.) The DJ is heavily scripted and automated, so the patter is exactly replicated each time. At this point I can quote it verbatim.

When it comes to exercise, I use either a specific BPM playlist (generated by Spotify) or one of my genre playlists. If I’m doing cardio while simultaneously reading (as I usually do), I’ll tweak it to be an instrumental playlist. I prefer higher energy music for this purpose, so it usually comes out to somewhere between 120 and 160 BPM. I like electronic music genres with specific BPM ranges for cardio, meaning that I listen to a lot of relatively obscure sub-genres like Melbourne Bounce.

For researching music, I actually don’t use Spotify that often. If it’s a topic or genre that I’m unfamiliar with, I’ll go to the artist page or their radio, but usually I’ll use YouTube to get the feel of it. Frequently, the visual component is important to consider. If it’s an artist I know relatively well, I’ll eschew listening to them entirely.

This brings us to the star of our show, my Spotify Wrapped for the past year. If you follow me on social media, I highlighted my results via Instagram and BlueSky, but I wanted to take a slightly deeper dive than just screenshots. I’ll also take this opportunity to highlight previous articles of mine that tie in to what I’ve listened to. (Gotta plug the archives when I can. Clicks are clicks.) We’ll begin with number ten…

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10. Lavender Bones - Stand Atlantic

This one is on here due to research. When I was building a list of female-fronted bands for Women’s History Month, I selected Stand Atlantic as representative of pop-punk and alternative. It just so happens that they’re a good band with a lot of catchy songs. By the way, that article is here:

9. Misery Business - Paramore

For a while, the Spotify DJ insisted I wanted to listen to this song at least twice an hour no matter how many skips I used (and I make good use of my Premium account for just that reason). I think it’s ironic that an ostensibly progressive leaning band has been through the ringer with “cancel culture” in regards to this song, but since they’ve put it back in their setlist does that make them into a “cancel cancel culture” band? Either way, their new stuff isn’t as good.

8. Rich Girl - Hall and Oates

Speaking of songs with prominent anti-woman slurs in the lyrics, both Hall and Oates have been in the news as of late. It seems John Oates is trying to sell his half of the publishing catalog without consulting Daryl Hall. In recent years, Daryl has been able to leverage his talents and connections better than John, so he’s not as strapped for cash. Both sold a portion of their future earnings in 2007, but the restrictions placed on the duo mean that they have to move unilaterally to make decisions like that. Hall ended up suing Oates to stop him, so things are going swimmingly for the Philly Soul legends. (I need to write a full Hall and Oates and/or blue-eyed soul article. Someone remind me later.)

7. Semi-Charmed Life - Third Eye Blind

Stephan Jenkins is a well-renowned jerk, and is reportedly one of the most difficult people in (once-)popular music to work with. The official story of “Semi-Charmed Life” is that he wrote the song to show off to his friend Linda Perry when they were both struggling Bay Area musicians, to compete against her “What’s Up?” The actual story is more complicated. Allegedly, Jenkins “borrowed” the central riff from his former partner Herman Chunn, then bought out his rights for $10,000. Guitarist Kevin Cadogan says he contributed the rest of the guitar parts, and sued for 25% of the rights to the song. Tony Fredanelli, who auditioned for the band in 1993, alleged that he wrote parts of the song before then. Producer Eric Valentine (of Hole fame, so he knows difficult musicians) claimed that multiple people had input, and that the publishing rights might as well be fiction. Isn’t music law fun?

6. Everywhere - Fleetwood Mac

This is another one that comes directly from my research, this time for my Fleetwood Mac article. It’s pretty good, you should read it:

That was compounded by my Yacht Rock playlist featuring “Everywhere” fairly prominently. As you can tell from my article, though, this isn’t my favorite Fleetwood Mac song at all, so I’m moderately surprised this made the list this high up.

5. Dear Maria, Count Me In - All Time Low

This song peaked at number 86 on the Billboard charts, despite its reputation as one of the most iconic pop punk songs of all time. I guess cultural resonance doesn’t always translate to chart success? The song had a brief revival thanks to TikTok in 2021, with the “Mom, it was never a phase” trend. There are several songs I think are better examples of pop punk, but this one just hits right. (Is that what the children are saying these days? I’m old. I need a nap.)

4. Friday I’m in Love - The Cure

I can trace this one explicitly to research again, this time for my article on The Cure.

Everything I need to say about The Cure is in the article. I got a lot of positive feedback for that one, but I can always use more. (Validate me, darn it!) I’ve highlighted it multiple times in retrospective posts, and for good reason. My contention is that The Cure are a great pop band disguised as a goth rock group, and I love great pop music.

3. The Boys of Summer - Don Henley

I’m not sure if this one is the aftereffects of my Eagles article or my yacht rock playlist rearing its ugly head (shout out to my boy Chris for keeping the yacht rock flag flying high).

(Since I’ve mentioned that playlist twice now, I should probably push this article past the email length limit and embed it. In for a penny…)

It’s definitely one or the other, though. That playlist is a perfect road trip or lazy afternoon soundtrack, filled to the brim with “remember some guys”, one of my favorite activities. I’m honestly surprised that this version outstripped the Ataris cover, since I seem to listen to them about the same number of times.

2. Let Me Go - Cake

Is there enough Cake content to justify a full article? I’d have to throw together a list. I’m almost positive that “Let Me Go” wouldn’t be at the top. My gut says it’s “The Distance”, but my heart says “Comfort Eagle” or “Love You Madly”. Looking through it, I’ve probably got a solid top seven, but after that it’s kind of dicey. They’re practically designed in a lab to capture my interest: weird instruments, kitschy covers, killer rhythm section, and an almost perverse sense of humor about the entire endeavor. The anti-rock-stars if you will.

1. Sweetness - Jimmy Eat World

I’m not surprised at all that Jimmy Eat World is at the top of the list, but I am genuinely shocked that “Sweetness” is the killer app. I think it’s because my Post-2000’s Emo/Screamo/Post-Hardcore playlist defaulted to this song on top when I hit the “shuffle play” button, so it played a lot.

As you’re aware from my Emo retrospective series, my favorite Jimmy Eat World is easily “A Praise Chorus”, thanks to both killer hooks and looming nostalgia. Yes, nostalgia is a social disease, but it’s a good one. Especially when you’re looking back at an entire year’s worth of listening.

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Here’s the screenshot from my official Wrapped profile as proof:

Thank you for joining me for this recap. I’ll have something new for you in two weeks, after my birthday next Thursday. Gifts are always appreciated, but subscribing to my newsletter is the best gift you can give me. Unless you give me cash, in which case, give me cash. If you subscribe, you’ll get an email in your inbox every time I publish a new article. You wouldn’t want to miss these, would you?