Last week Spotify released its year end summary of user’s listening habits, including an individualized playlist of someone’s most played songs of the year. First of all, the timing of this is almost as egregious as Costco playing Christmas music the day after Halloween. GRUMBLE. There’s an entire month of the year ahead of me, and you’re going to tell me that whatever I listen to in the next four weeks doesn’t count toward this analysis? What if I were to discover my favorite song of all time—this won’t even hypothetically happen because no moment in music will mean more to me in my lifetime than the build that starts at 3:37 in Radiohead’s “Let Down”—BUT LET’S JUST GET HYPOTHETICAL FOR A HYPOTHETICAL MOMENT.
Four weeks, Spotify. That’s an awfully long time to discount when it comes to me and my ability to discover music that I really, really like. No need to box me in like that, bruh.
I’d been eagerly awaiting this year-end examination because I was certain that I knew exactly what my top five or six songs would be, each one of them for a reason of their own. And the rest of the list would all be from my June playlist because I listened to those songs for hours and hours and hours while wandering the streets of Paris alone. Goddam, those hours. Some of the best hours of my life, hands down. I love my kids, sure, but anyone who has fallen love with Paris is like, “Kids? What kids?”
And I was right! Sort of! The playlist on my app does not match up with the platform they used for the analysis AND I HAVE SOME SERIOUS QUESTIONS. First, remember when I said that “Strangest Thing” by War on drugs was going to be the best song of the year? Yeah. Second most played song of my year:
