Spotify Wrapped is probably one of my favorite cultural phenomena of the last 10 years. Every year, we wait to see what our music habits say about us, and we share them on social media for others to see – and judge. The statistics that Spotify collects about us say a lot about the kind of year we’ve had. Looking at the data that Spotify gave me this year had me wondering a lot about how my listening habits have changed.
48 Genres – Pop, Modern Bollywood, pov: indie, Desi Pop, and Alt Z
I’m going to be completely honest: I don’t really understand music genres that well. I just like what I like, and a lot of times they happen to fall within a category I didn’t know existed, like Alt Z (what even is that?). One of the biggest changes in my music habits of this year is that I discovered a lot of artists through social media, and if I liked a song, I would listen to their whole album or discography. A lot of times the rest of the album wasn’t as good as the one song, but I still listened to it and Spotify took note. And like every year, I listened to a lot of Bollywood music – one of the few constants in my Spotify Wrapped across years.
3,067 Songs
My top songs are something I laugh about every year. Most of the time, they end up being songs I obsess over for a few weeks and listen to 111 times – like I did with my top song this year – and then forget about it until Spotify Wrapped comes out. That is how 4 out of the top 5 songs ended up there. The only exception is, of course, Hozier’s “Eat Your Young.”
49,753 minutes – 34 Days Nonstop
I had to double check my number from last year because I knew this year’s was higher, but I didn’t realize it was almost 23,000 minutes higher. Part of the reason is that I worked a 9-5 internship the entire summer, where I was doing independent work a majority of the time. Listening to music while I work has become a habit of mine, and that definitely had an impact on my listening minutes. I also fell asleep to music a lot this year, even though most of that was from a 12 hour brown noise playlist.
1,458 Artists – Hozier, King Princess, Machine Gun Kelly, Lana Del Rey, and mehro
To the surprise of no one, Hozier was my top artist again, for the 3rd year in a row. Given that his new album, “Unreal Unearth,” came out earlier this year and that I went to his concert in September, I would have been upset if he wasn’t. King Princess being number 2 didn’t surprise me either, as I have been a fan of hers for years and listened to their entire discography regularly while at work. Machine Gun Kelly being number 3 was a surprise, but I wasn’t completely shocked. I did listen to his music quite a bit this year, and I genuinely enjoy some of his songs. However, I didn’t think I listened to him enough for him to be my number 3 artist. I felt like there were others that could have taken up that other spot instead. Lana Del Rey being number 4 wasn’t a huge surprise, as I did listen to a lot of her music last spring – I was going through a lot at the time. My number 5 artist was mehro, a smaller artist I discovered through Instagram last year. While they only have two albums out right now – “SKY ON FIRE” and “Dark Corners and Alchemy” – I listened to both regularly throughout the past year and had several of their songs in my other playlists. There were a lot of other artists I listened to this year that I was expecting to see in the top 5 but didn’t – including Halsey, JID, Childish Gambino, ROLE MODEL, Arctic Monkeys, and Indian artists like Arijit Singh and Diljit Dosanjh. I’m sure if we got to look at our top 10 or 20 artists, I would see all of those names on there.
Podcasts
A big change in 2023 is that I became a bit of a podcast girl. I find them as better alternatives to music for hot girl walks and doing chores around the house. My top podcast this year was a true crime/horror podcast called “Heart Starts Pounding,” which brilliantly details facts of unsolved cases and supernatural occurrences in places like Appalachia. The other top podcast is “Chosen Family,” a queer culture podcast hosted by Ashley Gavin, Alayna Joy, and Mak Ingemi. I love this podcast a lot because it’s hilarious and relatable, and because they handle serious issues within the queer community with grace and humor. And because I’m a bit of an insomniac, number 3 on the podcast list is the “I Can’t Sleep” podcast, where the host, Benjamin Boster, reads boring Wikipedia articles in a monotone voice in order to help you fall asleep. It has definitely helped me a lot and is a great alternative to the copious amounts of melatonin I used to take.
While I love Spotify Wrapped and look forward to it every year, I hate the way it has limited people’s ability to truly listen to whatever they like. I see so many people trying to skew their Wrapped in a way so that it reflects the version of themselves that people will find “acceptable” and not be judged for what they actually like. When one of your top artists isn’t someone your friends find palatable, how many excuses do you make to justify how they ended up there? When your top genres aren’t the same as everyone else in your feed, how do you explain that your music tastes are vastly different? How many people have we seen photoshopping their Spotify Wrapped so that they can feel accepted online?
When it started, Spotify Wrapped was a great way to celebrate and recognize everyone’s individuality. We’ve strayed away from that as a society, and I feel like we need to go back to it. We should stop worrying so much about what everyone else thinks of our music taste and just listen to whatever we want. No two people will have the same Spotify Wrapped stats, and that is simply because we are all unique and individual: we’re all human.