Most music enjoyers often declare their pride in their music taste, either based on the quality of the music or the personal connection they can find in certain lyrics or melodies. Whether I’m listening to more mainstream music or burrowing into more niche, specific artists, making playlists has become one of my favorite therapeutic past times. It is unsurprising that music allows for such profound creative expression, but creating collections that tell the same stories creates a new world of engagement with the songs we all know and love.
Playlists can be a specific vibe, situation, or just provide the perfect blend of music you may need at a certain moment. The most effective form of this is connecting music to the personal situations we experience in our everyday lives. Artists write based on relatability in their own lives, and the beautiful part is how it seems to always harmonize with our own lives.
There have been countless times where experiences have felt so disproportionately large, seemingly taking up so much space in my life. I found comfort in music, which somehow conveyed what I couldn’t. A big part of that was curating the perfect playlist for my feelings. It’s beautiful to keep challenging and exploring yourself. By carefully selecting songs to be a feeling, you are forced to partake in introspection and make connections to how others have processed their emotions. Making a playlist, however simple it may seem, is healthy and effective in working through your own feelings.
When I listen to my new playlist, I think about the situation without explicitly putting it into my own words. Conveniently, someone else has already done that part for me. Now, for this moment, my thoughts are in someone else’s hands and my only job is to relate to it. Eventually, after listening to it enough, it doesn’t feel so scary anymore. Suddenly, you’re not taking it on by yourself. It’s just you and your hyper specific playlist against the world!
Weeks later, when you’ve progressed through everything that seemed so overwhelming, you’ll notice that it doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Now you can look through those songs you once related to with a new outlook–they existed as a part of you, and you can move on while appreciating all that this little collection of songs has done for you. Your Spotify history will be a reminder of the past, an ever growing memory capsule perfectly curated to you.