There’s something so magical about waking up and knowing that today is your day to absolutely abolish everyone else with your 130k+ minutes spent listening to music in a year, or at least from January to October-ish. I don’t mean to brag, but in 2018 I had so many minutes of listening that my school knew me as the ‘music addict.’ Not to mention in 2021 alone I had almost 200k minutes of listening on Spotify — you could say I’m a little addicted.
However, what makes Spotify Wrapped my favorite holiday is the newest addition to it. In 2022, Spotify added this new feature where musicians were able to record messages for fans thanking them for listening and, in general, appreciating them for all the insane listening they did. And so if the musicians you listened to the most made one of these messages, you basically got a personal message from them that, for me at least, made me feel 10x more happier for listening to my favorite musicians. They’re definitely not one-on-one super intimate messages, but to have your favorite musicians thank you for supporting them is always a good feeling. I mean, personally, when I saw one of my favorite bands, COIN, in one of my messages, I jumped with joy because I knew I was one of a few who actually got to see the message in real time and not through someone else’s screen.
I think anyone who is semi-interested in Spotify Wrapped though can agree that getting your end-of-the-year Wrapped playlist, with your 101 most listened-to songs is the best part of Spotify Wrapped. I consider myself a super reminiscent person, which means I connect a lot of the songs I listen to with vivid memories or moments that happened to me while listening to the song, encompass that whole memory in one, or the lyrics just relate to a moment.
For example, on the rare occasions when I listen to “Cold” by Maroon 5, I take a trip back to the last time I visited my family in Mexico in 2019 because during the whole trip, I was addicted to this song. And so every time I get my Spotify Wrapped playlist, I like to reminisce on all the cringy, funny, sad, or frustrating memories of the year that led to me playing these songs for an ungodly amount of times. So when my Spotify Wrapped comes out and I wonder why “breathin” by Ariana Grande is on my playlist, I can look back at my post-gallbladder removal surgery week when my nurse gave me a breathing toy to breathe into so my lungs could go back to normal.
Some people love Christmas, and some adore the spookiness of Halloween, but I think Spotify Wrapped Day tops them all. From being able to look back on the year to absolutely abolishing everyone in the minutes you listened to music, Spotify Wrapped is a holiday for all. Unless you hate music, we can all come to appreciate the joy of getting to see which artist you binged a little too much, and will likely continue to binge, but tell everyone that you don’t binge.