“There, there.”
“It’s okay.”
“It doesn’t define you as a person.”
These platitudes could apply to so many difficult situations. At this time of year though, they’re particularly useful in response to one particular milestone in a person’s journey through life. That’s right, the release of Spotify Wrapped 2024.
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Spotify, the music streaming giant, hit on a piece of marketing genius when it began packaging its users’ listening habits into their top tracks, artists, genres and so on. It started off as an email, but with the incessant growth of shareability on social media Spotify began giving its users graphics that they could post. Since then, it’s become a highly anticipated annual event with quite a lot of social capital riding on a person’s results, depending on how highly they value their musical taste and how it is perceived.
Spotify Wrapped is such a phenomenon that you will see jokes start to pop up online from the middle of the year on through to October that it still may not be “too late” to “fix” your results. Whereas some might proudly report that Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department was their top listen of 2024, others might prefer to hide their love of Swift and her Eras Tour in favour of Waxahatchee or Fontaines DC. Although the idea of someone frantically listening to 100 hours of Louisiana sludge metal band Thou just to offset their love for pop music is distinctly less cool than just acknowledging how legitimate pop music is.
It’s possible to split the Spotify Wrapped sharers into separate camps. Here are a few.
Firstly, there are the Musos. They’re the ones who spent the year listening to post acid from Kazakhstan, sean-nós and maybe some Tyler, The Creator album tracks. Their Wrapped has very few duplicates and covers genres you didn’t even know exist. Never, I repeat, never let them take control of the tunes at a party. You can kiss Call Me Al followed by I Gotta Feeling goodbye.
Finally, there are the Parents. Their Spotify Wrapped is a mess of Moana, Baby Shark, White Noise, Brown Airplane Noise and one random Neil Young song that is the only thing the seven-month-old will fall asleep to
Next up are the Mortos. Last year they promised themselves that they were going to have a really deadly Spotify Wrapped in 2024 but then they got bitten by the Sabrina Carpenter bug and now four out of their top five tracks are Sabrina bangers. And look, there’s no shame in loving Sabrina Carpenter. But if you had hoped for at least the Waxahatchee and Fontaines DC style of round-up, revealing yourself to be a pop princess who listened to Espresso 1,543 times might be difficult. Of course, you don’t have to share your Spotify Wrapped results but then, what are trying to hide? A Crystal Swing addiction? Best to fess up to your love for Sabrina Carpenter.
The Popettes are serious about pop music. Yes, they have the big hitters of Billie, Taylor, Charli and Beyoncé (Eilish O’Connell, Swift, XCX and Knowles – although she doesn’t need a surname) on heavy rotation but they’re also going deeper. They’re well up on Tyla album tracks, they’ve never given up on Halsey, they were at Chappell Roan’s gold dust gig in The Olympia, they’re devotees of Irish pop princesses CMAT and Morgana. Don’t question their devotion, because you will never best them.
Next up are the Are You Okays. This was a category that really came into its own in the depths of the pandemic when a person’s Spotify Wrapped might consist of poetic indie-pop by Mitski and then just hundreds of hours of Deep Forest Sound Bathing For Anxiety. The Are You Okays are using music both as a release and a therapy, simultaneously crying to Mitski and then lying in a darkened room imaging they’re surrounded by trees and woodland creatures.
The Fanatics are the diehards. They’ve loved The Beatles since they were 11 and haven’t listened to anything else since. They are in the top 0.001% of Oasis consumers and it’s still not good enough for them. They’ve seen Bruce Springsteen live 17 times and goddammit they’ll make it 18 when he inevitably comes back to the RDS. All together now, YOU CAN’T START A FIRE!
Finally, there are the Parents. And these are the ones who most need the platitudes laid out at the beginning. Their Spotify Wrapped is a mess of Moana, Baby Shark, White Noise, Brown Airplane Noise and one random Neil Young song that is the only thing the seven-month-old will fall asleep to. They used to listen to The Gloaming and Tove Lo but now it’s all Frozen and Bluey. There, there. It’s okay. It doesn’t define you as a person.