albums i listened to all the way through

posted this week and every week (31)

Sep 14, 2025

Hi, my name is Abby, and I’m a Spotify addict.

They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, right? Welllll, I do.

Having all my playlists, albums, and artists at my fingertips, alongside the enduring promise of new playlists, albums, and artists waiting in the wings for whenever I discover them, has left me a strange limbo.

Half the time, I am so unbelievably grateful to live in a city and a time where physical media is accessible and easy to come by. It’s all the rage, in fact. Just last week, I wandered into a record store I’d never seen before and procured two albums on vinyl I’d been wanting and listening to for years. What a find!

The other half of the time, I am seeing a Substack rec and immediately opening the Spotify app to save the album to my library. Like any other social media addiction, it’s a reflex I cannot shake. The convenience of streaming is unbeatable.

But is it? I saw this reel on Instagram the other day.

gee_derrick

A post shared by @gee_derrick

Gen Z is pirating music??? Actually, yes. Or at least, investing their time and money into MP3 players and physical media. Whaaaa? Have the days of early Internet piracy returned? Hmmm, to be determined.

I’m still kind of curious if this shift in Gen Z listening and consumer behavior is, as the kids would say, performative. I want to believe it’s genuine. Perhaps the nasty combination of inflation, low wages, unemployment, alongside the moral outrage towards Spotify and desire for more “ethical” means of consuming music, have created this generation-wide need for “free” again.

If you search for “MP3 player” or any variation of iPod on selling platforms like Depop, Mercari, or Ebay, you’ll find tons and tons of used media players. You find Walkmans and CD players too. The physical media renaissance is upon us!

For me, I’ve had so much trouble letting go of my Spotify Premium account. So many of you were kind enough to respond to a note of mine last week, sending me transfer links and/or just telling me to do what I want.

I’ve used the “I don’t want to lose my data” excuse so many times. So many damn excuses.

Vinyl is expensive. I cannot fathom how much money it would take me to rebuild my playlist library in Bandcamp, or if that would even be possible. This on-demand landscape has made a glutton out of me.

Slowing down my listening and focusing on albums has helped some. I don’t feel this immense pressure to listen to music ALL THE TIME, nor do I worry so much about what I’m listening to and how it will be perceived by those around me (i.e. the wild, still unnerving feature on Spotify where your “friends” can follow and stalk your every listening move.)

The truth is—it’s not the data or convenience loss that scare me most. It’s more that I fear what life post-Spotify looks like when the last decade of my life has been built on it.

I know that the other side of this exists and will arguably be better for me and, most importantly, the artists I love and the ones I have yet to discover. I know that. But I’ve always had trouble letting go. My hoarder genetics go beyond the clothes and clutter. I’ve hoarded massive amounts of data in a library that isn’t even mine to claim.

Can we really call the playlists we create “intellectual property”? I think the delusional creative in me wants to say yes but the rational part of me knows better than to say that seriously.

Still, they all feel like mine in a way, and letting them go is like cutting off a limb.

Sad but true.

All of this to say—I’m in the midst of crafting my annual Fall Playlist over on Spotify and feeling all of these feelings intensely. Where will I host this stuff when the inevitable comes along and canceling is absolutely necessary?

To combat thi existential conflict, I followed Kevin Alexander’s lead and listening to Jawbreaker’s Dear You, which turned 30-years-old this week. I’ve never done a serious listen to Jawbreaker until this weekend, and WOW. Okay, Kevin. I get it.

My favorite tracks off Dear You are easily “Jet Black,” “Oyster,” and “Basilica.” I love their gritty sound and challening lyrics, all so true to the 90s sensibility but never trite or derivative. All of it was fresh, forceful, and potent, even for an album entering its flirty and stable thirties.

Dear You is definitely going on my list for the next physical media buy.

Here are the albums I listened to all the way through this past week: