playlist memoirs: awakening
on growing up as a music lover in the streaming era
I sort of hate just how much of my inner life is embedded in Spotify data.
Musical time capsules (or landmines, maybe) line the road between the past—the Czech “minulost”—and me. I tend to avoid them now, save for the times I can’t sleep and the only comfort is the reminder of what life was like for me then.
Making playlists was once an Olympic sport. I trained for years and took my craft very seriously. First, there were those that held me—the ones I’d listen to in bed late at night when I couldn’t let anyone else near me. Later, there were the ones I made for others, full of love songs, appreciation, sadness, and anger. Then, there were some I made because the lyrics and melodies spoke to me in a way I could not ignore—stories I made up and told myself every time I listened.
Over the years, I’ve known a handful of people with whom I could share playlists in a truly meaningful way. It was always an outpouring of something—love, friendship, loss, or pain. I always wanted someone to hear the music of those artists I held close to my chest and hear me. I called to them all, across time and space.
To feel all of that—to have discovered so much of myself on that app, I feel inexplicable sorrow knowing it will never feel or be the same. I’m aging and changing. The emotions I felt then were of an exposed kind of intensity. I look back and find myself afraid of them—afraid of myself.
What sort of musical landmine will I step on next?
I have a distinct memory of the first time I heard the band Passion Pit.
It was 2012. I was sitting shotgun in my older brother’s 1998 black Subaru Outback. He was playing a mixtape some girl or friend made for him. He was home visiting from college for a few days. As so often happened when he visited, my mom asked him to take me to and from my various afterschool activites: play rehearsal, dance class, Quiz Bowl, Glee Club, etc.
That day, we were driving to the Union Theatre, where I was rehearsing for a Junior production of Disney’s Cinderella. (For the record, I was cast as an ugly step-sister.)
As we descended the hill towards Main Street, a series of strange synthesizers eeked out of the stereo speakers. Immediately, my brother turned the volume up as loud as it would go, and we were treated to Passion Pit’s song, “Carried Away.” Despite the fact that Passion Pit had already reached mass acclaim by that point, their particular sub-genre of distorted indie pop was completely foreign to my novice ears.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“Passion Pit,” My brother responded.
“Is that a band?”
“Yes,” he replied, too quick. He was so clearly annoyed. “Just listen.”
And listen, I did. I was weirdly fascinated but, admittedly, too immature to really appreciate it. Much of my proto-music awakening listening was exactly that: immature. Sure, my parents, older brother, and friends exposed me to plenty of good stuff, but I didn’t really pick up on the thrill of truly great music until I was a freshman in college.
If memory (and the Spotify web app) serves right, I started my “awakening” playlist on August 5, 2016, a week before I moved into my freshman dorm room. I was fresh off a high school break-up and enamored with the idea that older people wanted to know me. I was ready to take life by the horns. I was ready to be an adult already.
Except—well, I was also really lame.
Sensing my iTunes library (full of 2015’s Top 40, Original Broadway Cast albums, and whatever I happened to pick up on Pandora) wasn’t going to cut it in this new phase of my life, I started a new super-playlist. I filled it with new songs every couple of days for two years. Starting with indie and folk, I dove head-first into every single algorithmically-generated recommendation Spotify could provide me. Early favorites included Maggie Rogers, Father John Misty, Sarah Jarosz, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and the Head and the Heart.
As I met new people and explored myself more in the college environment, I added songs from every walk of life. I took a class on Global Cult Cinema which forever altered my brain chemistry. I learned about music supervision and the power the right song can have in combination with the right visual. I discovered Stephen Day, the 4 Non-Blondes, Mistski, Morcheeba, and The Beta Band. A year later, I was fully embedded amongst my new peers. I met a college mentor who introduced me to Ani Difranco, Erykah Badu, Bikini Kill, The Internet, Janis Ian, and Chastity Belt.
My roommates and I quickly became inseperable. We’d go for walks around campus or drives around the city and listen to Sufjan Stevens, Animal Collective, The Mountain Goats, The Cure, the Talking Heads, and the Sisters of Mercy.
I lived so many different lives within that two year period and held close to every new version of myself. They’re all detailed in the pages of my journals and stanzas of my crappy poems. Most importantly, they are embedded in the songs, artists, and albums on the “awakening” playlist. While I won’t claim every song on there is a winner, each one served an important purpose in my early listening. My entire listening profile for two years can be studied and understood just by listening to this monster of a playlist.
271 songs. Just as many albums. 17 hrs and 21 minutes. It’s a time capsule. It’s a snapshot of my inner life when I was most vulnerable and most willing.
It’s also rather obsessive. Why I felt the need to catalog all of these songs in this way is unclear to me, even now.
Looking back, those two years were full of pain, heartache, and rejection. They were also full of passion, joy, and discovery. I gained and lost friends like second-hand clothes. I dyed my hair and changed my style to fit in with all the cool girls wearing Doc Martens, mom jeans, and thrifted 80s windbreakers. My sense of self was forever in flux—fluid and unsettled.
I suppose it makes sense why I was so desperate to learn as much as I could about music. I felt adrift and lacked self-assurance. I often deferred to my friends and elders on the topic of “good music” and forced my own taste profile to mimic theirs. It was just easier to let everyone else hold the AUX cord, while I rode shotgun, quiet, observant, and along for the ride.
To this day, I can relate to just about anyone when it comes to music. Perhaps this non-traditional music appreciation class led me down the path to this insane level of genre fluency. From Afro-futurism and nu metal, to bluegrass and classical, there’s not a single genre I’m entirely opposed to (except pandering country. GTFO with that inauthentic mess).
For the most part, if you send me a band or a song or a genre recommendation, I will give them all a fair shot. I find myself falling in love with artists and genres I never would have otherwise considered. It’s a beautiful and singular thing. I love when an album or song or artist creep up on me and insert themselves into my life over extended periods of time. I love when I can talk to someone about a band they love and understand immediately why they love them.
Unfortunately, the same has rarely been true in the reciprocal. Most people, understandably, have firm music boundaries and tastes. As much as I might want to send some obscure progressive metal song to a pop-minded friend or beg my punk-loving bestie to listen to a choral piece, it’s just not how most people listen to music these days.
People like what they like.
If I were smarter or had more time, I would study this phenomenon from a neurological and socio-geographic perspective more seriously, but for now, let me say—my freak of nature ways have not exactly always served me well. I am always in want of a musical kindred with whom to share anything and everything, no matter the particulars.
Right now, I subsist on a few beloved connections. I keep a massive roladex in my brain of their various musical fancies—what they like, what they hate, what they might be ameanable to hearing in a daring discovery phase.
While I’m grateful for this breadth of knowledge I’ve amassed over the last decade, it’s also lonely. I’m a little tired of going to shows alone every week. I’m perplexed and intrigued by those who see music as casual. It’s never been just “casual” to me. It’s everything to me.
Is it a bit obsessive? Sure, but it’s also indicative of something else. It’s meaningful in a way I can’t quite explain without crying or laughing or both.
What am I to do with this insane need to listen?
About a year ago, I started thinking about music writing and recommendations more seriously. I’d been following Lindsay Zoldaz’s NYT newsletter The Amplifier for a year. I devoured her recommendations and found myself amazed at how similar our taste was, even week-to-week. I was also pretty bummed because she never published any of my submissions. (I submitted every single time she asked for fan recommendations.) I wondered if my taste was any good at all, or if anyone gave a single iota about the music I loved.
I wanted and needed some sort of outlet to share music with people like me—the freaks of nature. I wanted to curate an audience of careful listeners who wanted my recommendations. I wanted my own version of The Amplifier, sans NYT corporate.
By some stroke of luck, I’ve found something akin to it here on Substack. While I doubt I’ll ever get paid to listen to and/or recommend music, I’m glad to have a place to share my passion for it amongst like-minded cool cats such as yourselves.
Anyway, here’s my awakening playlist. It will be available as long as I have a Spotify account. When I let that thing go, I’ll be sure to link out to my playlist catalog once it’s available.
Playlist Memoirs is a series of personal essays about my music awakening. With the mass exodus away from Spotify, I decided to start documenting my Spotify playlists in writing. I wanted to bring meaning to the hours and hours of streaming data I’ve compiled there over the last decade. Even if Spotify is a soulless, corporate monster intent on stealing from its artists and robbing its users blind, I still grew up on it.
I hate Spotify, but I could never hate what it brought me.
Loved this! I really felt like some of the things you said could’ve come from me too ☀️ I’ll definitely be sticking around to read more from you!
You doubt you’ll ever get paid to recommend music, and I doubt I’ll ever earn anything from the music I make (and write about)! But it’s good that Substack exists to allow us both to do something we love.