I love Spotify Wrapped day. It’s the perfect treat for someone like me — loves personality tests and reading my horoscope; nostalgic to a fault but also, somehow, can never remember a damn thing. This year’s Wrapped was particularly special because I’m coming up towards the end of my first year living by myself, and music has been the ultimate companion through exploring self-sufficiency, loneliness, control, and identity.
The night before the 2022 Spotify Wrapped launch, a friend and I were talking about how there aren’t any musicians or bands that we have kept up with for their entire artistic journeys. I don’t know any musician’s discography top-to-bottom and don’t necessarily care to. My friend felt a little guilty about it, and I do too, because diving deep into the work of an artist you love feels like paying them some basic respect. Outgrowing something that once meant a lot to you feels a little like betrayal. However, to me, even the most special music feels entirely emblematic of the time I first heard it, and with life growing and changing so frequently, no music or artist feels like a desirable constant.
But that’s okay, because that means revisiting any music feels a little like time travel. I love the way that music sticks onto my memories and becomes fully intertwined with my thoughts and feelings. Certain songs bring me back to those things vividly, so I listen to them non-stop, which yields downright embarrassing Spotify Wrapped results. For example, I first heard “How Long” by Charlie Puth while driving between Oakland and Pleasanton, California with my cousin Kavita during a lovely trip out west. Naturally, I listened to it so much that it became my top song of 2018, because listening to it reminded me of that trip, and of her (sorry Kavita). That year, I also listened to “How Long” dozens of times with another cousin’s daughter Maya, who was 2 years old at the time and would ask for the song by demanding that I “play Chah-lee.” You know, how little kids can’t pronounce the letter “R” for some reason?
On the other hand, a lot of music can feel attached to bad memories, also producing sometimes downright embarrassing results. A very funny fact about me is that I hate the song “Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners because it was playing downstairs at a house party while I was upstairs experiencing the worst hook-up of my life. Do you know how embarrassing it is to associate a bad memory with “Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners? You cannot be in a Toronto dive bar for more than an hour without hearing that song. One minute you’re drinking a rum and coke and minding your own business, the next minute you’re thinking about [redacted] from high school. Thanks a lot Eileen, whoever you are!
Anyway, for better or worse, I love the way that music is memory to me. 2022 has been a blur and the longest year ever, and I’m glad I had so much music to keep me company through it all. Spotify Wrapped is like a memory reel for this past year.
I spent almost the entirety of January 2022 alone in my apartment because of Omicron; it was the same month that my plumbing stopped working for a few days, and I was working 60 to 70-hour weeks between my two jobs. The music I listened to the most that month (the first half of a playlist naturally called “laying facedown on the floor”) feels cold but also cool, reminding me of my loneliest self but also my most resilient. It’s the music that helped me dwell as much as I needed to but also helped me out of a funk, and it’s funny to see the playlist get more and more upbeat as my spirits lift. (Standouts: “Father Bird, Mother Bird” - Khruangbin and Kadhja Bonet; “Out of Time” - The Weeknd; “Heat Lightning” - Mitski; “Baby’s Gone” - Free the Birds; “papi bones (feat. shygirl)” - FKA twigs; “HOT HOT” - Bree Runway)
The end of Winter and start of Spring 2022 are summed up by “heart on” - named after a runway from Drag Race season 14 - a playlist that reminds me of a very nice guy that I very briefly dated at the time. I was playing it when he came over for the first time, bringing with him a bouquet of flowers, two pizzas, and dessert for us to share. I ended things shortly after that, and felt so guilty about it that I couldn’t listen to the playlist anymore. (Standouts: “Cherries” - Hope Tala and Aminé; “Blue Moon” - Billie Holiday; “Sexy Villain” - Remi Wolf; “Mental feat. Saul Williams and Bridget Perez” - Denzel Curry)
The end of Spring and most of Summer 2022 are difficult to summarize. I turned 26. I was fortunate enough to travel to Vermont, Montreal, California, and Newfoundland. I spent a lot of time with the people dearest to me. I also lost my uncle Nilesh, a pillar of my family, someone who was like a brother to my parents, and a second father to my brother and I. It is the first major loss of my adult life, and one that I am still trying to understand. Music was a salve for days (months, really) that I felt depleted, and I was drawn to dreamy songs that felt escapist, sometimes relentlessly optimistic. This spawned “for sure,” a playlist that is named after a bit from “oh my love” by FKA twigs and was briefly named “it’ll pass” after that devastating line from the last episode of Fleabag. I had to change the name because it felt a little too cringe, even for me. It did pass, in a way. I still think about my uncle Nilesh all the time but that means he’s always with me, and so is the music that brought me comfort when I felt crushed. (Standouts: “Romanticist” - Yves Tumor; “Lucy” - Still Woozy and ODIE; “Congratulations” - MGMT; “Geology” - Barrie; “Chicken Lemon Rice” - Priya Ragu)
Things picked up speed quickly in September, and though Summer weather slowly bled into Fall, it felt like an abrupt change of seasons for me. Work started kicking my ass once again! I endured new professional challenges and burned out fast after trying to adjust to an in-person working environment with very high expectations of myself. September and October whizzed by and I was in a hectic daze for most of it, forgetting to eat and getting headaches from looking at a computer for too long. Turnstile’s 2021 album Glow On became a permanent fixture in my music rotation because its combination of fervent hooks and emotional screams scratched a part of my brain that desperately needed a reset. One afternoon after a particularly tough few hours, I closed my office door, put on my headphones, and listened to the album all the way through in the semi-dark. Somewhere through “WILD WRLD” it felt like Brendan Yates had managed to roundhouse-kick my brain back into its original position. (Standouts: “T.L.C. (TURNSTILE LOVE CONNECTION)”; “MYSTERY”; “HOLIDAY”; “UNDERWATER BOI”)
That pretty much brings us to the end of the year. For the past few weeks, I’ve been listening to a lot of Nirvana, A Tribe Called Quest, and Barrie. This year’s highs and lows have taught me a lot about myself, but the most interesting moments have been the ones that felt still. That’s when I felt the most calm, the most like myself, the most alone, and the most at peace. They’re the moments that don’t always feel like a whole lot, but will feel precious when I hear these songs again in a few years. And whatever it is that they make me remember and feel, I’m grateful for it all.
My 2022 Spotify Wrapped:
i feel the same way about my wrapped every year, i always find something in there that i forgot about over the year!