49: The lost art of playlisting
On rediscovering my love for music discovery and playlist curation ( ˘ ɜ˘) ♬♪♫
I’m a firm believer in the inclusion of an “Interests” section on one’s resume. I find that it reminds the people who are looking to potentially hire you that you are, in fact, a human being with a life outside of work. The last defining interest in my list of interests is—and has always been—“music appreciation.” But I’m not sure I feel that music appreciation defines my daily experience even remotely close to the extent it once did. And that saddens me. Worries me, even.
I’d be lying if I said I don’t still appreciate music. I continue to put a great deal of time and effort into creating aesthetically-consistent bi-/tri-monthly playlists for myself. I attend concerts (when I’m feeling secure with the venue and COVID situation at the time, that is). I put far too much thought into the playlists I make for musically-inclined loved ones. I recommend songs to those who recommend songs to me. But the seemingly bottomless well of love I had for music discovery and curation has been running dry over the years. I’ve come as close to the bottom of it as I’d ever care to. So, I’ve been trying to figure out why this happened and how I can reconnect to the part of myself that lived and died by a good playlist. Join me as I walk down memory lane, revisiting some of my favorite playlists over the years and the versions of myself that lovingly left them behind. We’ll start with a few samples of the meager number of playlists I’ve made over the past two years so you can get a feel for what I’m about.
It all started with “be crumbled” in 2018—a playlist I named after a Rumi poem.
“Be crumbled. So wildflowers will come up where you are. You have been stony for too many years. Try something different. Surrender.”
This poem was a sort-of mantra for me as I entered college, striving against my shyness to be more vulnerable and open to the newness the world had to offer me. I added any and all new songs that spurred uncontrollable foot- or finger-tapping (for me, movement is a sign that music is good) to the playlist until I started racking up a fair amount of length. I then finally paid full attention to the tiled playlist cover Spotify generated from the first few tracks in the queue, no longer ignoring this feature like I (usually) had in high school. I went for a simple primary color palette, pulling together tracks with album covers that fit the bill and could play off of one another: “Things Happen” by Dawes, “If She Wants Me” by Belle & Sebastian, “All the Young Punks” by the Clash, and “Handsome” by The Vaccines. (Hot tip: if you’ve never listened to “Handsome,” you really should—it is relentlessly fun; see: “I'm as awful as they come, oh, what a pity / So I thank the lord above that I am pretty”) Once the playlist was named, I was consistently reminded of my mission for that year—to be crumbled, to surrender to whatever the world asked of me—anytime I listened to it. And it was a welcome reminder, one that I genuinely held myself to. I arbitrarily capped the playlist at 220 songs (eventually I would start settling at ~270) and set about undertaking the same ritual again and again, attuning my playlists to the emotional undercurrents of my life at the time they were made.
I would devotedly listen to my Spotify Discover Weekly, alternate to Pandora Radio (writing that makes me feel ancient!), and stalk Pitchfork’s reviews, the arsenal of songs funneled to each playlist growing day by day. I even reviewed new albums as they came out with my friends at the time, populating a Google Sheet with my hot and not-so-hot takes. The excitement of musical discovery and my drive to make each playlist a capsule for how I was feeling at the time of its creation worked together hand in hand, pushing me to listen voraciously to anything and everything I could. Songs on my early college playlists came to truly define my experience—or at least my memories of them.
Tipsily dancing to “No Problem” and “Broccoli” with my friends at crowded house parties with sticky walls. The thrill of listening to Makthaverskan’s “Asleep” for the first time and forcing all of my friends to do the same. Finding Laura Marling’s immaculate Once I Was an Eagle just when I needed it, carrying it with me for years as I worked toward breaking off contact with someone I desperately needed to leave behind, and later attending my first concert alone just to see Laura sing. Being struck dumb by “First Love / Late Spring” by Mitski as a freshman, sharing and bonding over her music with Anna, the two of us seeing her and Jay Som play live together as bookends to the beginning and end of our college years. Jumping around my shitty first apartment with Anna on the first day of our sophomore year, aggressively yelling the lyrics of Terror Pigeon’s “Girl!” at one another while twirling in our summer dresses, feeling braver by the second: “There is nothing about you I won't love!” The music that underscored such a formative time in my life made those moments stick in my mind all the more—gave them color and texture I could constantly return to just by revisiting a certain song.
By the time I hit my junior year, Spotify implemented its playlist description feature. The poet in me went crazy. After following my previously-established playlisting flow, I would select an interesting line from a poem, song, some other form of media, or my own brain as the title and then be on the lookout for a quote (usually from a poem—predictable, I know) that fit the overall mood. This became an essential part of my process—the main part I still look forward to today. Each time I opened up a bimonthly playlist, I would be greeted by words that made my breath catch in my throat. I spent my summers working in Madison skipping across campus to Aminé’s “REDMERCEDES” or Tyler, the Creator’s “See You Again” in my little black UW Housing polo. Hiking up Bascom Hill’s steepness as the sun rose at my back, “Neon Orange Glimmer Song” by The Mountain Goats entreating me to slow down and welcome the day (and my looming early morning desk shift) with open arms. As I faced the hardest semester of my life, I endlessly cycled between “Let it Go” by A$AP Ferg and “White Iverson” by Post Malone in the midst of brain-melting finals, fighting off exhaustion as I deliriously laughed along to the lyrics. My playlists kept me afloat—and even awake—on hard, long days at school and at work.
After the most difficult semester of my life, I was able to finesse studying abroad in London with multiple scholarships and the money I’d saved up working by working over the past few years. I was ready to let loose and take on life a whole new country—at least for a while. My playlists during this time hyped me up for this huge change: I revisited my old Blur favorites and let Matt Berninger of The National encourage me to “Put an ocean and a river / Between everything, yourself, and home.” Once I was living in a flat in Hackney, I went on dates with English and Irish boys, trading my songs for gems like “Be Safe” by The Cribs and ultimately feeling underwhelmed by Slint’s Spiderland. I stomped into the Tube with King Krule’s strange, deep warble in my ears: “If we were commuting, this train would fucking crash.” I gained an essential and deep appreciation for the Euro dance-pop favorite “Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!” by Vengaboys. I enjoyed every moment shared with Anna on our shoestring getaway to Amsterdam, Paris, and Barcelona—as well as the soundtrack that defined our time there together: “Momentary / Temporary, transient / Impermanent, fugitive / Short-lived / Fleeting.” But eventually, my playlists became a source of comfort as I dealt with more homesickness than I ever expected. Lomelda’s “Columbia River” and “Brazos River” were painful revelations that laid bare how much I missed my family. But they soon became a balm as I balanced my wistfulness with exploration and new experiences with friends, both new and old, making the most out of my hard-won time abroad.
“I find that I wish I was home / Singing songs that you already know / Instead of always singing my own / And arranging the tones / In this city that reminds me I’m alone”
“I know what it means to be alone, and I sure do wish I was home”
Back in America again, my senior year marked the first year that my playlisting output began to lose steam. This very much aligned with when the ~grind~ truly began for me—working three part-time jobs while studying as a full-time student can really cut into your musical deep-dive time, lol. I still made my overlong playlists with aesthetically-pleasing covers, titles, and descriptions, but my rate of discovery had really slowed. My passion for said discovery had diminished as well. I relied more on replaying what I already had found than seeking out new things—seeking out comfort and familiarity over new experiences as the pace of life accelerated. I recall singing along to Fiona Apple’s “Paper Bag” every morning as I walked to class or work for weeks on end, all at once lamenting and celebrating the fact that I didn’t have anyone to feel just as heartsick over:
“Hunger hurts and I want him so bad, oh, it kills / ‘Cause I know I'm a mess he don’t wanna clean up / I got to fold ‘cause these hands are too shaky to hold / Hunger hurts but starving works when it costs too much to love.”
This trend toward musical fixation would continue from here on out.
I spent 2019 living at home with my parents, bookselling at Barnes & Noble. My time off was chock-full of GRE prep and filling out applications for grad school and the JET Program. I was also trying to teach myself Japanese for the latter. Losing the extensive commute I faced each carless year of college compounded the stagnation of my listenership. It’s crazy how much more time you have to occupy your ears when you walk or ride the bus everywhere you go. I tried to eke out as much listening time as I could on my short drives to and from work, but I never spent an adequate amount of time in the company of my playlists while on the go. I’d sit in my car in the strip mall parking lot and listen as long as I could before each work shift, each song a lifeline delaying my descent into retail hell. I remember a particularly rousing carpark revisitation of My Chemical Romance’s “Dead!” on a gray suburban morning. Fitting.
Then, everything derailed all the more when COVID hit. You know how it goes: I lost out on everything I mentioned in the previous paragraph (except my car—still the proud mom of a Honda CR-V). I don’t know about any of you, but I have struggled to listen to music since we started living in this “new normal.” From the early days of lockdown to my current work-from-home-while-living-alone situation, I’ve felt largely isolated and separate from the outside world as we knew it. As a result, I find that I’ve been more prone to seeking out and listening to human speech—to podcasts, video essays, and even TikToks. It could be that I’m seeking out the ambient noise of togetherness, the sensation of being with others in shared public spaces. With my needs changing and this societal sense of loneliness seeping out of me in unexpected ways, I no longer take solace in music the way I once did. It takes a lot for me to muster up the energy to listen to a new album. I used to religiously check my Spotify Discover Weekly, genuinely becoming stressed out by the prospect of missing out on new music I wouldn’t have come into contact with otherwise. Now I let weeks upon weeks of Discovers pass me by. I rarely keep up with music reviews or journalism, and even updates from my favorite artists seldom rouse me to listen to their new work.
The only time I really felt an uptick in my listening and passion was when I found someone to share that passion with. My boyfriend and I bonded over our mutual appreciation for Father John Misty’s I Love You, Honeybear and, after comparing vinyl (him) and CD (me) collections, went on to send carefully curated songs to one another as our infatuation grew into something good. I remember our shared sense of wonder after discovering that Jens Lekman (one of my favorite artists) unknowingly used a line from David Berman’s (one of Alex’s favorite artists) poetry book Actual Air in his song “You Are the Light (By Which I Travel Into This and That).” Lekman received a love letter containing the words in his native Swedish and included them in his song, never knowing they were Berman’s until after he had a radio hit on his hands. It was such a weirdly specific intermingling of our interests—it felt, against all our cynicism, like a love letter from the universe that they came together in this way. That we came together in our own way. Music appreciation has underscored our relationship all the while, be it through concertgoing or making each other playlists with stupid memey Spotify covers or battling for control of the aux cord on long road trips. Having Alex come into my life has reminded me how beautiful it is to engage in reciprocal music discovery—to show someone you love something just because you love it and want them to love it too. To attempt to understand why the person you love loves what they love. To try to love that thing in turn. In this vein, discovery is much more personal and imbued with meaning. With love, even. It’s a literal gift.
In working to understand how much this facet of my relationship has helped me to sustain my relationship with music, I am struck by the fact that I miss this communal aspect of the music enjoyment process the most—much, much more than I thought. The pandemic-induced physical and mental isolation I’ve experienced has largely contributed to my self-imposed detachment from consistent music appreciation. I miss updating the collaborative playlist I shared with my dad. I miss making Anna intensely overlong playlists she could never work through even if she tried (sorry bestie, lol). I miss showing the people in my life that I thought of them when I heard something that reminded me of them—something overwhelmingly beautiful or relentlessly fun.
I’ve been lucky to find that with another person in light of all of my life’s changes, and that’s helped resuscitate some of the joy I felt when I was so enveloped in the excitement of new (and “new” old) music at the outset of my college years. But it’s up to me to keep chasing that high of uncovering the songs that speak to me and sharing them with the people in my life, speaking to them in turn. It’s up to me to build and maintain a sense of musical community once again, even if that community is a bit more distant and ~virtual~ than it used to be. And that starts with me once again paying attention to the musical landscape, seeking out others’ carefully curated playlists, and asking others to share what they love with me while offering up something in return. So, I am genuinely asking you, my friends, family, and readers, to send me your song recommendations or playlists in the comments, via text, or over DM. I care about what you listen to, and I want to start caring about what I listen to the way I used to. Help me get there, if you’re willing. I’ll make you a nice playlist in return—I promise. :^)
Olaplex Bond Maintenance Shampoo and Conditioner. I am still haunted by conversations I’ve had with my two most recent hairstylists. I asked both women whether there were any drugstore shampoo brands they recommended. Both of them refused to name even one—they didn’t do so in a snooty way, but they just were truly conveying to me that most inexpensive shampoos do not provide proper hair care. I am not one to ball out on makeup (I still use my now-discontinued Naked 2 palette from the dark ages lolol) or beauty products, but I eventually asked for the No. 4 Shampoo and No. 5 Conditioner for my birthday given that I’m on my ~hair journey~. They’ve been nothing short of transformative. I have really wiry hair (at least on my top layer), but Olaplex has tamed so much of that weird texture, noticeably softening up my hair and adding extra shine. Also, the formula for both products is so thick that you barely have to use any at all to cover your whole head—a big plus given the heftier price. In my opinion, the investment has been well worth it. It might be for you, too!
“Mold” by Lunar Vacation. This is the most insistent and gloriously poppy earworm of a song I have heard in a long time. I literally have to hold myself back from dancing (or chair-dancing, if I’m seated, as I often am) when this song comes on shuffle. It’s an immediate mood-brightener, and I think you should all listen to it. I’m confident you’ll like it. It’s pure joy. You’ll be singing “IIIIIIIIIIIII could be anything you wanted” with me soon.
Hope you’re okay with just two Things We Don’t Hate this week as I recommended, like, a bajillion songs in the captions of the playlists they pertained to. Also I am running out of space! :^)