Playlist for the Soul

Like most college students, I almost exclusively use streaming services as my method of music consumption. Specifically, I use Spotify on my laptop, Apple Music on my phone and Tidal absolutely nowhere because who has time for that. You can see cliques that form around each service, clusters of likeminded people devoted to a common platform. Spotify is for the casual music listeners. Apple Music is for aggressive curators. Tidal is for the Beyoncé fans who desperately wanted to listen to “Lemonade.” I even know someone who uses Google Play—we get it, you’re hipster!

One commonality shared by all of these consumers is a love of playlisting. The playlist is simultaneously superficial yet intensely personal—a way for people to express themselves through someone else’s creative product. The way we organize and curate these playlists reveals both our general tastes but also the music that makes us feel some type of way. There are hundreds of playlists entitled “Happy Music” on Spotify, and each of them is distinct from the other. Every one of these curators has different notions of what music makes them happy, or even what happiness is. One of the playlists I came across during my browsing had albums worth of Metallica, which is music that hardly fits the traditional definition of happy. But who knows what that could mean to the curator. They might feel at their absolute euphoric peak jamming out to “Sandman” in their room, moshing about and knocking all of their school supplies off of their desk.

Until recently, I took a different approach to playlisting: aggregation rather than curation. I have never had a special fondness for playlisting. On Spotify, I have two playlists that I routinely update, “Poptimism 2016” and “Essential Music.” As a true connoisseur of pop, I find dozens of indie or major label pop songs that I put into one huge list. Only the best of the best makes it in, and the overall fun vibe of the music fits my workouts and makes it easy to spin at a get-together with friends. I have a now-defunct “Poptimism 2015,” as well, and I occasionally go back and listen to it to compare how this year stacks up against the last (2016 wins).

“Essential Music” is a whole other beast entirely. Clocking in at a whopping 114 hours and 44 minutes of music across 1,814 songs, it is the ultimate aggregation of music I listen to. The only requirement to make it on to “Essential Music” is a song has to fit my nebulous and ever-shifting definition of “good.” Scrolling down the playlist, one can see Morrissey next to Nelly Furtado, White Lung next to Justin Bieber and Kanye West bumping right after 2NE1. It’s eclectic and has absolutely no rhyme or reason to it, but I love it regardless enough for it to be my go-to casual listening.

One of its more interesting functions is its role as a time capsule for the evolution of my musical taste. The first song I ever added to it March 20, 2012 was “Criminal” by Fiona Apple, which remains one of my absolute favorite songs by my absolute favorite artist. Going through the playlist, you can see my massive Smiths phase in December 2012, my introduction to and subsequent love of classic house music in September 2013 and the underground rap phase I’m currently going through. It’s interesting to go back and think about why I added certain songs: what is the significance of something like The 1975’s “Somebody Else?” Why did it speak to me then, and why does it speak to me now? Can anything by Jennifer Lopez be considered “Essential Music?” According to my playlist, three JLo songs!

The main reason why I enjoy aggregation rather than curation is the variety and lack of formalism that aggregation provides. What may seem like a music dump is rather a commitment to musical eclecticism. Sometimes a song is re-contextualized when placed up against another; “How Soon Is Now?” is ten times more crushing coming after the giddy disposability of “…Baby One More Time.” That isn’t to say I eschew playlisting. I’ve made several playlists for friends based off of criteria they’ve given me, and occasionally I’ll revisit them to see if I would do anything different. But they’re not the same, beholden to a time limit and criteria that I prefer to throw away when cultivating my own musical tastes. I like the idea of playlist as a playground—chaotic, inspired, and fun.