Thursday 1/12/22

I know Spotify Wrapped is kinda cringe and people hate brands trying to sum up a year, but I embrace cringe and I want to talk about my music taste for the year. 2022 is a unique study of my tastes because I didn't actually use Spotify much for a large part of the year.

As discussed in Media Recommendations #37, I spent a few months bingeing all of Season 2 of Critical Role, and recently, I've been listening to another D&D podcast called Dungeons of Drakkenheim. Now I hate being alone with my thoughts, so while I usually will have my headphones in with music to fill that void, D&D filled that role for a large part. And so, Spotify did not get as much use.

The interesting impact of this on the trends in Spotify Wrapped compared to 2021, is that times of obsession are overrepresented in the data. In past years, if there was a song I played on repeat for a week, it would maybe make it to somewhere in the top 10 maybe, but the top songs would still be my evergreen faves. This year, when I had a song on repeat for a week, that would've been one of the only times I was on Spotify, and it would therefore be guaranteed top 5.

With that preamble out of the way, let's discuss my Spotify Wrapped 2022.

So first bit of data to analyse is my taste in genres. The top 5 they gave me is Rock, Dance Pop, Otacore, Indie Pop, and Anime. In the past, Dance Pop was my top genre, since a lot of my fave songs are 90s or 00s Pop like Savage Garden, Gorillaz, or Outkast. But I went through a phase of angsty rock music early in the year, where I constructed a play list of Linkin Park, Imagine Dragons, and Nirvana.

In my younger years, I thought these and other teen angst bands were cringe, but earlier this year, when I recommended Sail by Awolnation, I went through a phase where I accepted sometime a bad mood needs angsty music.

Otacore and Anime are more a result of later in the year, when I started to listen to a lot of Anime OPs, and music by Vtubers. For those confused by the term Otacore (like i was), it basically means weeb music. Videogames, Japanese, Anime.

Next, my top song was Komm Susser Tod, from the soundtrack of The End of Evangelion. Now to be perfectly blunt, I didn't walk away from Eva a superfan. It was confusing at times, and often hard to follow. But at the time, I was going through huge problems with family relationships and self esteem. I was in a state where suicide was a real option, and unfortunately, the lyrics of Komm Susser Tod really impacted me.

Example lyrics:

So with sadness in my heart, I feel the best thing I could do, is end it all, and leave forever. What's done is done, it feels so bad, what once was happy, now is sad. I'll never love again, my world is ending.

You can see how easy it is for someone in a real bad place to get into a worse place with messaging like "it all returns to nothing, I just keep letting me down, letting me down, letting me down."

Now I am in a much better place, but I still appreciate Komm Susse Tod as a very powerful piece that sounds amazing and has very impactful lyrics. So even after I had gotten mentally better, I often replayed this song. 26 plays is not a lot, but again, I wasn't on Spotify a lot this year.

As for the rest of my top 5, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Imagine Dragons' "Believer" started out as a frequent play because of a meme song from Siivagunner if you'd believe me. But as that Angst play list became a more frequent part of my listen time, I started enjoying the song unironically. Out of Touch is up there as a happy accident. It's just a song I'm often in the mood for. And while it is tangentially a bad mood song, it's more often a comfort song.

Magic Circuit I've gotten more into this year. They're an Indie Dance Electronic band that sometimes features Vtuber personalities such as Nyanners and Ironmouse on vocals on their tracks. Slip is the first song of theirs I ever listened to, and it's still my big fave of theirs to this day.

Money Game pt 2, like Believer, I started listening to as a meme, since there was this clip featuring the best verse of the song circulating at the time. But then I legit became a fan of Ren and his music. He's often does stuff commentating on how much the world sucks and how we live in a society. Big recommend his stuff if you're unfamiliar.

Despite my suicidal angsty phase earlier in the year, my top artist was Ninja Sex Party again. And that's good news for my mental health overall, since NSP is all about absurd positivity. Despite there being no NSP songs, even in my top 10, I wanna attribute NSP being my top artist to the fact that I listen to so many different songs of their all the time.

Because while I may have only had 6 NSP songs in my top 100 play list they made me, other bands I have to be in the mood to listen to. But I'm always in the mood for NSP, and if I have my library on Shuffle, I never skip an NSP song.

As for the rest of my top 5 artists, these ones were also consistently in my good books. Magic Circuit I have sung the praises of above. And while I said that I had 6 NSP songs in my top 100, there were also 6 Magic Circuit Songs. Nyanners is my favourite vtuber, and also a really good singer. She does vocals for most of my favourite Magic Circuit songs, but she also releases songs outside of their collab. And while some of them are shitpost songs like Hey Boy Hey Boy (subtitle: I wanna fart in your mouth), others are legit bops such as Foolish Heart, which was my Top Song last year. She also recently released a cover of Snake Eater (from Metal Gear Solid) that I'm a big fan of.

Maroon 5 got really into my good books this year. I've always thought Maroon 5 was alright, but this year I took the chance to really explore their catalogue, and found there were many songs of theirs I enjoyed that I didnt even know was them like Harder to Breath or their new one Memories.

Imagine Dragons, as I mentioned above, was originally a meme follow, but I became a fan of quite of few of their songs, not just Believer, but Radioactive, the tie in song for Arcane: Enemies, and I like their new one, Bones.

My "Listening Personality" was The Deep Diver, which just confirmed my suspicion that this year's Spotify listens was very often obsession based. When I investigated Maroon 5, I went back and listened to all their stuff. When I followed a couple of Magic Circuit songs, and then their new album came out, I listened to all of it, multiple times.

Not a lot of regular vibing with music this year. It was either I was in the mood for some serious jamming, or I wasn't listening to music at all.

And that was my Spotify Wrapped for 2022.

I had an angst period which ended up being over represented in my top 5 artists and songs, but I also deep dived on some more happy and chill music in Magic Circuit and NSP.

I'll try to listen to more music next year and expand my scope, to try and discover more music, and try to stay in a happier mood. Best wishes for next year!

Here's a link to my top 100 if anyone wants to interrogate the rest of my music taste:

U Wanna Fall in Love // Zero [SDGF AMV]