Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

What Our Listening Habits Say To Ourselves and Others

Nov 21, 2024

It’s that time of year again—Spotify Wrapped season: the digital confetti, the pie charts, the badges of musical honor. For a few weeks, it’s all anyone seems to talk about. Some people love it, gleefully posting their stats. Others roll their eyes at the parade of playlists flooding their feeds. But whether you’re in the camp of “look at my impeccable taste” or “please stop,” one thing is clear: Spotify Wrapped has become a cultural moment.

As the shares and humblebrags start rolling in, I can’t help but think about what makes Spotify Wrapped so universally (nearly) compelling. It’s more than a playlist summary—it’s a roadmap of the year. Time flies so fast that it’s easy to lose track of where we’ve been. But music? Music is sticky. It clings to moments, milestones, and moods, quietly mapping out our lives.

What’s fascinating about music, and by extension Spotify Wrapped, is how easily it fits into the fabric of our daily lives. You can listen to music while driving, running, working, cooking—it can be a productivity enabler, a multitasker’s dream. This gives it a kind of social permission to become addicted to background music. For the most part, no one feels guilty about their Spotify stats. If anything, sharing them feels like saying, Look how rich and textured my year has been!

Compare that to other forms of entertainment. TV binges? People tend to under share those numbers. The difference seems to be that music is inherently seen as more virtuous, maybe even productive. After all, a perfectly curated playlist feels like proof of taste and culture. A weekend lost to reality TV… not so much.

Where’s My “Life Wrapped”?

It’s curious how Wrapped dominates the cultural conversation in ways that book lists or TV recaps never quite do. Sure, people share their favorite reads, but “books of the year” lists feel more niche, like a polite dinner party discussion rather than a viral phenomenon. Even Goodreads hasn’t cracked the cultural zeitgeist the way Spotify has. Why?

Even Strava, the running/fitness brand/app, has a beautifully designed, Wrapped-like summary of what an individual has achieved that year: pace per mile, distance, frequency of workouts, etc. This is insanely impressive for fitness-minded people, but is it too much of a flex? Is it too exclusive to feel inclusive?

In the early Oughts, Nicholas Feltron would create a personal annual report. For a few years, he meticulously tracked his life: every meal, every drink, every outfit, every song. He visualized it all in stunningly designed infographics that gave even the most mundane details a kind of poetic resonance. He started doing it because he lost his father and used infographics to outline his life, and the practice filtered into his daily routine.

Felton’s reports were a marvel, but also wildly intimidating. Who has the time—or the patience—to document every single thing they do? Wrapped offers a kind of low-effort version of that. It collects your data for you and packages it into a neat, dopamine-inducing highlight reel. I’m not pro-Big Brother data sharing, but this requires no spreadsheets, no tally marks. Just the “thrill” of seeing your life—or at least, your listening habits—reflected back at you.

So, what’s the takeaway here? Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe it’s just fun to ponder why we care about these things. Maybe it’s enough to marvel at how Wrapped stitches together the fragments of a fleeting year, reminding us of moments we might have otherwise forgotten. It’s a small window into who we were, or at least who we want to be perceived as.

Regardless of whether you love it, hate it, or post it ironically, Spotify Wrapped provides a reflection—one we’re surprisingly eager to hold up to ourselves and voyeuristically judge others with. Its revelations may not be deep, but they are uniquely ours, and maybe that’s enough.

Fazerdaze - Soft Power

This feels like the album that will take Amelia Murray from the bedroom to the stadium. It’s been seven (!) years since the debut Fazerdaze album, Morningside and the approach hasn’t changed, but the quality certainly has! With the way the pop landscape has evolved since 2017 (i.e. Olivia Rodrigo & Chappell Roan), this album could hit pretty big.

If you like this, try these albums:

Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow (2019)

Alvvays - Antisocialites (2017)

Yumi Zouma - Yoncalla (2016)

TYSON - CHAOS EP

It is a short little album that is 25 minutes long, but in that short running time, TYSON draws from 90s trip-hop, UK garage, Dean Blunt, and the magical world of Tirzah. Never once sounding derivative, but rather inspired and expanded upon. Her 2020 mixtape “Moonlight Mixtape” is also really damn good.

If you like this, try these albums:

Tirzah - Devotion (2018)

Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part Two: Return of The Ankh (2010)

Solange - When I Get Home (2019)

The Green Child - Look Familiar

It’s really weird/fateful that this album is called Look Familiar because it sounds familiar as I’ve been listening to it for the past couple of days; like a fever dream or a lost memory from a parallel time in space. I missed their first album in 2020, but it’s also a great listen and a little rougher around the edges, which is cool to hear.

If you like this, try these albums:

Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

What Our Listening Habits Say To Ourselves and Others

Where’s My “Life Wrapped”?

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