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Universally bland Taylor Swift. Gareth Cattermole/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
My favourite part of Spotify Wrapped day is psychoanalysing my peers. Oh, your top artist was Alice in Chains, was it? When was the last time you spoke to your father? Lana Del Rey is pretty high on your list, isn’t she — did you ever finish Lolita in the end or was it all a bit too wordy? Chappell Roan, ey… ghosted again?
Every year since 2016, one day in late November or early December, Spotify releases its personalised data hoards. You receive about 10 slides of digested stats on your top artists, top songs, hours listened and “vibe” — for example, I had a “theatrical vocal baroque” January, apparently. As a matter of course, you then share them on Instagram. The wild frenzy that greets it is like the flourishing of the mayfly; for at least 24 hours, social media becomes a gallery of humblebrags, with literally everyone you know posting screenshots of their yearly listening stats. I, too, have shared humiliatingly smug stories of my own Wrapped report card: top-five artists, top-five songs, secret delight at results which, I tell myself, set me apart from the Swifties lurking in my friendship group.
Having poked us with the algorithmic cattle-prod to sponsored genres and artists for the past 12 months, Spotify is pulling back the curtain to reveal that yes, we are in fact individuals with laudably individual tastes. Look, you’re in the top 1% of listeners to Lewis Capaldi! That must make you, somehow, exceptional, despite the certainty that his warblings were first piped into your AirPods while you shuffled through a rack of polyester loungewear at a provincial H&M. There is something sanctifying about the certainty of a data digest — its ability to both herd and coronate you. And Spotify knows this.
The compulsion to share exactly how we are special, via this musical ritual of Spotify Wrapped, is strange. For what could be more intimate than the song you chose to listen to again and again while staring out the window of the 344 after an abortive summer situationship? Yet we are still compelled to expose even these tender intimacies — for at least it suggests we have some depth. A meaning-laden song appearing in your ranking is like a scar from a tender blade, and our posting of it is a signal to others: admire my hinterland, I am complex.
Such is the power of Wrapped that users now admit to gaming their digest before it’s released; “imagine hating me, a girl who is simply in her room trying to change the trajectory of her Spotify Wrapped until it’s too late” read one viral tweet last week. Are some people genuinely listening to Kate Bush on repeat to knock Sabrina Carpenter out of their top five? My Zeppelin-devotee dad would hide his Madonnas at the back of his record collection; for us not so. Even our guilty pleasures, the secret indulgences of our inner lives, must be laid out for scrutiny.
The rewards of this relentless self-fashioning are significant: we narcissists love to feel special. And Big Tech loves reassuring us that we are exactly that. Throughout the year, Spotify will send you personalised “mixes” to cajole you with the assistance of an AI-generated, upbeat African-American DJ. That Gen Zs are attracted to the idea of an individualised radio show, whose host talks only to you and only plays music you already know you like, speaks to our desire to be deemed exceptional, and our aversion to being challenged.
‘….in which we hear snippets of a remarkable song by an unknown and unremarkable band in a little record shop.’
Like when I first heard ‘Sultans of Swing’, during a lunch hour in 1978 from work?
That was a remarkable experience.
Is all this better, worse, or merely something different. Are the atomized algorithm driven listeners of today somehow worse than the high school cliques, goths, preppies, stoners, and gamer geeks of the 90’s that defined my own generation X? Are those cliques any worse than the earlier versions of flower children, hippies, nerds, and jocks? Are the profit hungry data overlords who command the algorithms that drive the listening patterns of today’s young people really all that much more sinister than the record company execs of the 90s who came up with the concept of a Boy Band, or the old timers who hit on the concept of marketing the Beatles as a bunch of clean cut young people singing silly love songs that set the archetype such boy bands sought to emulate? Is Spotify’s social change somehow worse than that of MTV or Elvis? Does Mark Zuckerberg make a better cartoon villain than Walt Disney? Older generations are always suspicious of what is new and different. It’s part of being human. Much of our personality and preferences are formed by our formative years, the historical equivalent of an eye blink. The music, the media, the culture, as it exists during this critical time comes to define us, then technology advances, and the world changes, but we don’t. It is often difficult to separate legitimate concern from the natural tendencies of the old to be suspicious of the new. Sometimes, as with social media, such suspicions are more or less justified by history and subsequent events. Other times, as with rock and roll or MTV, the moral panic turns out to be much ado about nothing.
Just this morning I saw an advertisement for a child’s toy that is an interactive AI robot companion, and it made me vaguely uneasy. I am personally not as intimidated or afraid of AI myself because I’m a grown adult and have a decent idea of how the technology works. I’m reasonably confident in my ability not to be duped or manipulated by AI or the erstwhile social engineers inside faceless corporations that decide what forms AI will take. It helps that I’m already suspicious of regular old fashioned HI. Children, on the other hand, have not learned to be suspicious and skeptical of everything and everyone they encounter. I can easily see my young nephews earnestly begging their parents for these sorts of toys. If I were a parent, I’d probably not give in. I’d either tell the child directly I don’t trust the people who program such devices not to subtly influence your young minds with their ideas that very much conflict with mine or make up some plausible excuse that might or might not be believed. I’m exceptionally dispassionate and I am highly resistant to emotional appeals and advertising, particularly when such appeals are intentional and obvious.
Time will tell whether my suspicion of AI for children is justified or not. Time will also tell whether Spotify ruins young minds and atomizes society in a worse way than the internet and the vast array of media choices to be found there already have. I’m inclined to think that the author’s concerns would be better turned towards social media and the internet in general when it comes to the death of culture and the lack of camaraderie in modern society. The basic issue, as I see it, is that the Internet obliterates geographic barriers in terms of communication and association, but does not obliterate the real implications of geography on an economic, political, or logistic level. It undermines local, regional, and national culture without eliminating the need for those things to act as social stabilizers. I think many of our current bitter political conflicts can be traced to the destruction of culture. It won’t be easy to reverse. We can’t un-invent the Internet. The best we can do in the present is to restore the supremacy of elected governments, reaffirm that nations, borders, and culture does have meaning, and politically defeat the globalist ideology that contributes to and encourages further destruction.
I am old and I agree with you. A lot of old people around me talk about “common sense”,which means experience of life. How can young people have common sense?
I have to say that one thing does worry me – the fear of being/going outside. When you are frightened of rain or strong winds, when the Weather Channel/Met Office warns you every day, when all of your hobbies and friends are inside a room, it is going to be difficult to get things in perspective. Getting wet is fun if you can get dry and warm afterwards. Walking in a strong wind is exhilarating. If you don’t see these in your youth you will never see them later. So you will have a FEAR of the outdoors.
Yes!
And this ‘FEAR of the outdoors’ is a major driver of the hysteria of climate alarmism.
If truth be told, getting rained on is good for the soul.
I never had thought of that but you make a good point. I myself wither in the heat of summer but have a tremendous resistance to the cold. I often get comments about wearing t-shirts and sandals in the dead of winter, but it just doesn’t bother me. I don’t mind shoveling snow simply because I don’t have to worry about overheating like I ordinarily do. I wonder how many young people couldn’t tolerate either one.
Pretty much sums it up.
“Your Zeppelin devotee dad…” As I’m another gen, apparently not the greatest, my friends detested LZ at college so I was embarrassed into trying to adopt their tastes …so much did I want to fit it…. No, they adored Incredible String Band….I went to the concert and said to myself this is bull….
So back to LZ on my own. And especially MoTown…and unlike that old film the Big Chill I saw no other people like myself listening to Motown.
When the radio is on in the Uber, I see I’m listening to Back Street Boys….that’s old Don’t go breaking my heart….and Dua Lipa that antisemite, also not breaking her heart.
So I’m going on with my CDs and even vinyl which is back. So no luddite I.
Somewhere on YouTube there’s a video which identifies the seventies originals of which every single one of Dua Lipa’s tunes is a direct copy.
In fairness, Led Zeppelin copied a few things too.
I actually managed to like this piece despite barely understanding what it was about (73). So I offer here a tablet excavated from the rock of the prehistoric era:
“In decades to come, when the rock/pop era has become just something that old people go on about and when it has ceased to be a Mickey Mouse degree course for the academically challenged) a proper historical perspective might begin to emerge. In that historical reckoning, two remarkable aspects are likely to stand out:
Firstly, the hitherto unimaginable quantity of this new medium of entertainment; now around 60 million songs and counting. This has created a problem for even the most determined devotee. With classical music one can, with sustained effort, gradually acquire some kind of basic overview. Not so with Rock. It takes a tenacity bordering on OCPD to be prepared to pan the never ending stream of new releases on the slim chance of finding a new musical nugget.
And secondly, the emergence, during the mid to late 60s, of a new conception whereby a small part of this vast outpouring came to be accorded a status as not mere ephemeral entertainment but as an art form. An art form complete with designations of musical genius and lyrical profundity. (We are now two years past the sixtieth anniversary of the release of Bob Dylan – the first album by the man, more than any other, associated with this idea of rock music as Art.)”
It’s still easy enough to use music to parse yourself from the passive herd, find an active tribe. The key is getting off your arse and consuming ‘the music that will change my life’ at live gigs. The sheer volumic excess of recorded music, along with the commensurate dilution of any new band’s capacity to make a living out of it, has (happily) sent us back in time to the pre-vinyl days, when musicians paid the bills primarily from live performance, with all the unexpected thrills and communitarian delights that can still offer audiences. Those who can afford Taylor Swift megashows can find their (many!) peopled pleasures there; those who can’t, or don’t wish to, will still meet their gangs, maybe even in the five quid show down at the local pub, maybe only for those few hours. And those who like to wallow in the retro-victory laps of fading established stars can still, sometimes, discover that playing live, their lifetime lodestars aren’t fading at all, can still surprise a-fresh.
I saw the eighty-odd year old McCartney down here in Oz last year: it was a truly stunning show…and not because he arrived on stage pre-famous and Spotify-mass-disseminated. Last night I saw Frank Turner in a sweaty rock shack for eighty bucks – also, for me, the first time live. Both gigs, suis generis, both transiently supercharging and equally communal: one alongside 80 thousand chanting fans, the other sharing sweat with 400. Great musicians and great music live on the stage, in the now, not online, in amber. As I would reckon does real music fanhood.
A lovely piece of music writing, PS.
If I was a Spotify user, my Wrapped would doubtless reveal I have been in a two-year period of mourning after the death of Christine McVie in 2022. I doubt I’d share that on Spotify, though. Most users would have to google Christine McVie, and even then they probably wouldn’t care.
Test
Drones…..
If this is the mentality of Gen Z, I despair for our species.
Sounds like too much time trying to please the machines in order to get a sticker of approval…
Older Gen X here… and all I can say is I’m very very glad that my number 3 song was a Charlie xcx Bon Iver remix haha!
I find this discussion fascinating, but I have to admit that I have never listened to Spotify. 320kbps is way too low a resolution rate to provide a satisfying listening experience.
I enjoy listening to music and use Spotify frequently. I noticed this Unwrapped thing appearing and ignored it and carried on. Can’t see the point as I already know what I like to listen to.
Yes, I believe that the whole intent of the article was to perhaps define the point of it.
That read like a “Black Mirror” episode
Kudos to PS for a great article. There are few Unherd contributors who do a better job of illuminating the ways in which apparently trivial pop-culture phenomena have much wider and sometimes sinister social implications. I personally stopped listening to pop music with both ears decades ago, when it became clear that the product mostly couldn’t live up to the hype and musicians seemed obligated (perhaps contractually?) to release new material even when they had nothing to say.