Hang the DJ 🎧
my wrapped is better than yours
Spotify Wrapped day is essentially a holiday for people on social media — music lovers, etc. It is common for people to share their most streamed songs and artists across all of their properties. Screaming from the rooftops to be respected for their just right musical inclinations.
It is en vogue to hate on these folks. I get it. But we all want to be seen right? Why else would I be writing these posts and pumping them out into the void? I see both sides, but like many other social media fads, I keep my visions to myself.
Every year I view a lot of these posts and my main takeaway is that we are not as unique as we like to think. The mono culture is real — music taste, or maybe, music in general is ran over, run through, or whatever the de rigueur turn of phrase for rode hard and hung up wet.
Music has become, like everything else, a passive activity. One that requires no passion, or hard work. Something easily accessible and evergreen.
No one is sitting next to their radio, on the edge of their seat, waiting to hear the opening few bars of their favorite song. They are dialing it up on Spotify and putting it on repeat. The pendulum has swung a bit too far.
In my humble opinion, there is nothing more deeply uncool than quantifying music taste. How does it feel when music doesn’t make you feel anymore?
How will Gen Z ever hear War Pigs If they are streaming Tommy Richman 85 Billion times? Their algorithm may be lightyears away from Pictures of You. Who knows.
The first time I heard Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks was on the radio, in the car with friends in Washington’s Crossing, Pennsylvania. It was a foggy fall night in 2004. I don’t remember who was driving, it could have been me, either way, it was impossible to see — all that existed was wall of gray against the black of night. We might as well have been driving blind through outer-space. The car was filled with smoke and hot teenage breath. I was so high I think I started to cry.
If I put on Waterloo Sunset now, which I currently have playing (on Spotify)— I feel. Old. Sure. That is true. But I feel a great big something. A great big unexplainable something that I will never stop chasing.
My mother has never been cooler than the time she was dosed at Yes concert at RFK Stadium. My father, never as cool as the time he was struck by lightning playing electric guitar on his front porch during a rainstorm, most likely trying to figure out a Rolling Stones riff. Music used to define people, bring them together. It was mythical and sexy.
These are likely all my machinations on my part — but I am having a hard time seeing through the matrix. I sure as shit hope there are people out there, in basements of punk houses, slamming their fists through amps and screaming into a microphone. I am there in spirit, eyes red and high life in hand.
I hope the flattened, digital wall of sound we call music is able to continue to encourage bad decisions. I feel like there may still be hope. If you are curious, my most played song of 2024 was Are You Looking Up? By Mk.Gee
The constant rumination about the act of listening to music is more about the outcome it seems. Of the immediate surroundings when listened. Lately, I moved my whole vinyl collection to my basement to make it more 'usable' than having it in the busy space of the active living room. I kicked off with a first-print of Creepoid's "Horse Heaven" yesterday and played it LOUD. It felt about right. And now I'm even more sinking into proverbial dad zone, where listening to music in the basement by myself is... normal. Again? Like when I was a teenager.