Watching other people’s Spotify Wrapped makes me think I’m doing it wrong. (If I were more honest, I’d say it made me feel like everyone else but me was doing it wrong, but I won’t admit that.) my city Writers shared a roundup of the most listened songs of 2024 in our Slack, with Kenneth reporting that he listened to Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” approximately 1,582 times. My most played song is “Young Fathers” by Typhoon, I’ve played it 17 times.
If you asked me to sing “Young Father” by Typhoon, I would sincerely answer, “Who?” I had absolutely no idea that was the name of the band, or even the name of the song, but when I played it back, I thought, “Oh yeah, I really like how this sounds!” I’ve added it to my “Liked Songs” playlist (currently 1,622 songs), I guess it came up during the year 17 times. I don’t know who the Typhoons are, if they are brilliant progressives that young people embrace, or if they are a bunch of problematic old assholes that only real Nazis love. It was just a song that sounded good, so I listened to it. (I’ve turned it on now, and it’s a great pop song with lots of catchy riffs, but I never paid much attention to the lyrics.)
According to Spotify, I listened to a total of 5,232 songs from 1,992 different artists this year. And, apparently, that’s not normal? It keeps telling me that I’m in the top 0.5% of listeners for various bands, which feels incredibly tracking and makes me even more confused considering I apparently rarely play any singles. But most likely because of this breadth rather than depth, fifth in my top five artists is Eels.
Don’t get me wrong – I love eels. I loved their Beautiful Freak in 1996 and I recorded the CD to cassette and played it on loop on my Walkman while mowing the lawn at the Scottish Outdoor Center in the summer. I love “Electro-Shock Blues” (well, as much as an album can be a shocker), as well as 2000’s incredible “Daisies of the Galaxy” and 2002’s “Souljacker” “, and then…I gradually lost it. I haven’t listened to their songs in 20 years! I spent a few days listening to some of their recent albums, put a few of the tracks on my “favorite songs” list, and that was about it. Obviously this makes the band my fifth highest choice!
The rest of the top five isn’t all that surprising to me, even if it shows that I still only listen to what comics writer and former colleague Kieron Gillen always describes as “John Walker music.” (This is a derogatory term.) Number one is sound of marblewhich makes perfect sense. The Belgian singer’s music is my “joy” and I play it when I need to feel life’s eternal ennui reflected back to me in beautiful sounds. Second place goes to The Mountain Goats, again, the only surprise is that it’s not number one. Besides Nick Cave, John Darnielle is my favorite singer, and The Mountain Goats are the band I watch live the most. If I had to choose an artist I could listen to it would be him or Kev, depending on the day. Third place is Radical Face, who is also my favorite artist (along with another Ben Cooper vehicle, Electric President, along with Alex Kane) since I discovered him in 2017 with the phenomenal video EP “SunnMoonnEclippse” .
But from then on, everything is free. I’m sure I’ve listened to many more songs than those listed in my top five, including who Typhoon is. Like Caravan Palace’s incredible ditty “Miracle,” which I heard for the first time this year on some TV shows, even though I’m five years old.
Also, I’m sure I listened to A House’s 1994 song “Why Me” over 17 times on the same day a few weeks ago. Still, at least “A Wave Across A Bay” being number two on the list represents how much I’ve listened to Frank Turner this year. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a deeply moving song about anxiety, “Keeps behaving badly” Or his brilliant song “Miranda,” about recovering from her broken relationship with her father after she came out as gay (the term agreed upon between them).
Also, where is the bus driver? Where’s Aesop Rock? Where is Nick Cave? Where is Noname? Are there any other artists that I feel like I perform more often than others?
Well, I’ve tucked in my favorite songs for you to listen to – I’ll get back to it…
As much as I’d like to label myself “Captain Iconoclast,” it feels a little alienating to me after finding my own niche of middle-aged men listening. My wife and son would sing along to any song they heard in public, but they were all new to me. When Kenneth shared his top five, I asked sincerely who Sabrina Carpenter was. As it turns out, I knew the song “Espresso” and had listened to it a few times on purpose because it was a great pop song, but I had no idea who sang it—although I remembered her singing it on Saturday Night Live 》The performance was mediocre.
When I was younger I would have been stupidly proud of this. Oh, look at me, I don’t even know the hit pop songs, do I? very interesting. But as I approached 50, I realized, no, I was just missing out. Admittedly, a lot of this is driven by my wife and son endlessly repeating the same damn Taylor Swift and Chappelle Rowan songs, which may be wonderful, but I can’t help but Listened to them so many times, they were like sandpaper on my brain.
I guess it’s that last part that puts me in a weird spot: I don’t want to listen to the same song a billion times. Kenneth listened to “Espresso” 1,500 times a year. It sounds like punishment to me, and as I’ve already said, I think it’s a great track! But damn, after listening to it 30 times, I didn’t want to listen to it again for years. I wanted something completely new rather than wanting something familiar. Once something becomes widely popular, I hear it even when I don’t want to, and I start to resent it. it is imposed on me. To be fair, Spotify has 272 monthly listeners, and I’m not going to play another one of my favorite songs, “Trouble Books,” when I walk into a department store. (listen “Gravel Pit” Now, you bastards.
So am I the weirdo? Or Kenneth? I’m going to assume this might be an issue for both of us, and since we have to worry about it, we wrote this article.
