Scroll through Twitter and Instagram Stories this morning and you’ll be met with scores of people sharing their playlists. Why? Because yesterday Spotify relaunched their annual ‘Spotify Wrapped’ feature, showing users their top artists, songs and genres of the last year.
It’s a feature beloved by many, so much so ‘Spotify Wrapped’ was top of Google Trends this morning with more than 500,000 searches. Mostly, people want to know how to find Spotify Wrapped on the app - with ‘How to watch Spotify Wrapped’ a breakout search term, alongside ‘Can you get Spotify Wrapped without premium?’ (Yes, you can.)
There was also mass panic (okay, that’s maybe slightly dramatic, but there was certainly much confusion online) when the feature appeared to crash for some users – with searches for ‘Spotify Wrapped something went wrong' and ‘Why is my Spotify wrapped not working?’ major queries too. Users were encouraged to update the app, reinstall it, or clear cache and data stored on your phone that could be taking up too much space for the feature to work.
Clearly, understanding our musical preferences over the course of the year was important to many – not least because it means you can share them on social media. That’s why Spotify Wrapped is all we’re seeing online today, right? Because for the majority of us, sharing good music with friends and family is an important pastime.
But there’s another element of people sharing their Spotify Wrapped that’s intriguing: the desperate need to explain or contextualise certain music tastes.
You see it most with users who mostly listen to mainstream chart music. Alongside a Spotify Wrapped screenshot showcasing their top artists as Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish, the user will dramatically declare ‘I KNOW I’M BASIC OKAY!!’. Or, if there’s a particularly random artist among a sea of chart-toppers, they might caption their photo with something like ‘Not sure what happened there lol’.
But when it comes to those with less mainstream taste, the captions are much less self-depreciating and - whisper it - can border on pretentious. Where some are clearly embarrassed to have such 'common' tastes, others seem to take pride in only listening to underground artists. Really, it’s the epitome of music snobbery, and why sharing your music taste is often so much more personal than one might expect.
I experienced it once after a man I’d met on a night out asked to see my Spotify ‘Liked’ playlist. I opened it without a thought, but a strange feeling dawned on us both as I began to explain why I loved certain artists or songs. ‘God, this is quite intimate actually isn’t it?’ he laughed. And it was, suddenly we’d gone from joking about something or nothing to analysing my entire personality through the context of my musical tastes.
It’s not always that we’re embarrassed about liking mainstream artists, of course - the music we listen to also says a lot about our moods, how we process our emotions and what we do for fun. I’ve certainly fallen foul of self-deprecating humour around my excessive ‘sad bitch’ playlists, in the hopes that people don’t think I’m living an exceptionally sad life (I’m just an Aquarius who can’t process pain without music guys, don’t worry).
And we all do it - we all find ourselves gritting our teeth when we pop a certain song on the speakers of a party or share a certain playlist with friends – music taste is just one of those things people will harshly judge you for, often right to your face.
Guilty pleasure music shouldn’t be a thing.
But the thing is, guilty pleasure music shouldn’t be a thing. Who really cares if you still love Paris Hilton’s noughties hits (undeniable bangers) or only listened to Taylor Swift all year (to be fair, she brought out a gazillion albums)? The exception, of course, may come when a particular artist is controversial outside of their art, like convicted abusers Chris Brown and R. Kelly.
Just because music snobs deem our favourite artists crap or ‘basic’ shouldn’t mean we’re embarrassed to share. Particularly when most professional music critics are men that could easily be unconsciously biased towards male-dominated genres that have always been more respected in the industry than those populated by women (see rock artist Liam Gallagher hating any pop band winning a Brit Award for Best Band).
Ultimately, what we’re saying is: share your Spotify Wrapped with pride. Go forth and be loudly basic, there’s no shame in liking someone just because everyone else does too…
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