The Music that Defined My Year, and the Strange Art of Faking a Spotify Wrapped
Apple Music— which is superior to Spotify, I am not afraid to say it— has finalized my 2024 Replay, which has compiled the songs, albums, and artists that I returned to throughout the year.
The Wrapped/Replay season is an exciting time for all music listeners, to share our favorite artists and to reflect on how our musical tastes define us as people. This is such a massive endeavor for some, that I’ve noticed an increasing trend of people either refusing to share their lists out of shame, or going through the trouble to fake them all together. I read this week about a New Jersey gubernatorial candidate who was caught publishing a fake Spotify Wrapped page that reflected his intense Bruce Springsteen fandom. That’s how serious this can get.
It speaks to a strange aspect of “media consumption” that has become increasingly present as streaming algorithms and services turn our listening/watch history into these glitzy, fun infographics we can share with others. People are often ashamed of what they like, or the incongruities in their artistic tastes that don’t fit with the way they wish to be perceived. In the case of the New Jersey politician; Josh Gottheimer explained that he doctored his Wrapped because his family shared an account, and his daughters’ love of Taylor Swift skewed the results. There’s no doubt the Springsteen endorsement is a big pull in New Jersey, but I also believe earnestly that Gottheimer does love The Boss.
The question then becomes: what does that choice communicate about the person? Would his constituents not be charmed by him sharing the full story? “Hey, you know I love The Boss, but I also love my kids and we listen to a lot of music together.” That’s relatable, understandable, and a human thing to do. The choice to disrupt that narrative speaks to how the digital age has pushed us to so carefully curate our images online that we will even feel like obfuscating objective, measured data like a Spotify Wrapped playlist in order to appear one way or another. It’s silly, it ultimately harms no one, but it is a strange symptom of the artifice brought on by internet culture.
I don’t believe in guilty pleasures, so there will be no Replaygate scandal here. Starting with my most-listened to artists of the year:
Every year, I am expecting some variation of Bob Dylan, Mitski, Talking Heads, Daft Punk, and Japanese Breakfast to break the top ten. So it is no surprise that they’re all right in order at the start of my list. Mitski’s most recent album has remained in constant rotation, and especially in this later half of the year, I have taken a deeper dive than ever into Dylan’s 1960s catalog. He released nine albums during this single decade, and every one of them is remarkable.
The surprises/newcomers on the list are Laufey, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, and Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross. Laufey has been the most exciting discovery of the year for me, a Gen-Z artist who had some viral moments on TikTok that have launched an impressive and very well-deserved career. She blends popular, modern musical sensibilities with an old-school jazz & classical style, most notably influenced by the likes of Chet Baker, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday. I recommend “Fragile,” “From the Start,” and “Lovesick."
Billie’s newest album is among my favorites of the year. She is certainly the pop star of this era that I am most invested in. Each of her three studio records has marked a notable improvement in terms of songwriting ability and dynamic production. I also love how much she orients her music around the album-listening experience as opposed to releasing a variety of unrelated singles that are spun together haphazardly. Hit Me Hard and Soft flows beautifully and the final track ties together so many lyrical and musical motifs that reward a full listen of the record.
Chappell had a meteoric rise after her Coachella performance, and it is no surprise considering “Good Luck, Babe!” is one of the best songs of the year. Seeing her live at Louisville Pride was an incredible experience. She has an unbelievable stage presence, a great knack for pop music, and I love how she is challenging the status quo of how artists should respond to parasocial fans and parasitic media coverage of celebrities.
Reznor & Ross is entirely due to the Challengers soundtrack, a pulsating batch of electronic dance tracks that I have not been able to put down.
It has been a slightly more exploratory year for music than usual, but I still find that my favorite artists are relatively static throughout the decade so far.
Here is the Top Songs playlist generated by Apple, my 100 most replayed tracks of the year: