With Spotify Wrapped, listeners have the chance to unlock their personal music history over the past year, being able to view their top listened-to artists, most streamed songs, and more. Four Corners Upper School students access their Wrap-Ups and share their music tastes.
Spotify’s Wrapped Up event sends their listeners their personal data for the year in a video displaying the listener’s top artists, songs, and usage time, all in a fun little video. This year’s Spotify Wrapped-Up features bright bursts of color and song clips to create an immersive experience to delight Spotify’s users.
“When it came down to Wrapped for the first time, I actually wasn’t sure who would fill the top slot; when I got the answer, I wasn’t really shocked- more so curious on the breakdown of all my listening. I liked that this year still included the statistics on minutes listened, and the artist videos; I was kind of disappointed that this year’s was noticeably shorter than in the past and that the playlist of top 100 songs was out of order, save for the top five,” freshman, Bella Espinoza-Garcia said.
Recently, there has been a debate about whether or not Spotify’s top songs, music picks, and artists featured on user’sWrap-Ups are accurate according to the listener’s personal tastes and music footprint.
“My top artist of the year was Taylor Swift. Even though I did listen to many different artists like Gracie Abrams, Sabrina Carpenter, and Melanie Martinez, I listen to Taylor [Swift] the most out of everyone due to her music being so relatable and overall amazing. I would say Spotify definitely conveyed my music taste accurately,” sophomore Nyla Smith said.
Some artists have quickly risen to the top on Spotify, such as Gracie Abrams, creating mixtures of folk and bedroom pop music, with the hit song, I Love You, I’m Sorry, and some smaller artists such as Noah Kahan deliver more music leaning towards folk-pop, who created the well-known song, Stick Season. Some lesser-known singers and bands have taken the favor of some students, such as sophomore Lily Camacho.
“Modern Baseball is a Midwest Emo band, they have [an era] that is best described as kind of whiny, same for Mom Jeans. Zach Bryan is somewhere between Country and pop he does a lot of [collaborations] with other smaller artists; Noah Kahan is an acoustic, indie folk singer, he honestly sings about a little bit of everything, and Alex G has kind of like a chill vibe in all his music,” Camacho said.
Music creators usually have a general genre of music that their songs follow, and some of this year’s most listened-to genres were Afrobeats, Indie pop, and Latin Urban.
“My top genres were Midwest emo and Country, but those are typically my go-to vibes. I listen to a lot of Modern Baseball, Mom Jeans, Front Bottoms, etc. I also listen to a lot of Morgan Wallen, Sturgill Simpson, Alan Jackson, andZach Bryan. I definitely think they represent my taste because I really enjoy listening to MidWest Emo; for example, I just went to a front bottoms concert last week. I also enjoy country; it is always playing when I am with my grandparents, and it’s honestly grown on me,” Camacho said.
Arguably, the most important aspect of a song is its lyrics. Some feel that music lyrics hold a special power to captivate and immerse their listeners, with many listeners favoring more relatable music content to listen to. Nyla Smith shares one of her favorite songs on her Spotify Wrap-Up.
“Taylor Swift made the song Marjorie about her grandmother who passed away. She had lost her [grandma] at the young age of fourteen. She was really close with her and had so much love for her. I relate to this song because when I was fourteen, two months away from turning fifteen, I lost my mother from a disease she had been battling. This song speaks to me so much and some lyrics in there are feelings I couldn’t put into words, and Taylor helped me do that with this song,” Smith said.
This year’s annual Spotify event has been sent, the statistics have been shared, Spotify’s listeners informed, and this Wrap-Up has officially wrapped up.
“I’ve used Spotify for several years, every year I get a similar outcome, the top artist is always the same, I know what I like and I’m loyal to those artists, slowly other artists have joined the lineup and I guess I just hope those other slots continue to shift and balance each other out,” Espinoza-Garcia said.
