We listen to a lot of music (I mean, who doesn’t?) and have personal fascinations with data analysis, so we look forward to Spotify Wrapped Day every year.
This year’s anticipation was no exception, though the Wrapped itself was more disappointing than years past. Spotify’s decision to lean into AI was a huge let-down; the resulting Wrapped was impersonal, dry, and at times nonsensical. It feels like a slap in the face to Jewel Ham, the designer who conceived of the social media-centric format that shifted Spotify Wrapped into a communal, interactive experience. The devaluation of the distinctly human element of social media is unsurprising, but expecting corporations to “optimize” something into oblivion doesn’t make it feel better when it happens.
With that being said, we’ve decided to re-humanize our Spotify Wrapped by comparing our data-driven Top 5 lists with our true Top 5 lists, created in all our messy, subjective glory. (And don’t worry—there’s some data in here, too.)
top songs
Emory’s “official” top 5:
Femininomenon [Chappell Roan]
Picture You [Chappell Roan]
HOT TO GO! [Chappell Roan]
Pink Pony Club [Chappell Roan]
Not Strong Enough [boygenius]
Alright, looking at my top 5 songs, I can say right out the gate that “Femininomenon” is number one because it’s the first song on The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. Over the summer—especially getting ready for the concert—I was listening to the album on repeat, start to finish, and there were plenty of times when I didn’t get through the whole thing; it seems obvious that the song I listened to the most would be that one. It isn’t my favorite song, though. In fact, of the four Chappell songs on my top 5 list, only one makes my actual top 5.
I love “Picture You.” It’s one of my favorites to sing along to, I think the lyrics are fantastic, it’s very sexy—no notes.
“HOT TO GO!” is also up there for getting-ready-for-the-concert reasons. I had top surgery about two months before the concert, and I was really worried about my mobility for dancing along. I did a lot of experiments with the arm movements over the course of my initial surgery recovery to gradually increase my range of motion and rebuild some of that strength (because everyone knows dancing to Chappell Roan is the most important reason to rebuild one’s strength post-surgery).
I’m not sure why “Pink Pony Club” is up there. Honestly, if you’d asked me which song on The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess I listened to the least, I would’ve said “Pink Pony Club.” It’s a great song, don’t get me wrong—even my least favorite Chappell Roan song is better than the best song by almost any other artist. But more than any other song on my “official” top 5 list, that’s the one that surprised me.
Do we think they threw in one non-Chappell Roan song just for the sake of diversifying my my top 5? Who knows! I do love “Not Strong Enough,” and I listened to a lot of boygenius this year for sure—the record is one of my all-time favorite albums. That’s not my favorite song on the album, but I’m not surprised to see it’s the one I listened to the most. (I was surprised to see that “Emily I’m Sorry” was in my top 100, but there were plenty of other boygenius songs higher up than 54 in my top 100, so it’s fine, it’s fine.) Part of why it’s this song in particular, I think, is that Jo and I had a very difficult summer for more than a few reasons; there was a time when I really didn’t feel strong enough to be able to be the man Jo needed and deserved. Couples therapy has helped me deal with that feeling, but so did scream-singing “Not Strong Enough” again and again.
If that’s the data-driven top 5, what’s the emotionally driven top 5? I’m glad you asked:
Coffee [Chappell Roan]
MOVEMENT 18’ (Heroes) [Jon Batiste]
Picture You [Chappell Roan]
Salt In The Wound [boygenius]
AMERIICAN REQUIEM [Beyoncé]
I can’t emphasize enough how difficult that list was to make. My impulse is to start listing all the songs I almost put on there, but I recognize that defeats the purpose of a top 5 list. Just know that Charli xcx, Sabrina Carpenter, Adrianne Lenker, Phoebe Bridgers, Hozier—and, yes, more Chappell Roan—fought to make it on the list (I’m sorry to leave you all as honorable mentions!).
So, I think “Coffee” is such a gorgeous, deeply emotional song, and while it isn’t necessarily Chappell Roan’s most vocally challenging song, it’s so tonally rich. The fact that it isn’t her most challenging is part of why I love it so much, really; I love singing along when I listen to it. And like I said before, “Picture You” is a hot song. I like Chappell Roan’s slower/less energetic songs a lot, which is why I was surprised to see some of the most energetic songs were the ones that made my Spotify top 5.
“MOVEMENT 18’ (Heroes)” is, in my opinion, Jon Batiste’s best song. Jo and I regularly discuss our fervent belief that Jon Batiste is our generation’s Mozart (Beethoven? Bach?). He’s a truly brilliant composer and musician. And he’s also why “AMERIICAN REQUIEM” is the Cowboy Carter song that made it on my top 5—he’s one of the producers, writers, and performers on it. I loved the whole album, but I think his artistic influence on this track is palpable and what puts it above the rest.
That leaves “Salt In The Wound.” I know, boygenius but not on the record? Gasp! I just love singing this one, I think the lyrics are fantastic, Julien Baker absolutely kills it.
Jozef’s “official” top 5:
Red Wine Supernova [Chappell Roan]
HOT TO GO! [Chappell Roan]
Femininomenon [Chappell Roan]
Guilty Pleasure [Chappell Roan]
Vampire Empire [Big Thief]
Chappell Roan has been on my playlists since 2017 (shout out to the other guy in the church worship band for putting me on when School Nights came out) and I was loving every second of her rise to fame this summer. Notoriously uncoordinated and doggedly persistent, I listened to “HOT TO GO!” as many times as it took to learn the dance before seeing Chappell in concert… and it shows.
If I’m driving or doing chores, I’m singing. I’ll often listen to an album from start to finish in the car while commuting, cleaning, or running errands, so the appearance of the first two tracks of Midwest Princess in my top 5 is a testament to its dominance in my rotation. I’m surprised that “After Midnight” didn’t make it in my top five since that’s my personal favorite of the songs from the album (it came 16th), but “Guilty Pleasure” is a close second and easier for me to sing in the car. I’m fairly certain that’s how it ended up on top, along with another of my commuter karaoke favorites, the Big Thief version of “Vampire Empire.” I think this top 5 is a good indicator that numerical data can only tell you so much on its face (more on this later: it’s gonna get nerdy).
My subjective top 5 are much different— lyrically and vocally driven, slower, and softer.
Good Luck, Babe! [Chappell Roan]
I think about it all the time [Charli xcx]
Donut Seam [Adrianne Lenker]
Father and Son [Johnny Cash and Fiona Apple]
Born For Loving You [Big Thief]
I mean, come on. Who didn’t have every single part of “Good Luck, Babe!” on loop in their head since it came out? It made it to 12 on my quantitative top 100 list with half the time that the songs from Midwest Princess had to get there. Honestly hoping for another album and a Chappell Roan awards sweep in 2025.
“I think about it all the time” is so tender, a bold departure from the rest of Brat that really stood out to me. I think Charli xcx captured the uncertainty that I’ve heard echoed by later millennials/early Gen Z-ers without feeling try-hard. Like yeah! my career does feel so small in the existential scheme of it all! I do think about wanting to have a baby all the time! My friends are all radiant and on their own journeys! Call me sappy, call me trite, but this song makes me a little emosh every time I listen to it.
The simplicity of the melody for “Donut Seam” reminds me of a hymn—another summer full of heat waves and autumn full of hurricanes and unseasonably warm weather sent this song to the top of my list easily.
I discovered the cover of Cat Stevens’s song “Father and Son” on Johnny Cash’s posthumous album Unearthed this summer and fell in love with it instantly. Fiona Apple’s verses and harmonies remind me of all the times I sang Cash with my (now estranged) dad. In a year of familial tumult, I found comfort in their powerful, familiar voices.
And finally, “Born For Loving You.” While “Vampire Empire” is punchier, I’m a lover boy at heart. I send this one to Emory whenever I miss him.
top artists
Emory’s “official” top 5:
Chappell Roan
boygenius
Phoebe Bridgers
Julien Baker
Beyoncé
There aren’t any big surprises here, really. If Brat and Short n’ Sweet had come out earlier in the year—or, really, if I hadn’t been so depressed and burnt out during brat summer (I had more of a brat autumn)—Charli xcx and Sabrina Carpenter probably would’ve made it up there, so they’re definitely close behind. Adrianne Lenker, too, was a big one for me this year.
This year more than previous years, I listened to full albums on repeat versus a loose scatter of songs on shuffle. So, Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker are a tad surprising since neither of them had a new album out this year. Not that I don’t love them, don’t get me wrong!
Now let’s take a look at all the artists on my top 100 songs (well, most of them, since some had slivers too small to include their names in the chart):
The surprise for me is Sarah Kinsley. I honestly can’t say what song (songs?) is on my top 100, so I’m guessing her music frequented my daylists. On the other hand, Ethel Cain didn’t make it, and Spotify has decided that because I’m a depressed trans person, I must love Ethel Cain (I don’t—sorry, I just don’t!). I guess it all comes down to whether or not you skip the songs?
Maggie Rogers is on there for her new music, which is interesting because I don’t like it nearly as much as her older stuff. Dua Lipa is also on there for her new music—I know a lot of people didn’t like Radical Optimism, but I thought it was fun!
As you can see, boygenius ended up taking a bigger piece of the pie than Chappell Roan, which you probably wouldn’t guess from my official top 5 list. I think it’s interesting that Julien Baker was one of my top artists despite not a single one of her songs making my top 100. I actually triple-checked the list to be sure. It seems like Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx, or Mitski should’ve been up there instead, but that’s the trick of top whatever-number-you-pick lists—they can’t include everything.
For my non-official top 5, I’m going to cheat—although I think it’s fair, honestly—and say that boygenius encompasses Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus. It saves me from having them compete against one another and their own supergroup for a spot on my top 5. Because everyone is vying to be at the top of Emory O’Malley’s list of favorite artists, obviously.
Anyway, here it is:
Chappell Roan
boygenius
Jon Batiste
Charli xcx
Fiona Apple
I’ve already said a lot about Chappell Roan, boygenius, and Jon Batiste, so I’ll focus on Charli xcx and Fiona Apple. I thought Brat was an amazing album, and there’s something so refreshing about Charli xcx’s blend of IDGAF and “I actually really GAF” in her music, her live performances, and her overall persona. And Fiona Apple—I mean, come on. One of the greats. I first started listening to her music when I was really entrenched in advocacy for better Title IX policies and protections for survivors of sexual violence on college campuses. I stepped away from that activism work, but the rage hasn’t gone anywhere. And no one does rage at shitty men quite like Fiona Apple.
Jozef’s “official” top 5:
Adrianne Lenker
Chappell Roan
boygenius
Phoebe Bridgers
Big Thief
Music by these artists did make up almost half of my top 100 songs this year, likely a combination of songs from Midwest Princess, boygenius, the record, Punisher, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, and Bright Future being on many of my playlists.
Here’s the breakdown of artists on my top 100 songs:
One surprising inclusion on the list compared to prior years was Macklemore. I haven’t really thought much about the guy since “Thrift Shop” and “Downtown,” but deeply appreciated his outspokenness on the genocide in Palestine—proof that you don’t need to be an expert on geopolitics or political theory to use the skills and resources at your disposal to apply pressure to a broken system. His “HIND’S HALL” was 6 on my top 100 songs and “HIND’S HALL 2” was 83. (P.S. he was right, Kamala Harris did NOT win Michigan by staying the Zionist course.)
My favorites this year weren’t necessarily the artists who I listened to most, being:
Chappell Roan
Jon Batiste
Mitski
Sufjan Stevens
Charli xcx
The throughline here is that each of these artists had a standout album (or a couple!) that I returned to time and time again. We’ve talked plenty about Chappell, and I second everything Emory said about Jon Batiste—his broad range of musical styles, technical skill, and unparalleled creativity makes me feel lucky to be alive at the same time that he is working. WE ARE, World Music Radio, and most recently Beethoven Blues are albums I savor each time I listen to them. Mitski, Sufjan Stevens, and Charli xcx also had their own no-skip albums, all of which made it to my top 5 albums this year.
I also got curious about how much overlap there was in our artists, so I (in Emory’s words) worked some data magic with our top 100 songs to figure it out!
In total, Emory and I’s top 100 songs were by 55 distinct artists. For the nerds, I’ve broken this down by alpha and beta diversity—these are typically used in ecosystem studies, so I treated each artist as a species and each song of theirs as an individual within that species. Considering that we use each others’ profiles to play music around the house, share playlists, and have lived together for four and a half years, I was a little surprised that our listening habits still had a pretty decent amount of variation from one another (our Bray-Curtis dissimilarity was 0.61, meaning we had slightly more unshared artists than shared).
top albums
Spotify Wrapped doesn’t show you your top albums of the year, so we got to just create them ourselves. We decided to go real analog and illustrate our top albums by hand.
Emory’s top albums:
the record [boygenius]
The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess [Chappell Roan]
Brat [Charli xcx]
Cowboy Carter [Beyoncé]
Bright Future [Adrianne Lenker]
Again, I’ve said a lot about boygenius, Chappell Roan, Charli xcx, and Beyoncé, so the fresh material for all you readers is Adrianne Lenker. I think Bright Future is such a quietly powerful album, and it’s one of my favorites to listen to while I write fiction. I don’t know if any of you are fiction writers as well, but I’ve found that the music I listen to while writing has to really speak to the emotions of the character central to whatever scene I’m working on. It’s unlike writing marketing copy for work (I listen to lo-fi), essays and newsletter issues (I listen to whatever playlist I’m in the mood for), or poetry (I don’t listen to any music at all).
Jozef’s top albums:
The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess [Chappell Roan]
The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We [Mitski]
Brat [Charli xcx]
Bright Future [Adrianne Lenker]
Javelin [Sufjan Stevens]
The two previously unmentioned albums here are The Land Is Inhospitable and Javelin, both of which were the soundtrack to my spring and early summer 2024. I’m a sucker for a good folk/Americana album and Mitski and Sufjan Stevens (as well as Adrianne Lenker with Bright Future) did it so well. More melancholy queer folk, please!
our taste in music is a ~vibe~
But what type of vibe? We each decided to collage a sort of mood board for our music taste this year—way more fun than being called a “pink pilates princess,” right?
Unlike Jo’s collage, which is very much vibe-based and abstract (see below, he says it speaks for itself), mine is a series of pop culture references courtesy of copies of New York magazine that I clipped. The background is a fantastic photo of Maggie Rogers in a car, looking cool as fuck with her notebook in her lap—let it be known that I meant for her to represent my vibe while listening to boygenius, though, not while listening to Maggie Rogers. Charli xcx has to take center stage, but you’ll also notice the even more brat Moo Deng beside Paris Hilton in the bottom left corner. I don’t have a good reason for the addition of Paris Hilton, honestly—it just felt right to include her. Bowen Yang is (in my head) dancing to Chappell Roan, and he’s also in the Moo Deng corner because Bowen Yang as Moo Deng on SNL was a perfect metaphor for Chappell Roan’s frustration with the press. I added Barry Keoghan from a Burberry ad because I felt like he looked like he’d be listening to Sabrina Carpenter, but in a moody way, and Sabrina Carpenter herself made an appearance as well. Last but not least, the quilted teddy bear is there to symbolize Adrianne Lenker’s folksy vibe.
what Spotify doesn’t say
At the end of the day, your Spotify Wrapped can literally only tell you the frequency with which you listened to different songs and artists. So, what Spotify doesn’t say is: a lot. Including all the music we didn’t listen to on Spotify!
What Emory’s Spotify didn’t catch:
The lo-fi beats in all the “study with me” YouTube videos I had on in the background while writing
The music of Bo Burnham’s Inside, which I’ve listened to extensively on Spotify in years past but this year primarily consumed as the Netflix special and the songs popping into my head and sticking around for a while
“Last Christmas” by Wham! (and all the other Christmas songs I’ve listened to nonstop in the days post-Spotify Wrapped, but anyone who knows me knows I love George Michael)
The random pop music that snuck into my TikTok feed, because somehow I still get the occasional video of a random cishet white girl dancing
“Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar—I mostly enjoyed this one via recordings of concert performances
What Jozef’s Spotify didn’t catch:
My Brat singalongs after buying the CD for the car
The playlist at Target—honestly I don’t even know how to describe this, it goes from post-9/11 country to Olivia Rodrigo to disco hits in the blink of an eye and we get a good laugh out of it every time
All the classical music on public radio I listened to on my commute or while doing dishes
The cacophony in Wegmans where the dad rock from the beer corner and top 40 from the rest of the store create the fluorescent-light fueled mashup from hell right at the end of the grocery trip when all I want is frozen pizza and dog treats and to go the f*ck home
With that, we conclude our extensive (some might even say exhaustive) review of listening habits over the last year and we’ve had a blast.
So long,
xx
Emory & Jo
this was an absolute delight. best newsletter ever