My Beef with Playlists
Sings* "playlist killed with radio star"
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Hey folks,
My thesis is due this Wednesday, so I thought that this week, because my mind is one giant, unreadable footnote, I would use this space to air some vague *feelings* I have on the ubiquitous musical medium of our time: the playlist. It’s a form I feel really complicated about and sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person of my age who has some beef with its predominance. So hey, if you’re like me comment below and let me know? It would be nice to know I’m not the only one.
Even though I pride myself on being “on the pulse,” I feel like I totally missed the boat on the playlist’s rise as the defining musical form of our time. I think it’s because in high school I was an Apple Music user, and Apple Music seems to center the artist and album as the primary locus of musical engagement. That may seem like a weirdly basic point; it’s like saying Netflix values TV and movies. But Spotify, which I use now and I think most music listeners of my age cohort use as well, doesn’t center the artist, but rather mood/vibe and the vague notion of discovery. When you open the Spotify app you are not met with artists or albums like on Apple Music, but usually with playlists named “Confidence Boost” or “Late Night Drive” or “Ethereal.” On Apple Music, all important new releases are accompanied by blurbs similar to the writing one would see on Pitchfork. On Spotify though, only the very most important albums get some sort of editorial feature and it’s usually little videos of the artist talking about the music. The difference is that Apple is trying to express an editorial, curatorial perspective with its original writing, whereas Spotify is trying to express a vague vibe, the casual “I’m Charli XCX, this my album!”
My defining musical moments as a young person and during my Apple Music era were the release of three albums: 1. To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar 2. Blond by Frank Ocean and 3. Vulnicura by Björk (on a side note, this a list rife for psychoanalysis). I was obsessed with these albums, and because Apple Music’s interface highlighted what I was already listening to, I was encouraged to keep listening to them upon opening the app, not to engage with a curated bombardment of vibes and moods. And thus I was content to steep in my favorite albums and to read Apple Music’s well written liner notes. I didn’t need more discovery, more moods, more vibes.
But while I was crying to Björk’s orchestral anthems lamenting the end of her marriage to Matthew Barney, my friends were on Spotify getting hooked on the algorithm, because as Liz Pelly has written about so eloquently, Spotify centers the playlist at every step of the user experience. And my peers were responding to Spotify’s incessant curation via playlists by making their own compilations. From Spotify’s endless drivel of recommended music for their changing moods and tastes, they began to keep a dedicated list, or rather playlist, of their favorites from the heap. This, I believe, is how the playlist became so incredibly dominant. It was a both a necessary response to Spotify’s unique mode of listening and a learned behavior from the platform’s dogmatic relationship to music.
This all got further entrenched, when users began to use playlists as a social tool. Be it making playlists for their friends or loved ones (yes, I know that’s not new, but it surely wasn’t ever so mindlessly easy) or as public documents that say something about their taste, playlists became normalized as expressive instruments. “I made this compilation of songs to say something about how I feel about you.” “I made this compilation of songs to say something about who I am.”
I have some insight into this. I have a little pop project with my friend Grey, and our song, “Bed Head,” has been doing some numbers, almost exclusively through algorithmic recommendation. So many thousands of people have been shown the song on “Discovery Weekly” and many have added the song to their personal playlists, which I get to see. And its clear from the titles of these playlists that people are using music compiled in playlists for many things, including to serve discrete purposes like “running,” but more broadly to express their general states of being. That they are “better offff” or are in a “dream state” or whatever “mashed depressions & depression x” means.
People have used music as a way of expressing their ineffable interiority forever, but they have especially since the advent of recorded music when music became an ownable commodity. Digital music, and streaming in particular, have now created the ability for users to make playlists of whatever their heart desires, and with that near infinite choice, they can define what the playlist means down to their granular particularities. And this is something I too understand; I make playlists based on timeframes in my life. I name the playlist something that refers to where I’m at and am excited to compile my favorites of this era in one place. But I am also deeply skeptical that a compilation of other people’s work can say something about myself. In a way, because I started my love for music with albums, there feels like an inherent debasement in the endeavor.
Playlisting has always struck me as a tool of personalization and decontextualization. And as an album-lover, the work of extracting songs from their context and forcing them within my own narrative of self, has always made me feel a strange discomfort. It feels like a technical fix to the non-problem that is albums: the crafted work of artists. But who needs those when you can get your favorite hits, hits, hits!?
But then again, I may be one of the only people who sits and ruminates about my feelings towards these potentially frivolous questions of media and meaning. So if you’re a playlist person, as you probably are, this is not meant to cast your preferred medium as somehow lesser, just to process my own complex feelings around it.
Anyways, because I feel so wierd about this, I thought it could be a little meta and fun to share my own current playlists. One is titled “America” because I started it when I came back to the States after a strange stint studying in Berlin , and the other is called “Tobias for DJ” which is a compilation of songs I hope to work into a DJ set ! Woo hoo! Listen to them and let me know: what do you think of my inner most essence?
I always thought I was crazy for thinking this but I’m so glad I’m not alone. IMO there’s beauty to be held in both the album and the playlist but as a culture we are severely undermining the power and craft of the compilation work from the artist that goes into an album. I’m not saying stop playlists fuck them never use a playlist. But I think more appreciation needs to go into seeing an album as a whole being. An album or ep is something the artist made and there’s reasons the artist put shit together the way they did. Seeing albums as a mere file of songs from a particular year/era takes away from the art of the work an artists puts out and has the potential to drastically change the industry & force/encourage artist is to stick to one song for the sake of a consistent “vibe.” Like no I want to see a journey the artist sets out in their album, weather it’s like something vaguely there or very deliberately there in an album like American Idiot. I don’t think one of listening to a compilation of songs is the right way but listening to an an album all the way through is SEVERLY under-appreciated. An album is like an original photograph and a play list is like a collage. Both are forms of artistic expression but they are very different. Overall I think there needs to be more emphasis on the fact that the compilation and arrangement of songs is a dimension of the artists work. Undeniably some care about it more then others, but the same thing can be said about the use of vocals, the use of different instruments etc. Albums simply need to be seen as the medium it is and a way to appreciate artists in a deeper way :)
This is such an interesting perspective that I've never thought about before. Looking back on recent years, I've made a gradual transition and now listen to music almost exclusively in various playlists. Recently I've found myself unsatisfied with all of my playlists and am constantly searching for new songs that "match the vibe," so the point you make about listening to the same album over and over struck a chord with me.
I agree that part of the appeal is how customizable they are, it makes me wonder if the general preference for playlists is a result of our (at least in the US) more individual focused culture. Maybe it has something to do with our shortening attention spans too.