I am an inconsistent person. I find habits and goals hard to stick to, so anything that I have kept up with consistently usually means a lot to me. One of these habits is my creation of monthly playlists on Spotify, which I have done since October 2021. Any song I vaguely like goes on the playlist. I discover some of my music in the wild, yet many of my discoveries are from various corners of the internet and rabbit holes on Youtube. I also take a lot of inspiration from my friends’ monthly playlists, which I influenced them to make. Occasionally, I listen to full albums and add my favorites. Each cover is a picture I took that month, usually encapsulating the season or general feeling of the time. This forces me to take more pictures, something I have trouble remembering to do.

Before the monthly playlists I rarely listened to music on my own. Because of this, my progression through the months shows how my tastes have evolved over time. Since then music has become an incredibly important part of my life, with key moments associated with certain songs. For example I recently got into a small “fender bender” accident on the way to school. While there was no damage to any person or car it was a stressful and memorable situation. I happened to be playing “That’s Our Lamp” by Mitski from my December playlist on loop during the entire event, and now the song will be forever known as my “car crash song.” 

I like to think of each month as a season in a show. That way, I feel less pressure to make the playlist feel cohesive. Rather, the songs tell a narrative that spans a multitude of emotions. 

I like to think of these playlists as a kind of library of everything I listened to and loved. This is especially important to me because I don’t currently own any physical media to listen to, such as CDs, records, etc. The downside of the digitalization of media is that often one can lack a connection to favorite music, movies, or books. While many people of my generation have an increased interest in physical media precisely because of these concerns, most of them use online platforms such as Spotify or Apple Music in daily use. This changes the way they interact with music, as with much broader choice and ease of switching songs, it becomes more difficult to stretch one’s attention span and listen to a full song without skipping over parts. The online world of media is infinite and easily replaceable, so my playlists follow a similar idea to the collections I love so much in the real world. I am also obsessed with documentations of life such as photos and journals, and this practice is another way for me to preserve the present moment until it becomes the past, and I can look at the playlist again with a new perspective.