A Taxonomy of My Spotify Playlists

 (no one listens to worse music than me)

coffee today

This started as a playlist of nonoffensive song options to throw on when I was given the aux at my barista job. I made it because once my coworker put on a playlist that was simply twelve songs by The Fray on repeat, and when I was in my head jamming out to How to Save A Life for the seventeenth time, a woman came up to the register and said, "Please, could you play literally anything else." It has now morphed into a collection of every song I enjoy and I spend 99 percent of my waking hours listening to it. There are three different versions of labor organizing anthem Which Side Are You On on this playlist. It is not a good playlist. Despite this, having a long playlist to throw on at any given time is necessary, because if given freedom I would listen to the same three Mal Blum songs on repeat until I die. 

[name redacted]

At some point in the last two calendar years, I had an embarrassingly intense crush on [name redacted]. They asked me to make them a playlist, which I approached as them saying, "please prove to me with music how much you want to kiss me." I very much wanted to kiss, so the playlist is incredibly well curated. We never kissed, which is probably for the best, because if they had ghosted me after we had been intimate in any way, it's likely that i would have laid down in a large field and let the earth take my feeble body as her own. 

songs about food for kids

I used to nanny. This is one of many, many playlists I made for the children. Once my friend Laura noticed I was listening to the song "My Shiny Teeth and Me" from this playlist and texted me, "I hope you're with the kids right now." But I was not. 

CCM nostalgia playlist

I was raised frighteningly Christian, and every so often I become nostalgic for the anthems of my youth, namely, early 2000's contemporary Christian music. This is a playlist of every awful contemporary Christian song that I secretly love, to put on when I feel that I can't continue living unless I hear the song Sadie Hawkins Dance by Christian boyband Relient K. I spend every ounce of free time that I have googling whether or not these artists are homophobic. Tragically, there's very little information about if Owl City has ever said gay rights on Al Gore's internet, so my research is inconclusive. 

songs they play in japanese stores

When I was in Japan on vacation, I kept a list of every song that played in any store or public space, and then I made this playlist. Because I didn't have data and couldn't add to the playlist in real time, I facebook messaged myself song titles constantly and would add them when I got back to the hostel and had internet. My messaging app looked bananas because it was just me sending myself desperate texts like "that barbara streissand song??" "Sorry by JUSTIN BEIBER ?" etc. Although it is conceptually messy, I listen to this playlist on the reg because it fucken owns.  

jpop and kpop sorry im trash

I'm not proud of this playlist, but it is who I am.