aggienaut | Spotify Wrapped (Reply)

   In previous years I sometimes listened to music on Spotify but I'd get tired of its bad selection abilities and hated the commercials -- I don't mind the Aussies around me, I don't hear their accents any more, but somehow the Aussie accent in commercials absolutely grates on my ears, maybe its the combination of the accent with the usual saccharine-sweet ridiculously-cheerful excited-about-some-dumb-thing-no-one-would-be-excited-about-tone. Well at some point in my wisdom apparently I paid for premium, I don't remember doing this but it seems I did, and the algorithm has gotten better enough that it's surpassed the current youtube "your mix" I used to listen to (which seems to only play a very small selection of songs over and over again these days -- I really miss Pandora's "I'm tired of this song" feature (Pandora has been disabled in Australia))

   So that annual end of the year "wrapped" thing Spotify does might actually be relevant for once. I was genuinely curious because I have the utmost trouble describing my music taste to people. (Funny story, one of my coworkers when I worked at the icecream factory was asking me this, so I named what I thought was the most well known band I like, Flogging Molly, and then he asked, "like, okay which radio station here plays that" and I just had to laugh.)

   Anyway so these are apparently the genres I like. It's funny there's so much "country" because pop country makes me want to projectile vomit, but I've always liked for example Johnny Cash or like the Corb Lund band is pretty awesome without being too far off mainstream country (though they do have a few songs i can't stand, but man, Student Visas, No Roads Here, Horse Soldier, Horse Soldier, The Truth Comes Out; and Dave Stamey... but i digress.

   This boggled my mind because like, I've never heard of "Possessed by Paul James." I was like who the hell is this? And then when you look at my list of top songs:

   The only song by Possessed by Paul James is the only song in the first 20 that I hadn't "liked." and it's certainly not because it wasn't presented to me to have the opportunity for me to do so. What Spotify thinks is my top artist is somehow essentially the single artist I have declined to give a like to more than any other! And yet it keeps foisting it on me, WTF Spotify! As it happens, listening to the song right now, I don't terribly mind it, but I think it still falls just shy of something I'd give a Like to.

   And maybe you can call it the song of the month but the song I've been in danger of playing too much for myself lately is Gasoline Lollipops - Mary Rose