Fine Arts 

The morning of Wednesday, November 29th started like any other. My alarm went off at 7:05 am, then again at 7:13, 7:21, and 7:29 until I finally stopped it at 7:37. I mindlessly reached for my phone resting on the table beside my bed. As I opened Instagram and began to click through a few stories, I was immediately bombarded with colorful graphics featuring popular songs, artists, and musical genres. The day had finally come. After a long year chock full of pop culture phenomena and fresh new music releases, Spotify Wrapped had finally arrived.

In case you somehow missed the Spotify Wrapped train, it’s a personalized data report of a persons’ listening activity from the entire year. And it's not just some list of the top five songs you constantly played, it's grown to include information such as how many minutes you listened, what months you listened to your top artists the most, and which city shares the most similar music taste to you (which has proven to be a slightly confusing concept across the board).

Spotify Wrapped refers to itself as a “screenshot of pop-culture history.” They back up this momentous claim by explaining that trends from social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok, or from popular movies and TV shows, consistently find their way into Spotify data. For example, after her Superbowl LVII halftime show in February, streams for Rihanna went up 640%. Later that month, Valentine's Day saw the highest number of “break up playlists” streamed than any other day in the year. Even internet trends like “My Roman Empire” and “Girl Dinner” found their way on to Spotify over the summer. 

A few hours after they released the personal Spotify Wrapped lists, the company also released a list of their Top 10 Most Globally Streamed Artists. The #1 spot on this list was held by Taylor Swift, and followed closely by other musicians like Bad Bunny, The Weeknd, Drake, and SZA. I found it interesting to know about the world’s listening trends, but as I learned about them, I wondered how they all compared to the individual results of St. Andrews’ students.

To get answers about this, I conducted a survey and sat down with some SAS students. I found that the top artist of our school was (no surprise here) indeed Taylor Swift. “If Taylor Swift isn’t on your Spotify Wrapped, like somewhere in the top five, you’re doing something wrong. It’s just unavoidable, she’s everywhere,” said senior Olivia Lamin. 23% of interviewed students cited Taylor as their top Wrapped artist, followed by Drake at 15%, Kanye West at 8%, and Travis Scott, Lana Del Rey, and SZA all at 5% each. However, when asked their favorite artist (as opposed to their most listened to), students had different answers. “I don’t think your top artist is necessarily your favorite,” senior Charlie Cahoon said. “I think some artists are easy to rack up a lot of minutes listening to, but that doesn’t always mean that they're your favorite”. In light of this, I compiled a list of the most popular “favorite artists” for SAS students, regardless of what their Wrapped says. Here are the results. 

1. Noah Kahan (12.1%)

2. Taylor Swift (11.5%)

3. Childish Gambino (10.8%)

4. Drake (10%)

5. The Weeknd (8.5%)

6. Travis Scott (8.5%)

7. Kendick Lamar (7%)

8. SZA (5.5%)

9. Pink Floyd (5.5%)

10. Olivia Rodrigo (4%)

Other honorable mentions include John Mayer, Mumford and Sons, Billy Joel, J. Cole, Lana Del Rey, The Smiths, Frank Ocean, and Luke Brya. 

As I talked to students, a common theme began to emerge. Many of them mentioned the increasing competitiveness of music listening. “I know someone who claimed to have listened to like 150,000 minutes of music this year,” said senior Bella Benke. “If you actually do the math on it, that equates to almost 7 hours of music every single day of the past year, which is just basically impossible.” In fact, when asked how many minutes were on their Wrapped, most SAS students answered something between 30,000 and 60,000, which is about an hour or two per day. However, it's not just listening minutes that are being overstated. “Some people absolutely listen to certain artists just to be seen listening to them. Sometimes I look at someone's Spotify Wrapped and I go ‘I feel that this is curated. I think that you’re listening for the Wrapped.’ There are no specific conditions to it, but if I know the person and see the Wrapped, I’m like “I don’t believe this,” said Senior  Piper Erickson, touching on the competitive nature of music streaming nowadays. 

In an attempt to balance this out the whole “listening for the Wrapped” thing and rewrite the narrative on what type of music SAS students actually like, I asked them who their guilty pleasure artist was, someone that they’re slightly embarrassed of but love to listen to. “Once I did that thing where Spotify combinds random songs that you’ve listened to with random songs someone else has listened to and makes a playlist for both of you. I am literally never doing that ever again because it took all these songs from this musical I loved in seventh grade and put them all right at the top of the playlist. It was actually so terrible and embarrassing,” recounts Olivia Lamin. She isn’t alone in that either, seven other students admitted to listening to musical soundtracks like Hamilton, Chicago, and Wicked. A plethora of students also referenced the Glee soundtrack as being one of their musical guilty pleasures. 

But does any of this really matter? It turns out that to SAS students the answer is yes, it absolutely does. “I think that music taste is definitely a big indicator of personality,” says senior Homer Rangel. “You can tell a lot about a person by who their favorite artists are.” When asked, 85% of students agreed with him on this, saying that who someone listens to can change what kind of person they seem like. 

Regardless of whether your top artist made the list or not, whether you listen to Wicked in your free time or slap on a few extra thousand minutes when asked your listening time, we all have something to appreciate in Spotify Wrapped. We can use it as a mirror to see ourselves, and to better understand other students in the community. It holds memories of who we've been and what we've loved. It's not just about the numbers, it's about the stories they tell.