Looking at everyone else’s Spotify Wrapped makes me feel like I’m doing it wrong. (If I were being more honest, I’d say that it makes me feel like everyone else but me is doing it wrong, but I won’t admit to that.) As Kotaku writers shared their summaries of their most-listened-to songs from 2024 in our Slack, Kenneth reported that he’d listened to Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” some 1,582 times. My most played song—“Young Fathers” by Typhoon—had been streamed by me 17 times.
If you asked me to sing “Young Fathers” by Typhoon, I’d have genuinely replied, “Who?” I absolutely wouldn’t have known that was the name of the band, nor even the name of the track, but playing it back, I’m like, “Oh yeah, I really like how this sounds!” I’d added it to my Liked Songs playlist (currently 1,622 songs long) and I guess it came up 17 times over the year. I’ve no idea who Typhoon are, if they’re wonderful progressives championed by the youth, or some problematic bunch of old bastards only liked by actual Nazis. It’s just a song that made a nice noise, so I listened to it. (I’ve got it on right now, and it’s a great pop track, with a whole host of catchy riffs, but I’ve never paid attention to the lyrics.)
According to Spotify, I’ve listened to a total of 5,232 songs this year, by 1,992 different artists. And, apparently, this isn’t very normal? It kept telling me I was in the top 0.5 percent of various bands’ listenerships, which feels incredibly stalkerish, and confuses me even further given how infrequently I’d apparently streamed any single track. But it’s likely because of this width instead of depth that my top five artists included, in fifth place, Eels.
Don’t get me wrong—I love Eels. I loved them in 1996 with Beautiful Freak, a CD I recorded to cassette and then listened to on a loop on my Walkman during a summer spent mowing fields in a Scottish outdoor activity center. I loved Electro-Shock Blues (well, as much as that gut-punch of an album can be loved), and the incredible Daisies of the Galaxy in 2000, and Souljacker in 2002, and then…I drifted off. I hadn’t listened to them in 20 years! I spent a couple of days listening to a bunch of their more recent albums, stuck a few of the tracks on my Liked Songs list, and that was that. And apparently that made the band my fifth highest choice!
The rest of the top five isn’t as surprising to me, even if it reveals that I still just listen to what comic writer and former colleague Kieron Gillen always describes as “John Walker music.” (It’s a derogatory term.) In first place is Marble Sounds, and that makes perfect sense. The Belgian singer’s music is my “happy” place, something I put on when I need to feel the perpetual ennui of life reflected back to me in beautiful sounds. Second place is The Mountain Goats, and again, the only surprise is that it’s not first place. Alongside Nick Cave, John Darnielle is my favorite singer, and The Mountain Goats is the band I’ve seen live the most times. If I had to pick only one artist I was allowed to listen to, it’d be him or Cave, depending on the day. Third is Radical Face, and again, that’s a go-to artist for me (alongside another Ben Cooper vehicle, Electric President, with Alex Kane), since I discovered him in 2017 via the extraordinary video-EP, “SunnMoonnEclippse.”
But from then on, it’s a free-for-all. There are tracks I am convinced I listened to vastly more often than those listed in my top five songs, including whoever Typhoon are. Like French “electro-swing band” Caravan Palace’s incredible ditty “Miracle,” that despite being five years old I only heard for the first time this year via some TV show.
Also, I’m convinced I listened to A House’s 1994 track “Why Me” more than 17 times on the same day a couple of weeks ago. Although, at least the appearance of “A Wave Across A Bay” in second place for songs represents just how much I’ve listened to Frank Turner this year. If I’d had to guess, I’d have assumed it’d have been the deeply moving song about anxiety, “Haven’t Been Doing So Well,” or his wonderful song “Miranda,” about restoring his broken relationship with his dad (the agreed term between them) after she came out as trans.
Also, where’s Busdriver? Where’s Aesop Rock? Where’s Nick Cave? Where’s Noname? And the rest of the artists I feel like I put on more often than others?
OK, I’m done just crowbarring in favorite songs to make you listen to them—I’ll get back to the point…
As tempting as it is to crown myself as Captain Iconoclastic, having found my own niche of middle-of-the-road middle-aged men to listen to, it leaves me feeling a bit alienated. My wife and son sing along to any song they hear in public, but they’re all new to me. When Kenneth shared his top five, I genuinely asked who Sabrina Carpenter is. It turns out I know the track “Espresso,” and have deliberately listened to it a few times as it’s a great piece of pop, but I had no idea who sang it—even though I remember her lackluster performance of it on SNL.
When I was younger, I’d have taken dumb pride in this. Ooh, look at me, I don’t even know the big pop hits, aren’t I so very interesting. But as I get dangerously close to 50, I realize that, no, I’m just missing out. Admittedly, this is in large part driven by my wife and son endlessly repeating the same bloody Taylor Swift and Chappell Roan songs, which might be perfectly fantastic, but I’ve involuntarily heard them so many times they’ve become like sandpaper on my brain.
And I guess it’s that last part that traps me in my weird situation: I don’t want to hear the same song a billion times. Kenneth listened to “Espresso” 1,500 times in a year. That sounds like a punishment to me, and as I already said, I think it’s a great track! But damn, 30 times and I’d not want to listen to it again for a good few years. I want something brand new more than I want an old familiar. As soon as something is broadly popular, I hear it even when I don’t want to, and I begin to resent it. It’s imposed on me. It’s fair to say that with 272 monthly listeners on Spotify, another regular favorite, Trouble Books, aren’t going to be played when I go into the department store. (Listen to “Gravel Pit” right now, you bastards.)
So am I the weirdo? Or is it Kenneth? I like to assume that it’s probably both of us, given we felt so compelled to worry about it that we wrote this article.