2021 Spotify Unwrapped

the perfect cowboy artist. mazzy always feels like a time capsule from a different lifetime, somewhere way out in the desert landscape of no country for old men. i wonder if that twang is as universal as it sounds, because i can’t imagine any other picture coming to someone’s mind.

every time someone rolls into one of chris or billy’s party late, they inevitably queue teenage dirtbag, not realizing it played twenty minutes ago, but we are all thrilled to scream every word together. i think that’s beautiful.

i know junior day league was heralded as the crowned jewel of this double-single drop, but around again was what my brain seemed to crave over and over again for the next month. another track with a beautiful twangy guitar hook, around again seemed to accompany me on my way home more nights than not in september. i had my major hovvdy phase a year ago in austin when the only things that existed to me were the neighborhood mexican joint and a girl I never should have met, but it was this track nine months later that wound up being my most-played song of 2021.

who said pop punk had to die? i know a lot of people have a lot of things to say about travis barker, but between this and hollywood sucks, i would say his partnership with kenny is spinning gold. loooove love love the music videos for these two as well. if you can somehow listen to estella a couple times and not have it looping throughout your whole body for the next week… congrats?? honestly you’re just missing out.

WIREDDDDDD. all you need to know about me + this song is that it entered my life at the beginning of a solo 17-hour drive and I probably listened to it for about eight of those seventeen hours. pc music owes it all to the DDR tracks of the mid-2000s.

roughly a third of the messages I receive in my instagram DMs are shitpost-style alex g memes, which is funny considering how distant i still feel from the guy. i think often times, we connect with music that feels like it understands us, our feelings, and our experiences. im not sure if this makes sense, but the alex g songs i love feel like almost the converse—like im looking over his shoulder and understanding what he’s seeing. the pained, bleating chorus of bobby is the most stark example of this for me, as i feel a worrisome amount of identification with him chanting “i’d leave him for you, if you want me to” until it’s cemented beyond any doubt.

i forget which of my favorite artists mentioned recently in an interview that the singer they’re most excited about right now is beabadoobee, but they were definitely onto something. mark my words, we’re the lull right now before she becomes a clairo / phoebe bridgers-level indie rock / pop star.

billy, i love you dearly. you’re one of the friendliest presences in all of la, and it’s no wonder so many people around here adore you. i’m very grateful that i met you & for all of the wonderful people you exposed me to in this city. also, you’re my very favourite person to have on aux. i think you have an unspoken talent for reading the room & flawlessly setting the tone in a space. a lot of my most cherished memories since i moved here have involved you providing the soundtrack to the mind, or liars dice, or any other number of things. this song reminds me of all of those memories.

im always impressed by how much wet can do with just a piano and a few bass notes, & larabar is no exception. i don’t know how i’ve accidentally dodged seeing them so many times over the past decade, but hopefully that streak ends soon. if anyone has other examples of using choppiness almost as an instrument of it’s own, please point me in that direction. and if you haven’t seen the music video for larabar…

it’s a silly little line —“you can call it puppy love, because you know real love is just as naïve”—but I adore it. someone told me recently that i’m a lot like a puppy when i’m interested in someone, and i could say nothing to the contrary about it. that’s fine with me. i don’t think i have the energy to be guarded anymore when i like someone. i know when im interested, and i don’t really see the point in masking those sorts of feelings or thoughts, even if it’s “the smart thing to do”. why wouldn’t you want to be excited to see someone, and excited about everything they share with you? im ok with the vulnerability that comes with transparent admiration, even if i’ve been kicked around a bit lately because of it. also, this whole album is brilliant. spin it at night with someone you want to kiss, or with thoughts of someone you want to kiss.

one thing about ian, he knows how to make me love a bridge/outro. the layers in this song are oooooOOF yesssss. definitely feels to me like one of the strongest pieces he’s made, and I love how it came out of nowhere on a wednesday night. major shoutout to whoever did the mix/master, because those tones are cleeeeean wow.

i-i-i-iiii—iii-ve been i ive been ive been living on an island too i ive been living on an island too tell me can we— i’ve been living in my parking garage absentmindedly cornering clockwise as this hook goes round and round and round in my head. love it so much. shouts to tin for the wardrobe in this vid; we don’t talk anymore but you’re in my thoughts. i think i will make some great friends in this parking garage at some point this year.

im speeding down a freeway at night. any freeway. in any car. light trails like what you would see in akira. it almost feels like that midnight car ride to venice in wilson’s car, only a while eta later. just somehow spinning in that without stop. i don’t know if i discovered this song through the spotify blend i made with chris the afternoon i met him, but i hear him in this song every time.

something about this song always feels so patient. it’s probably the plodding, steady baseline/drumlines but woooow those vocals are soothing. I was in a pretty rough place when I found this song, back in washington unexpectedly in the middle of winter, not sure what I was doing or where I was doing next. I was feeling a real lack of care in my life and I think this song helped smooth some of that out for a dark afternoon or two. it doesn’t have the catchy bounce & earworm of a chorus of confirmation (ssbd), and that’s completely fine with me.

i think being 23 and discouraged about love makes it easy to forget how beautiful it can be to be transfixed by someone. i don’t know whether or not i’ve been chasing it since i first felt that way at 15, but i know i’ll be back there again at some point, and i think i’m going to appreciate getting lost in it. also, phil’s troye vn story was one of the funniest things i’ve heard this year.

I found out osa was dead via a phone call from my mom when I was stepping out of the car in austin at the start of the year. i’m still not sure how much I even process death in general. i spent the next four hours skating around west austin to this song, no thoughts other than mariah carey and my lifelong friend as i bombed down david st at dusk. if you listen to the song, it won’t be hard to understand why. i miss her a lot.

i can’t help it… his little vocal melodies ran circles around my head for a month straight, capped by spinning this track on repeat for two hours straight in the denver airport sometime last summer (rip spotify wrapped). I loooove the color palette of the cover art as well, & the type in the bottom left. ngl his logo necklace goes stupid hard. if anyone knows who did his wrist tattoo please let me know.

come on, does this song sound like anything other than tearing down la cienega during golden hour?

anyone who was in my life in may was exposed to my brief obsession with vocally-driven pop burners, & slower was always the standard-bearer for me. it’s so easy to sink into the lush production of that chorus that I couldn’t help but return to it every time I was cutting across LA late at night.

another nighttime 10-west track. i know some of you might string me up for disrespecting bruce like this but I reaaaally thing gus did this song justice, to say the least. I think I first heard this song the day it came out, on my way down from seattle to move to california. if I remember right, I was on that one stretch of I-5 between redding and sf where you know you ~have~ to stop for gas at some point. i think i usually stop in arbuckle, or wherever the freeway on/off-ramp layout looks optimal. anyway, this was my favorite song to be released this year, & would have been my favorite thing to listen to this year if not for dev hynes.

the accent guitar comes in eleven seconds in and my head drifts away into its back and forth twinkles no matter what i’m supposed to be doing. forever seems like such a simple tune… maybe i just love the way alex g says foreverrrrandeverrrr.

admittedly, this is one of my least-listened to songs on this list. perhaps i should have left it off, but i can’t help but to be magnetized from jump. tell me it’s not such a lovely sound to wrap yourself up in. also, it’s one of the few songs for which i actually hear the lyrics. i can see the room with carol. im listening to this song in this moment and every piece feels so perfect— the backing vocals sliding almost like a horsehair bow, the sunny beat, the minimal bass notes in the “now in my hometown” section, the sonic arc of the whole composition… chefs kiss for real. sidebar— there are few things more beautiful than the unbridled joy of a friend, and one of my friends who does it best, aidan (forza italia), was beaming for a week practically swimming in delight through this album. love you and love lorde for doing that for you.

wow, she hated that i liked this song. that probably should have been a red flag instead a point of insecurity. it’s so BOUNCY. i saw the sign it opened up my eyes i saw the sign that second verse’s accent, which i can’t really place, but want to cling to and still never quite know. this song is always gonna sound like the sunny day in austin when i fell in love with it again, and the acute awareness i had of not breaking jake myers’ car while he was away. edit— the note change on the final chorus… they really came in off of the top rope with that one. so simple and yet i love it so much.

if you’re still sleeping on dev hynes / blood orange, i don’t even know what to tell you at this point. one of the greatest contemporary artists we have right now. everything he touches seems to turn to gold, whether it’s a turnstile interlude, a one-off collab with the avalanches or park hye-jin, or this song, forget it, the first track off of his very first studio album from a decade ago. spinning the entirety of coastal grooves has been a weekly endeavor for me this year, one that I have zero regrets about. i adore every piece of this song: the perpetual hum of the background beat, the gradual instrumental buildup, an absoluuuuute buuuuurner of a guitar solo, the other scattered twinkly guitar riffs, and the panging candor of dev’s lyrics. to me, it’s a perfect song, and was hands down my favorite track this year.

simply the best singer-songwriter album of the year. if you have half an hour by yourself to spare, sink into it. to the person who showed me this: i know we aren’t talking right now, but i think about you often & hope each day is going well for you over in bushwick. you deserve it. honestly, i don’t know if i’d be writing all of these if not for our friendship.

prettiest cover/rework of the year (along w gus/brace cover)?? it took a minute for it to dawn on me that this was a misfits homage. so pretty though. i’ve loved hether’s sound ever since i found him scattered throughout alan’s playlists, and it’s wonderful to see it getting more exposure finally in 2021.

isn’t it crazy how bicep can stretch a single repeating motif into entire serene 4-minute tracks? they never make it feel stale, & manage to weave the drums and vocal samples in and out just enough to maintain this sort of dynamic & rhythmic flow to what they’re doing. also, that collab w/ four tet? mmmmmmm partnership made in heaven for sure.

listening to this puts me back in baton rouge, even if it’s not causeway. i loooove the idea of reclamation. hearing zack go through the hung-up-on-bernadette to i-never-think-of-bernadette pipeline >>>. also, the simple guitar strum line feels so personal, like i’m in the room with him. zack is always so so good at making you understand his nuanced thoughts & feelings in such a relatable and casual, non-dramatic way. you could come over, falling apart here baby

good listen if you need to feel like everything is okay. i think a lot of other people have more personal paul simon feelings than i do, but maybe one day i’ll get there. paul leaves so much of something so right so open and so spacious, a testament to how effective well-placed emptiness can be in a song.

im beaming for the entire 98-second duration of this song, and for the next 98 seconds where I inevitably run it straight back from the start. i know it's technically a cover, but i still think what phil did with this song is so beautiful. i was stunned that night when i first stumbled across all of his music that he'd never told me about, and this quickly became my very favourite. i am exceedingly grateful for all of the joy that he has brought into my life, and silly love is yet another reason why. knowing phil has been one of the most beautiful friendships i've ever had in my life, and i continue to revere every day of it.