I see your grams and I applaud your favorite artists, but I gotta tell ya: unwrapping my year in Spotify was a bit of a let-down. As a general rule, my top songs reached the top by way of my overdoing them at some point in the year, so another listen feels like imprisonment in whatever the feeling was that necessitated musical therapy in the first place. I think this is a playlist for years-from-now me, a person who’s had enough distance to be curious about this time. For now, though, give me new tunes or give me silence. On that note, here’s a little grab bag of songs I’ve discovered by way of other people’s end-of-year playlists. I hope they bring you joy, and maybe even help jog you out of your brain if that’s what you need.

Music for Egun Mvmt 2 by ÌFÉ — One of three reinterpreted Yoruban prayer songs for el Día de los Muertos. Deeply percussive and wildly compelling.

Garden Song by Phoebe Bridgers (Ok, I knew about this one but hadn’t spent real time with it until recently)

Long Violent History by Tyler Childers — Bluegrass!

Nada by Lido Pimienta with Li Saumet— I was so fixated on “Te Queria” all year that I slept on “Nada.” Lesson: follow Pimienta closely for more cumbia by way of Canada.

Frontline by Goodie Mob with Organized Noize — What are the “frontlines” in 2020? Goodie Mob will tell you.

death bed (coffee for your head) by Powfu and beabadoobee — The obligatory angsty white boy. (He’s sweet.)

Although it continues to blow up year after year, I do believe we’re turning a corner on Spotify Wrapped. Under the Vice headline, “What Your Spotify Wrapped Says About You,” the body of the article reads, “You’re basic.” That’s it, that’s the article. In Baffler’s even more miserly take on Spotify’s amalgamated wrap on the platform’s most-streamed artists of the year, we remember that in spouting all the dazzling metrics of our collective listening habits, “the Wrapped campaign suggests that a work’s value increases as it scales, something that is plainly false when it comes to art.” YES. As music scholars have pointed out before me, it’s the songs that make for the best musical wallpaper that get the most streams; to be clear, that’s the stuff we’re not paying close attention to. Of course there are exceptions to this— cheers to everyone who listens to a favorite album a million times in a row to catch the nuance. But for the rest of us, scale is a bit of a wash.

That’s not to say that there aren’t alternatives. While every publication announces best-ofs from their credentialed critics or whatever, I’m enjoying this playlist-of-the-people where everyone, everywhere is invited to share one song that carried them through the year. Tracks appear on one master list, each tagged with a mood and the name and location of its submitter. That’s what I want to take forward from 2020: decentralized, collective information-sharing designed for mutual support. Add your songs here.

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