AmeriCurious | Spotify Wrapped Anxiety

Spotify Wrapped 2024 is here to humble us. From “White Noise” as a top genre to performative coolness, here’s why the algorithm is roasting your aesthetic.

The Annual Humiliation of the Algorithm

Look, I’m not saying I’m better than everyone else. But I am saying that for eleven months of the year, I curate a very specific vibe. I tell people I’m into “lo-fi experimental jazz” and “early 2000s post-punk revival.” I wear the beanie. I buy the overpriced oat cortado. I sit in the window seat of the cafe in Greenpoint looking pensive while typing absolutely nothing of substance on my laptop.

I work hard to maintain the illusion that I am a cool, culturally relevant Brooklyn creative.

Then December rolls around, and the Spotify Wrapped algorithm kicks down my front door, looks me dead in the eye, and calls me a fraud.

My “Top Artist” is a Cry for Help

I opened the app this morning with the trembling hands of a man about to diffuse a bomb. I was hoping for something dignified. Maybe The Strokes, for nostalgia? Maybe that obscure ambient band I pretended to like on a date last February?

Nope.

My number one artist was “Pink Noise for Sleep.”

That’s it. That’s my musical identity. I spent 42,000 minutes this year listening to the sound of static just so I could drown out the construction crew drilling into the pavement directly outside my bedroom window at 7 AM.

And my number two artist? It wasn’t some underground indie darling. It was a podcast about anxiety.

This is the problem with the algorithm. It lacks context. It doesn’t know that I only listened to that pop princess anthem on repeat because the G train was stalled between Nassau and Metropolitan for twenty minutes and I needed a dopamine hit to keep from screaming. It doesn’t know that the “Sad Girl Acoustic” playlist was purely for the aesthetic of walking through McCarren Park in the rain.

The Performative Sharing Olympics

The worst part isn’t even the personal shame; it’s the social feed. Today is the only day on the internet where everyone suddenly becomes a music critic.

I’m scrolling through Instagram, and it’s just wall-to-wall screenshots of people trying to out-cool each other. “Oh, you’re in the top 0.05% of listeners for a band that hasn’t released music since 1983? Congratulations, Brad. We get it. You have taste.”

Meanwhile, I’m over here trying to Photoshop my results so it looks like I didn’t spend three weeks in July exclusively listening to the Hamilton soundtrack because I was going through a phase.

Embracing the Basic

But you know what? Maybe this is liberating.

Maybe there’s something raw and authentic about admitting that, despite living in one of the “coolest” neighborhoods on earth, my actual soundtrack isn’t underground techno. It’s mostly just white noise, podcasts about how to be productive, and the occasional banger from 2014 that reminds me of a time when rent was under $2,000.

We’re all just trying to survive the city. If that means your “Audio Aura” is “Wistful and Spooky,” so be it. If your top genre is “Stomp and Holler,” I won’t judge (much).

So go ahead. Post your results. Flex your obscure taste. I’ll be over here, headphones on, listening to “Heavy Rain on a Tin Roof 10 Hours” and pretending I’m the main character in an indie movie.

Because honestly, if you aren’t slightly embarrassed by your Wrapped, are you even really living?

Stay weird, Greenpoint.