You have bad taste.
In honor of Spotify Wrapped season, I’m going to take a day off from recommending any music and instead lead us to a website that’s not worth $8 billion. The Pudding, which normally makes cool data journalism, is rounding out 2021 with a delightfully dickish A.I. tool that will not only judge your awful taste in music, but troll you as it crunches your data. When I connected my Spotify account (you can also connect Apple Music lol), I started out with a decency score of 96/100, which rapidly fell as the AI asked clarifying questions that included a kill-fuck-marry featuring Weezer. We ultimately spun out to a place where it was like, “u ok?” If your ego needs to be absolutely wrecked this week (and I think it does; Wrapped is basically a participation trophy), spend two minutes getting owned by a neural net.
you know who really owns you
Your taste in music may be embarrassing but you can probably make up for it with your choice of gear. The wired headphone is back, according to street style photos of Zoë Kravitz, Bella Hadid, and approximately three other Hot People shot over the past two years. Vogue explains that it’s all very punk: Pods got too ubiquitous too fast and these gals are so so so rad for rejecting the consumerist hype — and also, by the way, here’s a list of 12 different styles you can buy, just in case you got swept up in consumerism and did the cool thing and are now aware that it was the WRONG COOL THING.
That page made me lol, but what makes me lol even harder is imagining that everyone’s fashion headphones are just silent, like the aural equivalent of non-prescription glasses.
SPOTIFY, we’re owned by Spotify
I can’t send you off without something to listen to, but I already said I’m taking the day off from recs. So we’re going to rip an idea from Rusty Foster and open up a collaborative playlist. Drop in your favorite song or two or three from the past year, and if you’ve got something you want to say about it — “pay attention at 2:15,” for example, or “this is the song that got me through my pet llama’s pregnancy and I’m forever grateful to Grimes” — I’m opening up the comments on this newsletter so you can tell us about it.
Go here to add your songs, and to add a comment, scroll on down to the “Leave A Comment” button (imagine). Keep it nice!
Just added a few songs from my Top 25! The whole list is here, with links to thoughts and stuff: http://anearful.blogspot.com/2021/12/best-of-2021-top-25.html#.YdTJnJ7MJPY
playlist additions: durand jones & the indications; aaron frazer (drummer for the former, adds to the musical constellation that is this playlist); paw paw rod (which I was pleased to hear popping up on insecure recently); tame impala. the snake people* sure do have good taste.
*millennials