Musings on Music

By Phoebe Pineda
LinkedIn

I joined Spotify in lateish 2020, one of many attempts to combat the combination of boredom and dread that loomed large during the pandemic. Most of my music up to that point had been downloaded from iTunes, ripped from CDs, or streamed from YouTube, so having access to a (mostly) unlimited treasure trove of songs opened up a wide range of possibilities. I started making playlists, and what began as a fun way to sort my music into categories—songs that reminded me of middle school, songs about “it girls,” songs about summer and being young—quickly became my favorite way to procrastinate.

To date, I have 90 public playlists plus a number of private ones. Some of them are collaborative, a blending of my friends’ music tastes. Many of them are dedicated to various characters from different fandoms, like Erza Scarlet of Fairy Tail, Jesper Fahey from Six of Crows, and Prince Zuko of Avatar—just to name a few. Some are just vibes: songs with villain energy, songs for sad nights, songs you’d hear in a car chase, or the opening credits of a teen movie. And, of course, there are my “Year in Kpop” playlists, where I round up all the Kpop songs that ate my brain throughout the year. I might be a bit extreme in my playlist-making adventures, but I take comfort in the fact that I’m not alone—that throughout the internet and the history of modern pop music, people have made playlists.

The urge to curate our music long predates the advent of music streaming. Before Spotify or even CDs, there were mixtapes: my dad (who grew up in the ‘80s) recalls sitting by the radio with a cassette and a tape recorder, waiting for a good song to come on. Nowadays, he brings a flash drive with him on our road trips to Southern California, a little jukebox of MP3s spanning the ‘70s (ABBA) to the ‘90s (Ace of Base), which he plugs into the USB port in our minivan. My dad essentially has a single playlist, with the simple goal of making a long drive down Highway 5 a little less boring. My mom’s the same way: she can’t drive without music, and her playlist (located in the music app on her phone) consists mainly of accumulated iTunes downloads of songs she likes: Boyz II Men and other ‘90s R&B staples, but also Niall Horan, Jungkook, and even Megan Thee Stallion.

In its most basic form, the playlist is a collection of songs you enjoy listening to. But I’m a story-minded person, and so my playlists tend to have a specific goal in mind, an essence to capture. Many of my playlists are what the fandom community would call “fanmixes,” assembled with a specific character, relationship dynamic, or work of media in mind. I also use playlists for my personal creative projects as a tool for fleshing out characters or pinning down an atmosphere for a story.

In many cases, I like to structure my playlists around a narrative arc, tracking the progression of a story through song. I tend to select songs that lyrically align with the story I’m trying to tell, although some songs make it in for vibes or because the joke is too good (like putting Jojo Siwa’s “Boomerang” on a Sokka playlist). Generally, though, I try to be intentional about the songs I pick: playlists, particularly in fandom, are all about personal interpretation, and I want them to resonate with what I consider the core truth of their subject matter while also being fun to listen to. Plenty of wonderful, bright, bubbly love songs exist, but my Barbie playlist contains none of them because Barbie is a film that is explicitly not about romance. Rather, it’s about the journey of self-discovery Barbie embarks on, her adventure in the real world, and how it changes her. I wanted my playlist to reflect that tension while still maintaining that upbeat, hyper-femme Barbie essence. (It also ended up being an excuse to make my friends listen to Kpop, but none of them seem to mind.)

Sometimes, though, my playlist-making endeavors are more personal. There’s something sweet about the playlist (or mixtape, or CD) as a love language: here are songs that make me think of you, of us. Here are songs we can sing along to on the drive to Solvang; here’s the setlist from our first concert together. And playlists can also help us process our own emotions: songs for complicated relationships, for anxiety and despair. Toward the end of my senior year of college, swamped with work and terrified by my job prospects, I created a burnout playlist: songs that captured the anxiety of feeling like a mess all the time—how comforting to know Olivia Rodrigo can’t parallel park and Hayley Williams is constantly running late!—but also the cautious optimism and determination to face the world anyway. Music can make you feel like a boss, but it can also remind you that it’s okay to struggle and it’s okay to own your failures.

In the world of musical theater, songs are the emotional heartbeat of the story. When mere words fail, musical numbers immerse us in the characters’ feelings, their psychology, and their experience. I think this desire to access another emotional dimension lies at the heart of every playlist. Music evokes emotions but also memories: I hear Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music” and I’m six years old again on summer vacation. I hear Echosmith’s “Cool Kids,” and I’m driving to Yosemite with my eighth-grade Girl Scout troop. I hear Hanson’s “MMMBop” and I’m in the middle of the pandemic, sitting shotgun next to my mom, dropping off groceries to my grandparents.

Our sensory experience of listening to music and the associations we have with it is a landscape all its own. Playlists help us navigate that landscape: whether we’re charting a path for an emotional journey or simply lingering in a single moment, there’s a mix for all of us.