Every winter, Spotify Wrapped takes over the internet, giving users a personalized snapshot of which five artists they listened to the most, which five songs they played and more. This year, Spotify introduced Music Evolution, a feature designed to showcase how a listener’s music taste changed over the year. U-High students and faculty said that the summary of their year of listening revealed individual favorites and evoked nostalgia.
Top artist:
“I have a special connection to Green Day — I went to their Saviors Tour and have been listening to their stuff for a while because my mom was a big fan and introduced their music to me. I started playing one of their songs on guitar a long time ago, and my mom started playing ‘Dookie’ when she drove me to school. After that I started listening to them on my own.”
— Justin Solomon, sophomore
Total minutes:
“40,030 of those 71,997 were spent listening to Playboi Carti. I also have a bunch of local files on my Spotify with Carti, but Spotify doesn’t track those, so I’m assuming that both of those numbers would increase by about 20,000 if those were tracked.”
— Mihir Amin, junior
Top song:
“‘Yoshimitsu’ by Cochise came out in February of this year, and it was a sneak peak to Cochise’s album that came out later this year. It’s a great song and I love its flow, and I’m not surprised that it was my top song. The past three years, a song by Cochise has been my top song each year.”
— David Smith, senior
Total minutes:
“I listened to Spotify for 23,646 minutes, and I think the vast majority of that time was when I was doing homework. I think music just makes homework feel less like a chore since I get to do something I like along with it. I just let my Liked playlist run in the background; it mainly has classical music, soundtrack music and J-pop.”
— Jonah Chen, sophomore
Biggest Day:
“My biggest day was July 27, with 525 minutes. I was on a road trip. We were going to New York state to visit my great uncle. We usually go there whenever we have a long break. A lot of the songs remind me of the trip.”
— Michael Light, ninth grader
Top songs:
“My most listened to songs in order were: ‘Changes’ by Tupac, ‘Brooklyn Baby’ by Lana del Rey, ‘L.E.S.’ by Childish Gambino, ‘White Ferrari’ by Frank Ocean and ‘No Role Modelz’ by J. Cole. I was a bit surprised by some of these because some of them were songs that I listened to at the very start of the year that I haven’t listened to in a while.”
— Allie Smith, ninth grader
Music evolution:
“I thought the music evolution feature was interesting. I liked how it showed how my music taste changed throughout the year and played some songs that I don’t listen to now but did a few months ago. But, I don’t like how the evolution feature was the majority of the wrapped.”
— Opal Martin, sophomore
Music evolution:
“I’m assuming using my Spotify for the Rites of May Festival for the Asian Students’ Association booth probably influenced one part of the evolution. It brought back memories of that day, getting to hang out with my club members, setting up tents and cleaning up both before and after the event for my service hours.”
— Sara Park, junior
Music evolution:
“It made me realize that I had very different tastes across those months. January was chill with Kali Uchis, April was rap with artists like Rod Wave and Drake, and June was summery with Bad Bunny and Karol G.”
—Isabella Alvarez, senior
Listeners:
“I’m in the top 2% of listeners worldwide. I play collaborative class playlists all the time during school hours. It’s my third year doing the collaborative playlist thing with the students. I really enjoy that, and I insist that all students contribute some songs even if they don’t have Spotify. I must confess, though, that I’m one of the biggest contributors to each of those class playlists.”
— Brian Wildeman, art teacher
