a few winters ago, when my friend julia was still blonde and the neighborhood where she lives (and where i later moved) still felt new and exciting, we curled up in her bed watching the high fidelity reboot on hulu.
first: i am colossally bad with watching tv. i never finish a show. i’ve finished maybe three shows in the last 8 years. i hope this explains why, despite living in crown heights at the time and my excitement that zoë kravitz was roaming around my hangouts in crown heights, i never finished the show.
second: in one episode, zoë kravitz’s character, rob, explains her principles for making a playlist. julia has explained that these rules are foundational for her, but i don’t remember them.
third: after years of having roommates, when i started living alone i started listening to music non-stop. now, in singapore, i listen to music not as accompaniment to an activity, but as emotional company. as such, i’ve been a playlist fiend of late. alas - i am an apple music user, and so my playlists stay (gloriously) secret to everyone else. this is a blessing. i’m not even going to pretend it isn’t. in lieu of spilling my heart on my sleeve by sharing my playlists with my entire social circle the way spotify makes one do (hehe), i get to talk about my feelings in the only manner more roundabout than music - talking about music.
janelle’s playlist rules
like a good essay, each playlist is distinct and defined in its exploration. there are parameters - fall 2020 sounded like adrianne lenker and the xx. i could sing “rumours” from front to back. fall 2021 was big thief, florist, and significantly less fleetwood mac. i don’t think i even made it through “rumours” in its entirety in 2021.
two seasons are never the same - and so a playlist, like a piece of writing, is a reflection of the person we were when we made it - who we were thinking about, what we cared about, what we were afraid of.
like a literary essay, you don’t reveal your argument right away. i don’t care what the five-paragraph essay in high school taught you: your argument, in a piece of writing, or in a playlist, is the single most elusive and most powerful weapon. this is because it’s the single most-debated thing in group chats. what does this song mean? what do these lyrics mean?
don’t give away fully what you mean until the recipient listens to the whole damn thing. and even then… let the group chats debate.
the building blocks of a good playlist are three to four songs that sound drastically different to someone who’s not you. your role here - as distinct from AI - is to help us see why you think the three sound similar, or tell a similar story. that’s what the rest of the playlist is for. if a playlist starts with carly rae jepsen (for me, it usually does), it sometimes also contains a chinese pop song and three faye webster songs. those are connected to me. that’s why i’m the only one who could have made this playlist. this love letter is in my handwriting.
i am generally a believer that an artist should only appear once on a playlist unless it is part of the theme. however. i tell my students this all the time. terrance hayes once said, “if something appears once, it’s present. if it appears twice, it’s an accident. if something appears thrice, it’s a pattern.” do with this info what you will, because it goes against all conventional advice for building playlists. build patterns. that’s all i’m saying.
if making multiple playlists about the same person, they cannot continually hit the same emotional note. like your relationship with someone is always evolving, so are you and the music you listen to and the things that remind you of them.
the first playlist i made for someone had “motion sickness” by phoebe bridgers on it. next to a song from when harry met sally (not the one you’re thinking). the second playlist i made for this same person centered around the aces and “ceilings” by lizzy mcalpine. and the third? i won’t tell you. maybe it’s the faye webster playlist ;)
a refrain is a powerful thing. if we say it multiple times in real life, the other person listens. we know it’s important. if a song is built around a refrain, that line is probably at least a little important. let the group chat chew on it.
(and finally) a good playlist has a narrative arc. of some kind. everything has a narrative. it’s your job to build one. it’s the recipient’s job to never play the playlist on shuffle.
i’ve been thinking a lot of playlists as modern love letters. for me, they look more like journal entries sometimes - it’s why i’ve held on to apple music staunchly (it also has significantly better audio quality) - i want my music to be an archive, a record that’s just for me.
as writers, there’s such an incentive to mine our lives for art. there are some things i want to keep for me and my close friends.
this is all to say: the best love letters are between you and someone else. at its best, that’s what a playlist is. a letter. one using other people’s language (it’s like a cento) - but it should have come from no one else but you.
if we both sent the same person a song that reminded us of them at the same time, it’d be a totally different song. what we want to say is so individual. our individual relationships with each other are so singular and specific.
a song is more powerful of a talisman than a photo. music is the most powerful keeper of memory we have. despacito came out when i was traveling solo through spain in 2017, and you couldn’t walk through madrid’s chueca neighborhood without hearing it at least twice. it lost a lot of its talismanic power with its virality and memeability in the months after, but now, when i listen to it, it just reminds me of one of the best (and most chaotic) times of my life.
like i can’t listen to fred again.. without crying, and “your best american girl” will always only be for a specific person, music is the most powerful capsule of not only a moment in time, but a particular juncture of a relationship between two people at a specific moment in both of your lives. it’s lightning in a bottle that we get to play over and over again.
besties know i’m actually a very private person, so i will not be sharing my apple music rewind (apple’s version of spotify unwrapped) with you. i will share, however, as a little end-of-year gift, the songs that defined every month in 2023 for me.
january: carly rae jepsen, “the loneliest time” (song not album, tho the album is a banger)
february: the aces, “girls make me wanna die” / zolita, “ashley”
march: st vincent, “new york” / ocean ou, “孤单北半球”
april: lizzy mcalpine, “ceilings”
may: the aces, “i’ve loved you for so long” (also a banger album)
june: frankie cosmos, “abigail” / bazzi, “paradise”
july: fleetwood mac, “everywhere” / sza, “nobody gets me”
august: some mix of carly rae jepsen’s “the loveliest time” album, david guetta’s “i’m good (blue)” and don omar’s “danza kuduro”
september: mitski, “bug like an angel” (also the entire “the land is inhospitable and so are we” album)
october: slowdive, “when the sun hits” (the entire souvlaki album was basically my october)
november: some mix of fletcher, the aces’ “live at bbc maida vale” album, and copious amounts of faye webster
december is anyone’s guess.
that’s all! love to all almost-90 of you (even the lurkers) who read these despite this having sprouted in the last 3 months, see you in the next one xoxo