Musically Messy

Lately, I have been trying to confuse my Spotify algorithm. Yeah, I know. We usually try not mess up our feeds, as I sternly told my friend who sent me a reel from a film that I absolutely do not want in my algorithm. But well. When I started Spotify, I picked on songs that I liked and played them on loop. Soon enough, they caught on and sent me a playlist. And for two years, I shuffled that same playlist, playing songs that got me into an adventurous head-space, beats, rhythm and voice. I wasn't listening anymore. I was zoning out. This isn't probably so much Spotify's fault as it was mine. I was using music to escape instead of paying attention. 

And then I got bored. I shuffled and changed and came back and shuffled and it seemed that there wasn't a song left that I liked without engaging in mental cosplay. Again, not the songs' fault, but mine.

And so I have been trying to remember how I used to listen to music before Spotify. Before we had our music on our phones. Before YouTube even. When we had cassette players and we listened to each song and waited for our favorites. When we had to play Side A to get to Side B. Well, the old cassette player is gone. But this past week I have been looking up those albums that were childhood favourites up on Spotify, with a few randoms thrown in between. Trying to get a glimpse of who I was.  No shuffle. Confuse the algorithm. 

Happy New Year. How have you been? Who have you been? See you soon.

*Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko via unsplash.com