'Tis the season for Spotify Wrapped! And A-Town is back with his yearly listening recap, showcasing his musical taste and the extent to which his children influenced the results! Special this year is the inclusion of a playlist created for the newest addition of the A-Town clan - Corey, who was born in September, so we'll have that playlist loaded up later on. Let's hand the keys over to A-Town himself, dive in and see how it went.
Spotify Wrapped - Top 10 Songs
- "All My Love" - Coldplay
- "Carry You Home" - Alex Warren
- "HandClap" - Fitz and the Tantrums
- "Hope" - We Shot the Moon
- "Who Needs Sleep?" - Barenaked Ladies
- "A Little Bit of Love" - Weezer
- "Foolish Father" - Weezer
- "Safe and Sound" - Capital Cities
- "This Too Shall Last" - Anderson East
- "Blackbird" - The Beatles
Over the past couple of years, since becoming a parent, I've come to wish that Spotify would give us, like, two vetoes for our top songs as a way of correcting the meddling of our children. Give us two. Anything beyond that is our fault.
If I could veto two of my songs, I'd kick out "HandClap" and "Blackbird," which are both good songs, but definitely not in the top 10 because of me. My two oldest boys are obsessed with "HandClap" and have even figured out how to get it to play on our Google Nest Hub - somewhat to my chagrin - but they sure are cute when they dance to it. "Blackbird" is a prominent song in the movie "Boss Baby," which they like, so I blame Theodore Leslie Templeton, Jr. for that one. "Who Needs Sleep?" is another one that was played on repeat in the car many, many times, at the request of my kids, but it's a fun song that I hadn't listened to in years, so I'd let that one slide.
If I bumped those two songs out and slid two songs up, the new additions would have been "Turn the Lights Back On," a song by Billy Joel that I had no idea existed but really ended up loving, and "Change Your Mind" by Sister Hazel, which is a great one, too. The honorable mention will live on for eternity.
Analysis: I was hoping "All My Love" would be the top song. Until earlier this year, I was unaware that Coldplay made good songs after "Viva La Vida," but as soon as I heard this one, I knew I wanted it as the first song on the baby playlist. It was definitely my favorite song of the year, and I went to some lengths to ensure that it wound up on top. "Carry You Home" and "Hope" were also on the baby playlist early on, so they got a lot of run through the summer and early fall. I don't know why I kept going back to the Weezer album "Everything Will Be Alright in the End" this year, but "Foolish Father" is a hidden gem, for sure. "This Too Shall Last" was a song that I discovered while trying to get creative for Corey, and I'd be interested in listening to more of Anderson East (who I had never previously heard of) to see if he has anything else that I like. Overall, not a bad top 10 list for the year. I'll take it.
Minutes Listened
However, this year, I bounced back in a big way, hitting my highest total since before the pandemic! Look at me go!
Analysis: This year, I thought it might be cool to listen to bands' entire discographies, from start to finish. I figured that could be a way to force the Spotify algorithm to understand which artists I actually like and possibly even broaden the number of songs Spotify would feed me when I opened the app, as opposed to just repeating my 15 most recent tracks over and over. (I don't think that second part worked; I love the AI "DJ" feature but he was always just feeding me the same dozen songs, as if they were the only ones I'd ever need.)
One of the firsts bands I tried this experiment with was Chicago - one of my all-time favorites - but I'll be honest: I couldn't do it. First of all, they have so many albums. It would have taken me all year, probably. And secondly, a bunch of their albums are live recordings and the amount of screechy freestyle guitar solos that were assaulting my eardrums was truly surprising. Less overwhelming, however, were the following artists, whose discographies (excluding some "greatest hits" releases, the songs of which I had already heard) I listened to in their entirety:
- Weezer
- The Goo Goo Dolls
- Muse
- The Killers
- Benson Boone
- Train
- Coldplay
- Fountains of Wayne
- Bob Seger
- The Strokes
- Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
- OneRepublic
- Cold War Kids
Also, doing a baby playlist surely boosted my stats this year. More on that later, of course, but it was a daily excuse to get at least a few minutes of listening in.
Spotify Being Weird
I have no idea what the heck Club Seratonin is, but 18% of Spotify listeners are right there with me. And telling me that my "Listening Age" is 76 is just straight-up insulting. Ok, I'm sorry that I listened to Elvis and The Beatles, but don't try to act like I was born in 1950, guys. Come on now.
Top Artists
Spotify says that I listened to 493 artists this year (don't know if that's actually true, but 47 less than last year, for what it's worth), and these were my top five:
- Weezer: Not a surprise here. Weezer has been my favorite band since high school and, as the record shows, my top artist every year that I've been doing these blogs except for one. The fact that it was the 30th anniversary of the "Blue Album" only added fuel to the fire. Long live Weezer.
- Coldplay: It was the summer of Coldplay, was it not? The memes were hysterical and the Coldplay Kiss Cam became one of the funniest things of the entire year. Heck, even I was caught on a Coldplay Kiss Cam while running the social media for FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention in September. I can report, as indicated earlier, that Coldplay did produce a few other hits after "Viva La Vida," despite all those pop super-hits like "Paradise," which turned me off from them for a few years.
- Train: Let me say: Train is excellent live. I've seen them twice and they put on a great show. I mentioned that I skipped a lot of "greatest hits" albums, but I did listen to Train's because their best stuff is really, really good, and they have a lot of fun with their audiences. Would recommend.
- Muse: Maybe Muse just had a really long discography or something because I'm a bit surprised that they landed at #4 this year. Their music takes me back to my college days, and their albums "Black Holes and Revelations" and "The Resistance" are tremendous.
- The Goo Goo Dolls: I don't know what the heck was going on when The Goo Goo Dolls recorded their first studio album (I almost typed "stupid album," which would have applied) because it was HORRIBLE. I actually had to pull up Spotify to make sure that I was listening to the right band. But after that, they pulled a 180 (I don't know if they swapped out some band members or something) and produced some classic stuff. "Dizzy Up the Girl" is an all-timer.
Analysis: Awesome, like it. It is interesting to note that bands 2-4 all changed from last year; only Weezer stayed on the leaderboard.
Top Albums
Listening to full albums was kind of my thing this year, but these albums stood tall:
Analysis: It's funny that Weezer's "Blue Album" made the list twice. "Weezer 30" was the special 30th anniversary edition, which I cranked at almost full blast while building a bunk bed for my boys. In fact, Spotify made a special note of that night in August, which was a fun reminder. It's also interesting to see how much of a difference listening to "All My Love" by Coldplay made, in terms of album listening time, because there's no way that I actually listened to "Moon Music" that often - probably just once, from start to finish, and then that single like 39 times (no joke, I think that's the number).
Top Genres
Here are what Spotify identified as my top genres of the year:
Analysis: Accurate. I'd probably have put oldies above pop, but I guess that all comes down to how those genres are being defined, which I'm not privy to.
Other Fun and Notable Songs in This Year's Top 100
Shoutouts to some great stuff that didn't make the top 10:
- "Da Vinci" - Weezer (#13; another song that contributed to "Everything Will Be Alright in the End" being my top album of the year)
- "The Lotto" - Ingrid Michaelson (#15; a cute song from the baby playlist - honestly surprised this one didn't crack the top 10)
- "Beautiful Things" - Benson Boone (#19; it was a big summer for Brother Boone, and I went out of my way to educate myself)
- "Someone to You" - BANNERS (#27; I remember snuggling my oldest son, who was there for almost every song of the baby playlist, to this song - I think he might have even asked me to play it twice)
- "St. Elmo's Fire" - John Parr (#28; this one is becoming a standard on my Spotify Wrapped)
- "Carried Me With You" - Brandi Carlile (#29; from the "Onward" soundtrack - a song that will always remind me of my kids)
- "Doctor Worm" - They Might Be Giants (#30; right up there with "Who Needs Sleep?" in terms of songs that my boys unexpectedly loved)
- "MMMBop" - Hanson (#36; I'm honestly sad and surprised that this song wasn't higher - it was the butt of many jokes in the 90s, but we can't deny its lasting power)
- "Peace Train" - Cat Stevens (#49; my oldest loved this one, along with the animation of a "flat man" with a bird that appeared on the Spotify app while it was playing)
- "I Will Wait" - Mumford & Sons (#59; one of the most interesting time signatures of any song out there)
- "Time is Running Out" - Muse (#60; a dark horse contender for Muse's best song? - is that aggressive?)
- "...Baby One More Time" - Tenacious D (#68; the cover song we never knew we needed)
- "Classical Gas" - Mason Williams (#74; "I need two men!" - IYKYK... and when my wife asked why it was called "Classical Gas," I had no idea what to tell her)
- "Right Here Right Now" - Jesus Jones (#85; a blast from the past)
- "Invisible Touch" - Genesis (#90; featuring one of the greatest key changes of all time)
- "Pokémon Theme" - Pokémon (#100; heck yeah - raising my kids right!)
Bonus Tracks
There are always a few songs that are conspicuous by their absence. In the past, I've condensed my top 100 songs into a 50-song playlist and added a couple bonus tracks. There were two songs this year that I was surprised to not see in the full Spotify playlist:
- "Welcome to Paradise" - Plain White T's (a cute song that I found for the baby playlist)
- "The Final Countdown" - Europe (a song we played to hype up our oldest son on the way to his soccer games)
Condensed Playlist
Speaking of that condensed playlist, here are 52 of my favorite songs from the year (including those two bonus tracks), embedded for your consumption and enjoyment:
Songs for Corey
We welcomed another baby into the world this September and, as I did for my other two boys, I threw together a playlist for him while he was still in the womb. Some parents read or talk to the baby, I communicate through Spotify, I guess. Now, when I did this for the first kid, I didn't know this was going to become a tradition, nor did I realize how hard it would be to continue doing what I've been doing. The concept is this: I play one song each night for 75 nights, leading up to the birth of the baby, all of the songs must contain kid-friendly lyrics (i.e., no inappropriate references to romance, no mention of alcohol or drugs - stuff I could listen to with the child without blushing), with no duplicate artists in a single playlist and no repeated songs across any of the playlists. This is to say that I can't play "Better Together" by Jack Johnson twice on the same playlist, but I can play different songs by Jack Johnson for each child. There are only so many songs by some of these artists that you can play for babies! It got tough! So I had to get creative.
Here are some fun facts that I dug up upon completion of Corey's playlist:
- The three playlists I've made for my boys contain 225 different songs from 156 different artists. No artists are repeated on a single playlist, and no songs are duplicated across any of the three playlists.
- Nineteen (12%) of the artists are featured on all three playlists (Barenaked Ladies; Billy Joel; Bob Seger; Chicago; Coldplay; Creedence Clearwater Revival; Earth, Wind & Fire; Elton John; Elvis Presley; Goo Goo Dolls; John Mayer; Journey; Juanes; Kenny Loggins; The Killers; Queen; Three Dog Night; U2; Weezer)
- Forty-two artists on Corey's playlist (56%) had not been featured on either of the other playlists.
- Ten artists that were featured on both of the previous playlists were not on the third playlist.
- At 4 hours 45 minutes, this playlist was the shortest (Griffin: 5 hours 13 minutes, Stockton: 4 hours 56 minutes)
Here is the full playlist, for those who are curious about which songs I added this time around. I found some really great songs - both by artists that I already knew and many that I had never listened to before. The songs on this playlist greatly altered my top 100 songs of the year and, thankfully, broke up what I'm sure has kind of been a monotonous streak of Spotify Wrapped playlists since I kind of get into a rut sometimes because I continue to listen to the same music I liked when I was in high school and college. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this and can find a few new songs of your own!
*****
And that will bring us to the end of another glorious recap blog. I love keeping track of these statistics, and I'm super grateful for companies and websites that make my weird hobbies easier to compile. If you've made it this far, bless your little heart! You might as well take a second to let me know what you spent your time listening to in 2025. Leave me a comment down below, follow me on Twitter (here and here), or hit me up on Facebook. I'd love to hear from you.
As always, keep it dialed here at Signs of the Times for all of the upcoming Year in Review blogs! We just got our Playstation stats the other day, but those will continue to update over the next few weeks, and we'll have recaps for Nintendo and audiobooks on the way here shortly, as well.
Until next time.
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