Last month I was one of the millions of people who eagerly opened their Spotify Wrapped and poured over the results. I could have predicted my top three songs (in the wrong order), and my top artists were also mostly what I expected, although Charli XCX was knocked off last year’s summit all the way down to number four.

The past couple of years I have happily shared my stats on Instagram, and this year I initially planned to do the same, even though I realize that Wrapped is a clever way for Spotify to track our data and then nicely package it so that we can go around marketing the service. 

Spotify also notoriously only pays artists fractions of a penny per stream, which makes it incredibly hard for all but the biggest artists to make a living from streaming. Spotify critics also argue that the platform’s algorithms are negatively impacting both how artists create music and the ways we consume music. More music than ever might be at our fingertips, but we can easily be funneled to listening to the same featured artists over and over. I am also curious whether the anticipation and public nature of sharing our Spotify Wrapped actually shapes the type of music we listen to during the year.

Despite these concerns, the truth is that Spotify Wrapped is incredibly fun and I have enjoyed seeing what my friends have been listening to this year, especially since I now rarely talk to anyone about music (although I guess I have no one but myself to blame since I have been complaining about this since 2017). The few conversations I did have about music this year mostly revolved around Taylor Swift, and she fittingly appeared as a top artist for many of my friends. I liked Midnights well enough (my favourite songs are Midnight Rain and Maroon), but what I most enjoyed was continuing a tradition with my sister and a friend where we rank every song on a new Taylor album and then compare our lists. 

It is this social aspect of music that I miss, so in lieu of just posting my Spotify Wrapped, I have decided to write about the music that helped define my year. 

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Two years ago when Shakira and Jennifer Lopez performed at the Super Bowl halftime show, some friends were delighted that the organizers had finally picked some exciting artists. To me this just signaled that our demographic was now old enough to be targeted by inviting the superstars of our youth.   

This year’s halftime show featured four heavyweight hip-hop stars all of whom are now over 50 (Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and Mary J. Blige). At least they threw in 34-year Kendrick Lamar, although even he has been around long enough that instead of streaming his debut album I actually went to a mall and bought it on CD. And yet, one of my friends turned to me when Kendrick came on stage and asked “Who’s that?”. 

Super Bowls aside, I have noticed how the soundtrack of my social gatherings often seems stuck at least a decade in the past, and it felt a bit surreal this year to be drifting down the Nile on a sailboat with a bunch of thirty-somethings singing along to mid-2000s pop hits.

This year marked the return of summer music festivals, and I was intrigued to see friends in Ottawa posting clips of huge big crowds for bands that I listened to 15 years ago but I haven’t thought much of since like Sum 41, Three Days Grace, and Alexisonfire. 

This summer also saw the triumphant reunion tour of My Chemical Romance (MCR), a stalwart of the early 2000s emo scene who had stopped making music in 2013. I saw MCR in 2005 when my Dad was kind enough to bring me to the Warped Tour in Montreal, and their performance which opened with I’m Not Ok (I Promise) and ended with Helena is one that I will always remember, but it has been a long time since I have regularly listened to their music.

I first read about the MCR tour during The Ringer’s Emo Week, and I was initially surprised to see a mainstream sports and culture website dedicating so much space to a genre that didn’t seem so relevant in 2022. However as I read through the articles I quickly realized that I am exactly the demographic who appreciates a side of emo-nostalgia along with their sports content. 

This tour got a ton of media coverage and was a huge commercial success, and as I was reading about it I came across the When We Were Young festival in Nevada, which has an amazing lineup of all the bands I would have wanted to see (and many that I did see!) as a teenager, and it seemed pretty crazy that they were all performing this year in the same place. I used to think my Dad was a bit strange for spending so much time listening to the local classic rock station, but I guess people my age are no different.  

I am no stranger to a nostalgia listen. Earlier this year I listened to the excellent narrative podcast Moonface, and one episode ends with a character going to a jukebox and playing the 2010 classic Heart in Your Heartbreak by the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. I immediately started playing the song on repeat and soon after stumbled upon a 2000s Indie Scene playlist which became my main listening for the next few days. 

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As much as I still love some of the songs I listened to as a teenager, this year I found myself craving new and unexpected music. 

In March I was instantly hooked when Spotify’s oft-maligned but personally essential Discover Weekly playlist introduced me to the remix of ericdoa’s song movinglikeazombie.  

The 2020 song clocks in at 7:45 and features 11 different artists, all of whom were unknown to me. After a few days of listening to the song on repeat I started searching for similar music, which led me to a user-created playlist titled ✨digicore✨, which had the intriguing description: not glitchcore, not hyperpop: ✨✨digicore✨✨. 

Glitchcore and hyperpop were both terms I had seen thrown around, but I had never heard of digicore, and a quick search led me to an i-D article Digicore captures the angst of coming of age during a global pandemic, which included this helpful description: 

“The kids of digicore are mostly between the ages of 15 and 18 years old: a diverse cohort of group-minded, mostly independent artists working from their bedrooms, who’re keen to prove themselves on their own terms…This sponge-like attitude to music is precisely why the genre is so playful; video game sounds, abrasive distortion and emotional rap lyrics are a typical digicore cacophony.”

There was something appealing about listening to music that seemed so tied to the current moment, and so this year I have spent lots of time acquainting myself with some of the artists associated with digicore, and here are a few of my favourite songs. 

aldn (feat. Glaive) – redeyes

I thought this would have been my most-played song of the year, but it came in at number two. The line “Most of the time, I realize I’m not the good guy” summed up how I felt much of the year. 

ericdoa, glaive – fuck this town

Cairo can be an infuriating city, and in those moments I would crank up the volume and sing along.

glaive – astrid

I gave you everything I ever had, even my sweater

Clocking in at a brisk 1:41, this is another song best listened at full volume. 

8485 – hangar

I first heard this during the last week of 2021, and it was the only song I recognized when I stumbled upon the digicore playlist, and it remained a low-key favourite all year long. 

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The artists associated with digicore may have dominated the year for me, but I still listened to lots of other music. My most-played song was Tangerine by Glass Animals, who was also my most-played artist thanks to my love of their 2020 album Dreamland.  

I also spent lots of time listening to Carly Rae Jepson’s new album The Loneliest Time, which I think got a bit buried by being released the same day as Midnights. The whole album is a lot of fun, especially the back to back tracks “So Nice” and “Bad Thing Twice”.

I was also happy that Mallrat released her full-length debut this year, as I was a big fan of her EPs. The album opens with the beautiful but under a minute long Wish on an Eyelash, and in December a remix by the Chainsmokers (my guilty pleasure) was released which feels like it was engineered just for me. 

I could share a few other dozen songs I loved this year, but I limit myself to three more.

Marwan Pablo – Sindbad

A friend introduced me to a few Egyptian hip-hop artists, and one of the biggest is Marwan Pablo from Alexandria. His song Sindbad was my most-listened Arabic song this year. 

FAUXE – Gaut

This song was both catchy and mysterious, and I didn’t even know the language the first few times I listened. FAUXE is a Singaporean artist, and this song is built from a sample from a 1960 Malay film.

Hoang Thuy Linh – See Tình (Cucak remix)

I discovered this song thanks to a friend who posted it on Instagram, and WOW what a delight. Ralph gets so excited whenever I play it, and we have had a few great dance parties when Jessica gets home from work. Seeing Ralph cackle with joy as we dance together has been my favourite musical moment of the year.