musactions

Ya '25: turning it up, then back down

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Same ritual as last time: a song goes in the current playlist when it makes me feel something, and I start a new one whenever it feels right. This is the first one I made in 2025, and the third in the series. After a detour into naming it by the month, I went back to “Ya”. It’s also the first one I kept in Spotify.

I think I was in a better place making this one than I was during the first 2024 playlist. Reading it back, I can hear that. I can also hear that “better” doesn’t mean the heavy stuff went away.

Thirteen songs, about 55 minutes.

The list

It starts with someone who’s tired of being sad

The first song is Mac Miller’s “Good News”, from Circles, the album finished and released after he died. It’s about being worn out by your own head and just wanting a little peace. It’s quiet and kind of drowsy, and it’s the most honest opening I could have picked without trying.

This was the year I really started to like Mac Miller. He shows up twice here, at the beginning and near the end, and both songs are from that same album. Every playlist since 2024-09 seems to have an artist I’m in the middle of discovering. Then it was Daniel Caesar. This time it was Mac.

Then come two songs from The National, a band built for this. “I Need My Girl” is missing someone so much it’s almost all you can think about. “The Alcott”, with Taylor Swift, is two people circling back to each other and talking past each other the whole time. For the first three songs, it picks up the thread 2024-09 left hanging: wanting someone, and not quite reaching them.

Then a run of songs that say it’s okay

Songs four through six read like I was talking myself through something. “It’s Alright 2 Cry” is pretty much what it says. Pearl Jam’s “Present Tense” is about letting go of regret and living in the moment you’re actually in. (Pearl Jam also closed out Ya, my first 2024 playlist. They skipped a playlist and came back.) And Jeremy Zucker’s “always, i’ll care” is a soft goodbye: the relationship is over, but the caring isn’t.

Permission to cry, permission to stop looking back, permission to still care. I’ll take that as progress.

And then it actually turns up

This is where it gets different from both 2024 playlists. Kid Cudi’s “Neverland” is him singing over acoustic guitar instead of rapping, about still being alive through the ups and downs. He called it the start of a new era for himself, which feels about right for where it lands in the playlist.

Right after it, the energy jumps. Two Miley Cyrus songs, “End of the World” and “Walk of Fame” with Brittany Howard, then Selena Gomez and benny blanco’s “Bluest Flame”. These are big, bright, produced songs you could actually move to.

Spotify scores songs on things like energy and how happy they sound, and the numbers back this up. The first six songs sit low on energy and are mostly acoustic. By “Walk of Fame”, energy is at 0.94 out of 1, the happiest-sounding song on the playlist, and the acoustic guitars are gone. Nothing in either 2024 playlist got this loud. Ya never got off the couch, and 2024-09 was for walking the dog after dark.

Then it comes back down

It doesn’t stay up. “Hand Me Downs” brings Mac back, slower and more vulnerable. Miley’s “Something Beautiful” closes her album about healing and finding beauty in the dark. Then the last song I added was “Silver Springs”.

“Silver Springs” is Stevie Nicks’s Fleetwood Mac song about someone she couldn’t get away from, and couldn’t let get away from her. My version is a cover by Matt Berninger, The National’s singer, and Gail Ann Dorsey. By Spotify’s numbers, it’s the lowest-energy song on the playlist, and one of the saddest-sounding.

Ya ended on “Just Breathe”. 2024-09 ended on a song about being gone. This one ended on that. I’m not sure what to make of it, other than that a better year still has a ghost in it.

What I notice now

I kept going forward. Ya was almost all 1990s and 2000s music, the stuff I grew up on. 2024-09 is where that changed, and this one kept going: half of it came out in 2025, and most of the rest is from the last decade. The present tense theme is right there in the track list.

It has a shape: down, up, down. Heavy and acoustic, then a stretch that’s genuinely fun, then back to quiet. The middle is the part that’s new for me.

Matt Berninger is all over it. He sings on both National songs and on “Silver Springs”, so three of the thirteen songs are his voice. If one person soundtracked this playlist, it’s him. Or Mac.

A lot of these are conversations. “The Alcott”, “Walk of Fame”, “Bluest Flame”, “Silver Springs”: two voices, a lot of back-and-forth, like the songs are working something out between two people. Make of that what you will.

Mac Miller bookends the heavy parts. His songs show up right where the playlist is lowest, and Circles is an album about getting through it, made by someone who didn’t get to finish it himself. I think that’s part of why it got to me this year.

On to the next one.

Written with AI, edited by a guy who put three Miley Cyrus songs on one playlist and stands by it. Claude (made by Anthropic) did the heavy lifting on the words. Every song, every feeling and the final say were mine.

2024-09: night walks and a new sound

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This is the second playlist in the series, the one that came after Ya. Same ritual: a song goes in when it makes me feel something. I broke my own naming scheme and called it “2024-09”, because I started it in September. I came back to “Ya” eventually.

It’s short. Seven songs, about 33 minutes. That’s all of it.

The list

It starts with Daniel Caesar

This was around when I found Daniel Caesar and really got into him, so it makes sense that he’s first. “Always” is slow and warm, a song about devotion, the kind that sounds like it was recorded at 2 a.m.

If I had to guess where it hit me, I’d say walking my dog Lucy at night. That’s when I do my best thinking, and it’s when music really gets to me. Honestly, this whole playlist sounds like those walks: quiet streets, headphones, nobody around.

Wanting love, in every version

Almost everything after that is about love from a different angle.

Choker’s “Rocket” is hazy and floaty, more of a mood than a story. Omar Apollo’s “Ice Slippin” is about a relationship gone cold (he’s said it’s about frosty relationships). Berhana’s “Grey Luh” is chasing love after a few drinks; you might know it from Atlanta. Joji’s “Gimme Love” is the most direct ask on the list. It starts out upbeat, then the beat switches and it gets slower and more inward in the second half.

Devotion, coldness, drunk hope, asking outright. I didn’t plan that, but it’s four ways of saying the same thing.

Frank Ocean in the middle

“Nikes” opens Blonde, and it’s right in the center here. Frank’s voice is pitched up and blurry, and the song is about chasing things that don’t fill the hole. There’s a lot of loss under the surface of that album. It’s the one song here that feels like it’s about more than one person.

It ends on what happens after

The last song is Noname’s “Shadow Man”, with Smino, Phoelix and Saba. It’s about death: what you want people to say, and how you want to be remembered when you’re gone. It’s gentle and almost sweet about it, which somehow makes it hit harder.

“Ya” ended on “Just Breathe”. This one ends on a song about being gone. I’m not sure what that says, but I notice it.

What I notice now

This is where the sound changed. “Ya” was almost all rock and singer-songwriter stuff from the 1990s and 2000s. Every song here is R&B or soul from the last decade, 2016 to 2023. This is the turn where I stopped reaching back and started finding things.

Every artist shows up once. In “Ya”, one song would hit and I’d go back to that artist for another. Here nobody gets a second song. It reads like exploring, not going home.

There’s always an artist I’m discovering. Here it’s Daniel Caesar. In 2025 it would be Mac Miller. I didn’t notice that pattern until I lined these up.

It’s night music. Falsetto, reverb, washed-out vocals, nothing loud. This is a playlist for walking the dog after dark, which is exactly what I think I was doing.

This is where this blog started. Around the time I made this playlist, I first had the idea of going back through these and writing about what they say. I don’t know why this playlist stopped at seven songs. But I like that the idea showed up here.

Next came Ya ’25.

Yes, AI helped write this. No, it has never walked a dog at night. Claude handled the drafting; I handled the songs, the walks, the edits and the deeply normal urge to explain my music taste to the internet.

Ya: the first playlist of 2024

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Every year I start a playlist, and I add a song whenever it hits me. It could come up on shuffle, on someone else’s playlist, or on Spotify’s shitty DJX feature (more on that another time). There’s no rule beyond that: if a song makes me feel something, it goes in. At some point the playlist feels finished, or I just feel like starting a new one, so I do.

I never really look back at them. They’re less a collection than a diary I didn’t know I was keeping. So I’m going back through the first one from 2024, called “Ya”, to see what it says about me that I didn’t notice at the time.

I’ll say it up front: looking back, I was not in a good headspace when I made this one. I didn’t really see that while it was happening. The playlist did.

Fifteen songs, a little over an hour.

The list

It starts with someone telling me to hold it together

The very first song I added is basically a pep talk. “Details in the Fabric” is Mraz and James Morrison trading lines about staying calm when everything is coming apart: you’re going to be fine, keep your head, the stitches will hold. I’m not sure you add that song to a playlist when life is easy.

The second one is Beck’s cover of “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime”, from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack. It’s a slow, aching request to change your heart and look around. It’s also from a movie about a guy who pays to have someone erased from his memory. I didn’t think about that when I added it. I think about it now.

Then two Kanye songs back to back, both older and gentler ones. “Everything I Am” is Kanye taking stock of everything he isn’t and deciding to be fine with what’s left. “Heard ’Em Say” is soft and almost a lullaby, about how hard things are and how little is promised. Neither one is a hype song. Both are someone talking themselves into acceptance.

So the first four songs, in order: stay calm, you need to change, accept who you are, nothing is guaranteed. Looking back, that’s a pretty clear opening statement.

Then the middle gets heavy

“Plane” is Mraz at his most bruised, a song about something ending and needing to get out. Right after it comes Taylor Swift’s “I Hate It Here”, which might be the most honest song on the list. It’s about not liking the present, so you retreat into an imagined past instead, a better era, a secret garden in your head.

Hold that thought, because it explains the whole playlist (more on that below).

Then the push and pull starts. “A Beautiful Mess” is Mraz in love with someone’s imperfections. Right after it is “loml”, which plays like a love song until you realize the letters stand for “loss of my life”. I put those next to each other without planning it. One is how something felt while it was happening; the other is how it feels once it’s gone.

After that, Radiohead takes over: “High and Dry” is about being left behind, and “No Surprises” is about wanting a quiet, numb, uneventful life where nothing hurts. Bon Iver’s “Flume” sits between them. Justin Vernon famously recorded that album alone in a cabin in the Wisconsin winter, after things fell apart. If there’s a sonic version of pulling the blankets over your head, it’s the middle of this playlist.

Two ways of remembering someone

The two Jack Johnson songs might be my favorite accident on the list. “Flake” is about someone who keeps promising and keeps not showing up. “Do You Remember” is the opposite: a sweet, small song about the early days of a relationship and all the little details you keep.

Same artist, same voice, two completely different ways of looking back: one resentful, one tender. I’d guess that’s what remembering actually feels like. You don’t pick one; both are true at once.

And it ends on breathing

The last two songs are Pearl Jam. “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” is about running into someone from your past who doesn’t recognize you, while you’re standing there recognizing everything. It’s the whole playlist in one song, really.

And the last song I added before closing “Ya” was “Just Breathe”. After everything before it, the playlist ends on gratitude and on staying: holding onto the people still here, and slowing down. I didn’t plan that ending, but I’m glad it’s the one I got.

What I notice now

I didn’t add songs, I added artists. Kanye, Swift, Radiohead, Jack Johnson and Pearl Jam each show up twice, and Mraz three times. Beck and Bon Iver are the only one-offs. Something would hit me, and then I’d go back to the rest of that artist’s catalog and find a second song waiting there.

Almost none of it was new. Apart from the two Taylor Swift songs, everything here is from roughly 1993 to 2009: The Bends, OK Computer, Vs., Late Registration, Graduation, Brushfire Fairytales, In Between Dreams. That’s the music of my younger years. When things got heavy, I didn’t go looking for something new; I went home. Which is exactly what “I Hate It Here” is about, and I added it without noticing the irony.

It’s mostly quiet. Acoustic guitars, falsetto, soft piano, nobody shouting. Even the Kanye songs are the soft ones. This wasn’t a playlist for the gym; it was one for the car at night.

It tells a story in order. Hold it together, take stock, something ends, you miss it, you go numb, you remember it two different ways, you see it from the outside, and then you breathe. I didn’t build that arc. I just added songs when they hit me. That’s what gets me about doing this: the playlist knew what was going on before I did.

On to 2024-09.

Full disclosure: an AI wrote this. I just supplied the playlist, the bad headspace, a year of feelings and about forty rounds of “no, not like that.” Claude (Anthropic’s AI) did the typing. I did the feeling. Very fair split.