Ya: the first playlist of 2024

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.