Music shapes a community in many ways. People come together to celebrate the artists they love, to share new songs with each other, to express themselves, or to form new connections.
The Northside community is no exception. Northside’s I-night dances, for one, feature a variety of musical genres and use music as a mode of expression and celebration. At the same time, music allows students to form individual identities.
Spotify Wrapped can provide insight into our identity as a listener and a person. The popular Spotify feature, first launched in 2016, provides users with a recap of their yearly listening, including total minutes listened, top artists and songs, and even the newly added category: “listening age.” Over the past few years, it has become common for students to post their results online and share them with friends to compare their music tastes and experiences.
Student Data
This year, The Hoofbeat collected Spotify Wrapped data from the Northside student population. The results show the diversity of Northside’s listening experiences. Students listened to a mixture of genres ranging from alternative rock to pop to salsa. Additionally, as seen in the charts below, students’ listening ages ranged from 8 to 76 with a peak around age 30. This information represents us as a community. The lack of an overarching theme just goes to show all of the different branches of music we enjoy and can share with one another.
Some of the top artists that students listed included Taylor Swift, Laufey, Drake, and Zach Bryan, but there were many more. Some top songs included Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, Second Nature by Clairo, and Like Weezy by Playboi Carti.
Student Insights
Some Northside students also reported their general opinions about the Spotify and Apple Music Wrapped platforms.
Junior Clara Degenholtz said, “Honestly, I thought my Apple Music Wrapped was weird. I listened to a lot of harder stuff and local bands that didn’t really show up on Apple Wrapped as my top albums. My Airpuds wrapped was more accurate than my Apple Music one.”
She added, “And I feel like my top genre is really misrepresented. Like what is indie? It’s just a status a band can have as a label. It’s not a genre.”
Similarly, Seniors Cecilie Garcia and Eddie De La Rosa agreed that their Wrapped did not represent them correctly. When asked about why, Cecilie said she “feels like [she] didn’t listen to that much One Direction and NSYNC,” and Eddie felt like “[he] listened to a lot of different genres so it really didn’t represent [him].”
Ultimately, though many may disagree with their Wrapped, the excitement built up around its release shows that it is still fun to reflect on your listening trends from the year and gain insight into others’ listening experiences.
