When I signed up to write an article about what my Spotify receipt reveals about me, I didn’t really think about how embarrassing it might look. Signing into Receiptify a few weeks later, however, I can’t deny I was a little nervous: This would be published for everyone to see. And usually, when I’m listening to music, I’m not thinking much about public perception. When I saw what it looked like, though, I realized there was a lot in there: a lot about me, what I like, who I am. A lot that wasn’t actually embarrassing (with the exception of The Last of Us soundtrack, but let a girl have her TV shows).
What interested me most was that most of the songs in here are reflections of home, or the people I love. While my receipt changed a few times in the days I spent writing this article, I noticed people pop in and out, showing their quiet (or, technically, loud) influence on my music taste, and how I listen to their music to think about them, hold them close. Maybe this is how I miss my parents, or stop missing them — by listening to their music. But I should start with some background.
I love music. I’m listening to it most of the day and my main genres are probably Bollywood, country, classic rock and maybe some Western classical, sprinkled with artists like Crooked Still and Marcin, who kind of stand on their own in my music. A lot of it comes from my family. I grew up listening to my dad’s classic rock and my mom’s Bollywood and ‘90s grunge.
When I got Spotify in freshman year of high school, I started listening to my own music, not my parents’. I was listening to musical soundtracks, Ariana Grande, and lots and lots of K-pop. But my family and I started really sharing music after I started college. We soon compiled a family playlist, consisting of 40 songs — 10 songs selected by each family member. We played it a lot — in the evenings, at dinner parties, while washing dishes. Despite the occasional groan and complaint about another’s choice, our music tastes started to grow and overlap. Now, I share music with my family all the time. And while my foundations come from my parents (and my K-pop era), I keep adding to that basis with my own exploration. I have a “new songs” playlist where I compile everything I’m currently listening to, and my family will listen to it occasionally for inspiration. It’s become a symbiotic relationship.
Now enough context — let’s get into my Spotify receipt. I won’t go into everything on this in great detail. I can’t quite explain (or justify) every song on here. Some aren’t reflective of anything — they’re just unexpectedly mine.
The first one, for example, a song off Shaken By A Low Sound by Crooked Still, a band I found after watching The Last of Us (we might be seeing a pattern here), isn’t reflective of anyone but me. I can’t explain why I like it, just that I do. Ravi Shankar’s “Discovery of India” is sitar music I found during a Spotify rabbit hole, and “Burden In My Hand” has been my obsession for the last two months or so (ask anyone I regularly share music with, as they can confirm — coincidentally, also from The Last of Us).
But there are some that are more interesting — Van Halen’s “316,” for example. I started listening to this quite randomly. I was sitting one day in The News-Letter Gatehouse and it popped into my head suddenly, a memory. Then it jumped into my On Repeat. Now it’s in my receipt, too. If you’ve heard of Van Halen, you might think of of the group as an aggressive hard rock band from the ‘70s and ‘80s with some fantastic songs and some really incredible guitar work. “316” is different from its usual songs, though. It’s this strangely acoustic, quiet guitar tune that Eddie Van Halen sometimes uses to transition between intense guitar solos. Its name comes from his son’s birthdate. I only know this song (and its history) because sometimes, when I’m home, hanging out with my parents after dinner, my dad will play a semi-low-quality YouTube video of a Van Halen performance, with this tune as an interlude, and we’ll sit there listening to it together. I didn’t realize it would spontaneously come back to me and find its way here, near the top of my Receiptify.
The Bollywood songs on my receipt — there are many, as you can see — are my mom. They come from the music playing from her computer in the morning or from the old playlists on the TV when we cook together (we don’t like cooking in silence). It’s especially the older songs that make me think of home, as she plays them more frequently, but all of my Hindi music reminds me of her.
I wasn’t expecting my Receiptify to feel so much like the people I love — my parents, especially — or, less seriously, so much like The Last of Us (I promise I have a normal relationship to this show). But it’s sort of interesting to see how it reflects me, and not just me, but the people who shape me, too.
Lana Swindle is a junior majoring in Writing Seminars and Philosophy from Princeton, N.J. She is an Editor-in-Chief for The News-Letter.