My three sons recently introduced me to a cool feature on Spotify: Spotify Unwrapped This feature gives you insight into the music you listened to in the past year.

Now, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Spotify, including its shabby royalty schemes. I’ve given Spotify DJ many chances to redeem himself and he perpetually lets me down.  Spotify DJ is an artificially intelligent DJ who makes a playlist for you based on its “perception” of your musical choices in the past. Now, why Spotify DJ sounds like “Ice T” is one issue. The second issue is how they push onto me certain “vibes” and “editor’s choices”.  My real complaint is why Spotify DJ has to be a male voice.  Like was Liv Tyler not available? But, I am digressing.

My top artist for 2023 was Faith No More, followed by The Who, Sonic Youth, REM, and the Smashing Pumpkins.

My top songs were “Kool Thing”, “Teenage Riot”, “Gimme Shelter”, “The Other Shoe”, and “Cherub Rock”.

The place on earth with the most similar musical tastes to mine was Kingston, Ontario, Canada. No surprise being the home of The Tragically Hip.

But, the most fun part was getting prerecorded brief video messages from some of my favorite artists. I got one from Jay and Chris of Sloan, Brendan (lead singer of Incubus), Emily Haines of Metric, Hayley Williams of Paramore, and…John f’ing Densmore of the Doors.  Truly super cool.

Maybe the shocker of all shockers. Not that I listened to 44 different genres but, I listen to 17,000 minutes of music (12 complete days worth). To put this into context this was double what my sons listened to and they always have airpods in!

No surprise that I love music, right? If you doubt it, you haven’t read my novels, have you?  Anyway, thought it was a fun feature and would love to hear about your musical experiences.

Music is a great companion to a good novel!

Mark