In an annual tradition of publicized music taste, millions of users took to Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter) this week to bombard our feed with their Spotify Wrapped summaries, where the streaming giant gives users a brief overview of their data from the year. These screenshots featured the usual information that Spotify gives—top artists, genres, and songs—but with a fun little twist.
“This year, your listening took you places,” Spotify Wrapped read. “And one place listened just like you!”
With users posting their results on social media, a trend emerged. Popular music destinations were Berkeley, Cali., Burlington, Vermont, and Cambridge, Mass. People quickly began to notice commonalities between their Spotify-assigned homes.
“the divide between gays in berkeley vs lesbians in burlington,” one X user pointed out.
Indeed, after seeing all this, I was excited to look at my results. Surely I’d get one of the hotspots, with my hip, cool, based music taste. You may ask where I landed, dear reader. Well, I’ll tell you.
I got Provo.
Provo, Utah, to be exact.
I was distraught. How did I end up in a city that’s 90% Mormon, alongside the students of Brigham Young University? What about my taste put me there? Sure, I listened to a lot of Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo—which, according to Spotify, are very similar to the soundscape of Provo—but so did everybody! Sure, I’m a WASPy, religiously traumatized, bleached-blonde man who very much gives lives-in-a-desert, but I have feelings too! Why was I being victimized?
I’ve done a lot of introspection in the last 24 hours, friends. Walked along college row listening to “Paul Revere” by Noah Kahan and tried to make sense of why I was kin-assigned Mormon by Spotify. Maybe it’s the fact that I listened to a lot of hymns this November, although I thought that was outside the range of Spotify Wrapped. Maybe I need to try to curate my music taste better and stop giving in to my musical whims left and right.
But as I stood on our bitter cold campus, the setting sun hitting my face at 4 p.m., a revelation came to me. It’s the greatest epiphany anyone can come to. I realized I wasn’t the problem, everyone else was. It’s not that Berkeley and Burlington were better places to be, they were overdone. Overplayed. Oh, you got assigned to Burlington? That’s nice. I’m cool and esoteric and got Provo. Denial and bargaining are my favorite stages of grief, in case you were wondering.
Getting assigned Provo on Spotify Wrapped is embarrassing, there’s no avoiding that. But also my top song of the year was “The Home Depot Beat” by The Home Depot, so I can’t really weigh in on anything relating to embarrassment. I’ve gone through a whole redemption cycle since that little map popped up on my screen, and I’ve learned to accept my fate with a smile.
So come to Provo sometime. I’ll keep listening to whatever my music taste is, you keep listening to yours. Don’t let the visibility of Spotify Wrapped shame you into changing what you like. Your faves are yours and yours alone.
Sam Hilton is a member of the class of 2025 can be reached at shilton@wesleyan.edu.