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On Friday (1st Dec), The Guardian carried an article about the Spotify Wrapped personalised listening summary, which is delivered to Spotify subscribers as an animated video every year. In the announcement email, Alex Petridis wrote:

“The annual summary of your listening habits has become a phenomenon – but aside from being a marketing wheeze, Wrapped doesn’t always reflect what we truly love.”

Until now, I have always ignored it, but this prompted me to see what it is all about. And, as Alex’s dusting of disapproval suggests, it’s more of a publicity stunt than a source of insight into one’s listening preferences. But that’s OK. It’s just an unashamed bit of fun. And, for that reason, it has been broadly welcomed in the corridors of Crotchety House.

My own Spotify Wrapped tells me that I have listened to 62 genres (surely, an exaggeration) with Progressive Rock at the top (not a surprise), Singer-Songwiter and Chamber Pop in the middle (most unlikely), and Contemporary Jazz at the bottom (horribly underrated).

Of all the places around the world, one city stands out as having people with tastes like my own: Oxford, around 100 miles (160 km) away – little more than a stone’s throw on a global scale, so not the most Earth-shattering of discoveries.

I have played 3,130 tracks on Spotify in 2023; whether this is high or low, good or bad, is (wisely) not stated. One of those tracks was played no less than 7 times. Spotify interprets this statistic as proof that it’s a piece I really love. The truth, though, is that I was having trouble deciding what to say about it in these blog pages; the repetition is more an indication of uncertainty than passion. (Chris Opperman’s Miles Behind is a top drawer instrumental, though.)

I clocked up 20,125 minutes of Spotify streaming time this year. According to my calculations, this works out at about 3.8% of a year. That’s probably a lot less than the average teenager in the developed world, but comes in the top 19% of listeners across the continents of this sound-soaked planet. Good enough to justify a music blog, I suggest.

My sound stream took in 1,895 artists. Top of the list was Chris Opperman again, putting me in the top 0.1% of his fans. I’m sure this indicates both the relative obscurity of the artist and the difficulty of blogging about him much more than an obsession with his work. Still, it provides a certain satisfaction to the curiosity cat lurking within my personality. Other artists that featured prominently in the headphones here include: Steven Wilson ✅, Lisa O’Neill (huh?), Hidden Orchestra ✅ and GoGo Penguin ✅. Well, Spotify, three out of four ain’t bad, I suppose.

My streaming activity has led Spotify to label me with the “character archetype” of ‘Vampire’ – someone who likes to “embrace a little … darkness”. Fair enough. I’d much rather hear the gloomy strains of Leonard Cohen than the jolly effervescence of a typical girl pop band. A good song has to have some depth.

Here, then, is a selection of songs on the theme of “wrapped”.

The first two simply have ‘wrapped’ in the title; the other three are all included in my Spotify Wrapped playlist. Bert Jansch’s Kingfisher has been mentioned here before and is included to give a little balance to the skewed view that Spotify has delivered. The Hackney Colliery Band track illustrates the lighter side of the Crotchety taste. And we end with a new(ish) piece by a favourite artist – Hidden Orchestra.

Winter has definitely arrived here in Crotchety Land. If you are in my neck of the woods, I recommend you wrap up warm when you venture out. Or, better still, stay at home and wrap yourself in the cosy sounds of your favourite artists. There’s nothing better for warming the cockles of your heart.

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