
Eva Lau-Johnston
23 Jan 2025
Eva delves into why we love 'year in review' summaries so much, and whether 'Spotify Wrapped' can really alter our listening habits...
Never before have there been so many ways to share, record and talk about our favourite media - from film and television to literature and music. Nor has it been so easy and quick to do so. The innumerable applications online demonstrate the increasing digitalization and globalisation of every aspect of human engagement. Whilst having many positive implications - specifically, community building and worldwide interconnection - modern media is simultaneously contributing to a crisis of sincerity and a culture of performativity.
In particular, Spotify introduced Spotify Wrapped (2016), consolidating annual user listening habits. This has since spiralled. Almost every art-related online platform is creating breakdowns of their patrons’ media consumption, permitting them to reflect on the year prior through data analytics. However, these wrap-ups themselves inform our media tastes, whether encouraging one to conform to social norms or to display a sense of uniqueness. This may be likened to the notion of ‘competing’ or performing in the media-consumption olympics. This lack of integrity is dangerous to the communities built from sharing media, contradicting the very purpose of these reviews. Other issues can also be identified such as the prevalence of Artificial Intelligence used to generate reviews, begging the question of whether this is a culturally valuable element of the digital world.
Many people who enjoy reviewing media consumption patterns do so as a mode of reflection. ‘People often say music is the soundtrack of life’ (Swant, 2019) and this extends beyond the media realm to other art forms. Reflecting on our personal consumption patterns can indicate changes and developments in behaviour and emotions. Preceding online forms of communication, I remember noting down emotionally significant movies and songs in bullet journals and diaries. Applications such as Last.FM, Letterboxd, Spotify and AirBuds have rendered this process accessible and increasingly seamless, not only encouraging personal contemplation but facilitating connections and unifying communities through communication networks. This may be traced back to the Oh Boy Record Label website, from which an online chat forum connected John Prine fans. This ‘recognition of shared experience and a sign of community’ (Kibby, 2000) allowed users to bond over their common musical interests. This demonstrates the significance of new media, forging local and global interconnection, allowing everyone alike to embrace community - even if it is not physically available to them. Increasingly, ‘fans have inherited the belief that listening to someone’s music means getting to know them, getting access to their souls and sensibilities’ (Kibby, 2000). Sharing our music online serves as a way to understand one another's minds. Media reflects an authentic and personal representation of how we live our everyday lives.
Further, the media draws individuals together by promoting a degree of healthy competition. Statistics generated by modern applications often indicate the number of minutes spent consuming media such as film and music - sometimes telling us what percentile we fall within - allowing users to compare and rank their music tastes. In turn, this motivates us to interact more with the media. Important aspects of cultural capital offer more points of reference to bind communities together, providing reconnection after the social isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. This creates space for us to find ourselves within the wider contexts of social media trends. ‘Music contributes to the way people make sense of their lives, in that it provides symbolic categories into which fans can organise the ongoing stream of events that constitute the personal, social and cultural life’ (Kibby, 2000). This fundamentally proves why we are so engaged with these reviews. Data reflects our sense of self, in turn allowing us to understand the increasingly complex - and often virtual - world we live in.
Data analytics do have precarious pitfalls, emphasising the need to categorise oneself. The search for identity can descend rapidly into desperate pleas for social value, deterring people from consuming media for their preferences. They are an enticing social phenomenon. For example, ‘Spotify Wrapped is part of the festive calendar’ (Wiertz, 2024). The name itself suggests a gift from the media conglomerate to its users. We eagerly await this dropping every year, enraptured by the ‘FOMO effect’ (Sauvaget, 2019). We feel obliged to participate. Despite its potential dangers, these communities exist as an important means of understanding the evolving digital landscape, paving the way for future virtual communities in the 21st Century.
Whilst reviews are becoming important artefacts of cultural currency - allowing us to exhibit our tastes in a digital environment - they reduce our online personas to subject positions from which we are judged, despite the subjectivity of these tastes. As such, people fall into performed identities, the desire to express a certain image - whether through conforming to trending pop music tastes and fan practices, or through crafting an underground and esoteric identity with lesser-known, niche indie artists. Tastes are context-dependent and culturally situated, exacerbated by the rapid speed with which consumer opinions are exchanged online. By displaying our tastes in a ‘sleek, info-graphic form’ (Lucca, 2013) we diminish the complexity of our tastes. If we understand authenticity and objectivity to have been born out of a fear of judgement, the concepts are under threat. This defeats the very purpose of Spotify Wrapped and its digital companions. People are tailoring their listening habits to fulfil a certain expectations and to adhere to ideal outward expressions. This obsession with perception demonstrates that there is a crisis of sincerity.Â
Human nature, too, is also an intensifying force. Media communication represents an ‘imitation [that] comes naturally to us humans’, an idea consolidated by Susan Blackmore’s ‘Social Contagion Theory’. Blackmore’s ‘Meme Machine’ bases its thesis on the fact that ‘our ability to imitate’ is what ultimately renders us human (Blackmore, 1999). Our tastes are weakened to appease others, reproducing a culture of performativity, a digital infection exacerbated by the social media landscape.Â
This constant pressure marks a domino effect, trickling down to the younger generation. The average young person now feels the need to censor their opinions. This is dangerous as it makes us more susceptible to the omission of political thought and criticism. This was termed an ‘Irony Epidemic’ by musical artist Hayden Anhedonia (Ethel Cain). ‘People are…afraid to be sincere’ (Anhedonia, 2024), pointing towards a loss of artistry and loyal fan bases. In the modern age, there is a continuing discussion about how we can manoeuvre through the virtual sphere. We often fall victim to untruthful manifestations, due to the high volume of progressive online media.Â
Hence, sincerity is more valuable and culturally significant than ever before. We must encourage its return. Matthew Healy (The 1975) employs the song, ‘Sincerity Is Scary’ to tackle this topic, emphasising the comfortability and ease of performativity, allowing one to hide behind a persona without risk of judgement and criticism. Healy suggests that ‘culture is to blame’ (2018). As such, we must ask ourselves why we have allowed such a culture to pervade upon our lives. ‘Why would you believe you can control how you’re perceived?’ Healy asks, criticising the innate need to control our public image to fit within a digestible faction dictated by abstract social and cultural values. This breeds negative self-perception and insecurity. This idea is perhaps reflected by Frederic Jameson who writes that there is a ‘disappearance of the individual subject, along with its formal consequence, the increasing unavailability of the personal style’ (1991). A distinct lack of cultural variety is a very clear repercussion of performed identities online. This denial of self-expression is largely rooted in fear of judgement, detrimental to social development through undermining the importance of human uniqueness.
In conclusion, the recent uprise in formatted breakdowns is indicative of a wider cultural phenomenon trending towards a lack of authenticity. Although these annual reviews might appear to be inoffensive, the implications for self-perception are becoming increasingly clear. These features encourage us to share our authentic tastes and to identify commonalities and differences, yet they have become products of manipulated online personas. This is contributing to an ‘Irony Epidemic’ with long-term consequences for individuality and genuinity.
Whilst the media can harm our identities, it is also an appropriate medium to address these concerns. Media spaces were created to proclaim manifestations of authenticity and of difference. Perhaps we can use the media to question the decline in originality and to advocate for the re-establishment of our personal values. Celebrating our differences and our individuality is to encourage diverse individuality.
Eva Lau-Johnston
Edited by Hannah Sugars
Bibliography:
Anhedonia, Hayden, ‘Sincerity Crisis’, Tumblr, published 2024, Accessed 22 January 2025 through X account user @ethelfiles. (ethel cains fly on X: "ethel cain speaks on the ongoing irony epidemic and how it frustrates her as an artist https://t.co/Cka4n6GQzW" / X).
Blackmore, Susan J., ‘Strange Creatures’, The Meme Machine (Oxford, 1999) 1-10.Â
Dean, Grace and Sandeman, George, ‘It’s bragging without the selfie’ - The Rise of Spotify Wrapped and its Copycats’, Published 21 December 2024. Accessed 22 January 2025. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg7kxxjzzno).
Healy, Matthew, ‘Sincerity is Scary’ from ‘A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships’ (2018), Lyrics published 13 September 2018, Accessed 22 January 2025. (https://genius.com/The-1975-sincerity-is-scary-lyrics).
Jameson, Frederic, ‘Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’, (Durham, 1991).
Kibby, Marjorie D., ‘Home on the Page: A Virtual Place of Music Community’ Popular Music 19, no.1. (2000), 91-100. doi: https://www.jstor.org/stable/853713.
Swant, Marty, ‘Spotify Rolls Out New ‘Wrapped’ Campaign To Help Users Remember Their Decade Of Music’, Published 17 December 2019, Accessed 22 January 2025. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/martyswant/2019/12/17/spotify-rolls-out-new-wrapped-campaign-help-users-remember-their-decade-of-music/)
Rapold, Nicolas, Cox, Alex, Lucca, Violet and Nelson, Max, ‘OPENING SHOTS’ Film Comment 49, no. 4(2013), 6-11 doi: http://www.jstor.org/stable/43459966.Â