Personality via a Playlist

We all love to press our shuffle button when we listen to our music to add a little element of surprise to our daily lives. “I wonder what song will play next,” we think as a song approaches its end. However, despite having our playlist on shuffle, there’s usually a certain song, artist or genre we have in our mind that we actually want to listen to and so we end up putting ourselves through the extra work of pressing the ‘skip’ button over and over again until what we want to listen to pops up. 

Skipping songs on shuffle is an entire adventure. There are moments of “Why do I even have this song?” even though we don’t bother removing the song from our playlist, moments of flashbacks to the first time we heard the song, or to a memory we have with the song, moments of “Yooooo I haven’t heard this song in forever!” after which we either have that song on repeat for a while or to which we jam to until the chorus before continuing our search, moments of “Nope, not today,” etc. 

Although each song in our playlist isn’t compatible with what we want to listen to on a daily basis as that is fully dependent on our mood, each song individually represents a part of us that can be discovered through  our playlist. I always liked to think that you can discover a lot about an individual through their music. Going through someone’s playlist really allows you to understand their individuality, their personality, their beliefs if they pay particular attention to lyrics, the emotions they have associated with certain songs, especially those that seem to be their ‘most played,’ the kind of songs they like to listen to on their happy days and on their sadder days, etc. 

Although we may have friends, family members and partners who have a similiar music taste to us, there will always be at least one or two songs in their playlists that we just don’t vibe with. These are the songs that draw the differences in our individuality. 

In fact, remember how I mentioned that although we don’t want to listen to every song on our playlist on a daily basis, each song still represents a part of us? Well, I feel like the daily experiences in our lives work the same way. 

There are some songs we listen to once and then never again as they’re just “meh” and so we do not add them to our playlist. These are equivalent to the everyday experiences we have that we don’t really think back to. There are certain songs in our playlist that we do not remove despite questioning their existence – (Barbie Girl, anyone?). These songs are kind of equivalent to the times where we treat ourselves to something delicious that we know is unhealthy or to the times we spoil ourselves with something expensive we know we probably won’t be wearing or using too often. I mean deep inside, we know what we did was ridiculous but the temporary feeling of satisfaction is good enough, right? Yay for guilty pleasures! Our favourite songs that we always have on repeat are like our hobbies that we don’t mind doing repeatedly, or for long periods of time, or like our favourite food that we don’t mind eating often. The songs that remind us of certain times and memories are essentially just auditory representatives of our experiences that narrate to us a story that they couldn’t communicate to anyone else. 

Music is music. Experiences are experiences. We all have music we love and music we cannot stand. Likewise, we have experiences we wish would happen again, and experiences we fully wish to forget. In the end it all makes us who we are. As no one’s playlist or taste in music is identical, no one’s experiences are identical either. Although we do get kind of judgemental when it comes to other people’s music taste, as we shouldn’t be judgemental of people’s past and experiences, we should respect the music other individuals appreciate as well. 😁