Playlist curating is an art
Photo courtesy of Pexels
Creating your own playlist should be considered an art! The amount of time, love, and care that goes into creating your own playlist is an art within itself that should be recognized.
Curating the most optimal array of songs to fit the attitudes of the time is not a new phenomenon. Since people have been able to choose listening habits, music devotees have worked to create the perfect array of pop ballads, crowd-pleasers, and slow jams. Burning CDs and winding mixtapes (not sure if that is the right verb to use— I apologize to the music curators who came before me), however, have become a tradition of the past, now helpful for letting us know that a character in a movie is cooler than everybody else (or a hipster, but I might argue that they are kind of the same thing). Playlist curation is now the avenue through which this happens.
Whether it be on Spotify, Apple Music, or some third option, these platforms can be great for gaining access to an unfathomable array of music from music industry stars like Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar, TikTok hall-of-famers such as Loren Gray and JVKE, indie icons like Wolf Alice and Dr. Dog, plus so, so, so much more! It means that music curation has somehow never been harder or easier than ever. There are so many choices as to what can be on the “perfect playlist,” so how do you choose? This is where the music-curator, the playlist-aficionado, comes into play.
Music can motivate us to take on our days, get us through a difficult workout, console us as our romantic lives crash around us, or be what provides that company they say misery is so fond of. Having playlists pre-made for all these turbulent and mundane moments of our lives can help accompany you in these periods, as well as increase your overall sensation that maybe your life is a movie with your own personally-curated soundtrack.
How, then, does one engage in hobbyist playlist-making? Well, what’s nice is that there are all different levels of commitment. The more casual playlist maker might be a semesterly or seasonal curator, one who makes playlists populated with the music they find themselves listening to the most during a specific period of time in their lives. I respect this kind of playlist-making in a time-capsule kind of way. I think it can preserve eras of people’s lives in very interesting and strangely revealing ways.
I might refrain, though, from calling this specific group true hobbyists, as I view these sorts of playlists as ones of circumstance and convenience. There often is no real aim or larger atmosphere these kinds of playlists aim to create. One might appear, but I chalk that up to being coincidental most of the time.
How, then, does one engage in true artful playlisting? I think one of the key components to true hobbyist playlisting includes some kind of conceptual element related to the playlist’s larger mood, purpose, sound, or imagined applicability. Crafting the perfect array of playlists and the songs inside them requires a kind of anticipation of future musical needs, and a true understanding of the music you already listen to and the kinds of artists, genres, albums, and other musical projects that are related to your typical pool.
Knowing how to choose the perfect songs for these vague or hyper-specific moods requires a skillful and ruthless ear. Sometimes, your favorites just aren’t quite appropriate, even when you want them to be, or the instrumental isn’t atmospheric enough to have that proper movie soundtrack feel that will round off your “main character” playlist that you imagine will play in the background of the hypothetical biopic about your life.
The ability of a playlist to capture a moment, create the mood of a party, or, honestly, set the tone for your whole day is a very powerful force. For me, nothing makes my bad mood worse than a song on my bad mood playlist that just doesn’t allow me to wallow enough. The act of making a playlist, and making an effective playlist, is a truly underrated skill that I feel deserves more recognition in a world where music is such a central force in many people’s lives in big and mundane ways.