Life Phase Playlists: Pt 1

The phases of life…

We are all moving through different phases in our lives. Everyone always seems to have something going on, all the time. Life just won’t stop throwing obstacles in our way. For the really bad stuff, we try to hide it from others, only letting certain people in to see, maybe only temporarily… We shut these people out either out of embarrassment, fear of rejection, or social ostracization. Life is tough, and we are all just trying our best.

I am trying to look at the different phases of my life with a more positive spin going forward. I feel like it’s a bit of a self-reflection ritual I do with myself every so often, making sure I am mentally keeping track of what events happened in each phase. What was the common feeling I felt throughout that last phase? Did I feel like I was more stressed than I wanted to be? Did I make many good memories during this time, or does it all kind of blur together? What do I want the next phase to be like? How can I set myself up for success the next time around? It’s a nice little journey I take myself on once every 6 months (roughly speaking).

The Playlist Portion of Our Show

I listen to a lot of music, and I have a lot of memories, so naturally, I have a lot of memories associated with music. There are certain songs I associate with childhood, elementary school, middle school, etc. It feels a bit strange sometimes, thinking of the large amount of memories I can recall just by listening to certain songs. Lately, I have been curating specific playlists to help me remember and eventually revisit the phases of my life I am currently going through. In a way, I have already been doing this for the whole of my music listening experience. From just listening to the radio, or discovering songs on Guitar Hero, later on my iPod (later the iPod touch), and then finally to online streaming. I have been making a mental catalog of certain songs that I correlate to each phase of my life.

That then led me to the idea: retroactively create the playlists for those times in my life as well! A playlist for when I did not have playlists. While I have not made a huge dent in this project yet, I am helping out “future me” by making playlists for the current phase of life that I am in. And I am just now realizing, as I am writing this, that I have been sort of doing this “playlist style” collection of music for myself since high school, so let’s take a look at that history, and maybe we can get a little glimpse into how my brain works.

High School/Beginning of College

My first ever Spotify playlist… I used this playlist to store all of the songs I wanted to listen to for around 4 to 5 years. Also, the playlist name was just supposed to be a placeholder until I could think of something better… I never spent the time to think of something better, and it’s much too late to change it now! The description is not a joke either. I have a hidden section near the end for all the mainstream rap songs that were super popular from that time that I didn’t like.

But why focus on what I don’t like? That section takes up less than 5% of the total playlist. The other 95% is everything else, from an artist’s entire discography, to new and weird shit I was trying out, classics that I had loved for years at that point, and all the new hip hop I could have ever dreamed of. It’s also got this weird quality, where the playlist is both organized and also not organized at the same time. For instance, when you scroll down to a random part of the playlist, you may see a lot of one artist. This must be everything from that artist, in chronological order, with genre adjacent artists before and after them, right? NOPE! This is just the songs that I like from said artist that are in the same order as a random YouTube playlist from 2012 that I found… I haven’t really gone back to this playlist at all, but maybe someday soon I will revisit it once more, just for the vibes.

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College/Web Dev Job

This was the follow-up playlist of “Awesome Stuff,” and while this certainly was not my second playlist ever created (I made a lot of smaller playlists that were basically self-contained sections of the “Awesome Stuff” playlist), this one became the main hub away from the rigid conformaties of the “Awesome Stuff” playlist… Basically, to sum it up briefly, you know how you do something without much intention or care, but then some time passes, and then before you know it, the thing that you kind of just threw together without much thought is now how that thing is, and any sort of trying to “fix it” now will just be breaking it, as it has become perfect because of it’s imperfections, all due to the passage of time?… Or maybe that is just a me thing? I am not sure, I may need to get my brain checked out at some point.

The idea I am really getting at, is that the “Awesome Stuff” playlist had become so old, that certain sections that were thrown together randomly when I was first creating it had become nostalgic to me. I had unintentionally created these weird clusters of songs that don’t really fit together, but it made sense to me (partially because I had listened to these songs like this for so long). I needed that flexibility and the freedom to rearrange, to add new things, to not feel bad if I got rid of something old from a playlist again. Hence, where the “Current Jamz” playlist comes in.

The name is supposed to reinforce the idea that “this playlist was made to be changed. It’s supposed to be current and up to date, so I need to clean out the old and let in the new.” And I will be the first to say, it was kind of a success (at first). I used this playlist for many many years, eventually surpassing the amount of time I had spent with the “Awesome Stuff” playlist. But sadly now, I feel like the “Current Jamz” playlist has met a similar fate, now acting more as a time capsule for when I was at peak “new music” listening. There are so many full albums on here that I only listened to once or twice. I always meant to revisit you, but I either never found myself in the mood for that type of music, or I did not feel excited enough after my first listen. The last update to this playlist was in August of 2024, so not super long ago in the grand scheme of things. But the last time I was actively listening to songs within the actual playlist? Probably more of a 2023 or possibly even a 2022 thing…

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Decentalization

After the creation of the “Current Jamz” playlist, there were times when I felt the need to branch out. Not that I fully left the “Current Jamz” playlist behind, but some extra variety helped mix things up and keep things fresh. I created a lot of smaller (200-300 song) playlists around 2019 to help capture a more specific vibe or soundscape. I have embedded a few examples of what these playlists looked like below.

While none of these completely usurped the role of the “Current Jamz” playlist, they did help supplement my listening experiences. In a way, I was branching out further from my previous playlist structures, and laying the foundation for what was to come later. Hmmm, it’s almost as if one thing happens that then influences the next thing that happens, like it has some sort of… CORRELATION?!?!? Ok, onto the next part…

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The New Style

“Sick Beastie Boys reference!” Oh, thanks for noticing, dude! Anyways… This is where we finally get to our most modern iteration of the playlist. These 3 embedded playlists below are the prime examples of how I have been listening to music for the past 2 years. Lots of different artists, lots of different genres, lots of different discoveries, but also a lot of older favorites sprinkled thoughout.

By now, if you have been glancing through the playlists as we are going through this journey, you may have noticed a pattern with these 3 recent examples. Some songs carry over, others do not. Some artists only get one song, others have a handful. The organization of everything is just – not there? Or maybe it’s just really well hidden. I ain’t gonna lie, I am still kind of figuring it out. While I hate feeling like I am just hopping from one playlist to another the moment I start to get bored with the last one, I feel like some part of me likes the idea of being able to let go and start fresh with a new playlist. However, that also leads to me putting certain songs I really really really like in each new iteration, which kind of goes against the whole idea of “starting fresh.” What is the point of a whole new playlist, when I am just going to add the same songs I have been listening to for the past couple of months anyways? It’s certainly a balancing act, and I am trying my best to keep these sorts of things in check. We will have to see how that pans out, in the future…

Closing Thoughts?

Well actually, probably maybe not. When I realized I should write a blog post about all of this, I also realized that this would make for a very good series, and a way for me to reflect on a batch of playlists in a different blog post in the future. Maybe if I am really, really smart, I will come back to this one, and I’ll put the link for the next one right HERE. If that text isn’t linked as you read this, that just means I am still in the process of experiencing life and building the next soundtrack to that portion of my life. Hope you stick around to hear it!