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I Really I didn’t see it coming. This year, I’ve been listening to a lot of my beloved Britpop – having missed the Oasis tour – and my most played artist was Lily Allen, as her new album came on repeat in the kitchen (when “Pussy Palace” comes on you’ll want to do a loud rendition). I hosted two summer barbecues and a first birthday party. So imagine my surprise when I found out that Spotify thinks I’m 100 years old.
According to streaming service Wrapped Feature – A roundup of your most played songs and artists over the last 12 months – My “age of hearing” Roughly the equivalent of a centenarian. Older than Sir David Attenborough. I’m expecting a card from the King any moment. As a friend said when I shared the news on Instagram, “You’re the oldest on my timeline!” I think thank you.
Obviously, this is all a clever marketing move by Spotify. Still, my social media feeds are filled with people sharing how old they are, because it cleverly taps into what we all want – to look good, and, even better, to be declared cool by someone else. oh, it’s not like that Me Spotify says my music tastes are that of a 25-year-old and my life is an “endless party.”
I saw one person post that their listening age was 17 – “Since you listen to mostly new music. Your taste is trending.” The ultimate humble brag. And who cares if you’re not responsible? A friend was granted a hearing age of 29 because of her husband’s penchant for Taylor Swift and, inexplicably, Avril Lavigne. She’ll take it, thank you very much – compensation for all those hours with music more suitable for a teenage girl.
I have noticed a distinct lack of anyone acknowledging the age of hearing in the forties, fifties and sixties. Who wants to be middle-aged and living in the middle of the road? “I’m 46, and there’s a lot of French electronica out there, peak middle-aged dad,” messaged a friend in the media who absolutely declined to share the information publicly.
Still, I’m glad to know that my musical tastes are in line with my biological age, and not about 60 years older than that. I thought I was pretty turned on? I try to listen to some new music. I enjoy podcasts, and none of them are about the Boer War. I can’t really blame my mother-in-law, who shares the account, because she loves Slipknot and house music.
According to Spotify, this is all calculated using the concept of “memory bump”. They look at the release dates of the music you listen to, figure out which five-year period you’re most associated with and hypothesize that you were between the ages of 16 and 21 during that time, since we’re most nostalgic for the music of our youth. This means that in 1941 I would have been 16 years old. Turn on wireless!
Others who have been labeled aging are equally angry and vocal about it – and are using it as proof that Spotify has got everything wrong and is passing bizarre judgments based on the occasional blast of Bach while cooking dinner. A friend, who was surprised by the musical age of 80 because she’s actually cooler than that, thank you very much, quietly admitted: “‘The Girl from Ipanema’, though, come on…”
And isn’t it true? For most of us it’s all just one big cultural zeitgeist? Gen Z are embracing the fashion of the nineties and noughties, and also listening to music, which puts them firmly in the same listening group as people in the forties and fifties. Many of us older millennials and Gen-Xers grew up with our parents’ sixties and seventies stuff and still have a soft spot for it.
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Placing us in music boxes by age fails to recognize the reality of how we listen and arguably the entire streaming platform model, which precisely uses algorithms to expand our musical horizons. This is partly why my top genres are Indie, Soul, Alternative Pop, Britpop and Electronica. This is called having range.
So while I’ve been listening to Lily Allen, I’ve also streamed Carole King, The Drifters, and Edith Piaf (which was on my cesarean playlist at the hospital — thanks for being so discreet, Spotify). Whenever I’ve played Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club,” my son has enjoyed the 1920s music hall version of “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” – there really should be an exemption for children’s musicals. Still, I think her newfound love for “The Wheels on the Bus” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” might help narrow down my listening horizon for the next year.