How did you celebrate Spotify Wrapped this year?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and I’m talking about the first cold days of December when Wrapped drops, when we finally have the opportunity to show the outside world our inner garden.
Every Wrapped counts as a personality trait, which would be very helpful if, for example, we shared it on a first date in order to detect if there would be a second one.

When our feed is packed with reposts, ads, and memes —anything but me, me, me— Wrapped looks like a rare moment of authenticity (or frenzy). It is something that we truly leave behind, our legacy, our imprint, which we share with ample pride and say: “Here’s what I listened to all year! Aren’t I too special?”

Wrapped, the jollification of surveillance and big data, appears like a rabbit pulled out of a hat, filling us with the confidence to be ourselves without fear and show to the world the nonsense we’ve had coming through our earphones all year long. Let’s embrace the diversity of what we listen to and join this Music Pride ourselves where it’s our personal data that parades through our stories, not us down the main streets of Athens.

“Here’s what I listened to all year! Aren’t I too special?”

“Okay, but did you see my Wrapped? Dude, come on I’m in my own little world, I’m not like everyone else. I was in the top 0.001% of superfans of some obscure band from the Strait of Malacca in Malaysia. They even thanked me personally in Malay. I didn’t understand a damn word.” It’s the one moment in the year when being “on the margin” is projected as a symbol of honor. The more we refrain from the mainstream, the more unique we feel.

Meanwhile, we are constantly aware of what we’re listening to all year long. We find ourselves censoring our musical choices, because they might “spoil our image” in the recap, ruin the perfect musical profile we’ve been building for years, only for it to collapse because we were once struck by nostalgia for the entire discography of Enrique Iglesias and, out of nowhere, Ricky shows up in our Top Artists of ’25.

“See what I listen to? See what I feed my fabulous, perfectly shaped ears? Look at me – look at me”. “Who the hell cares about the music, guys?”, Wrapped feeds our ego and vanity, our need to show how different we are, ending up in the sweet paradox of everyone sharing at once, inevitably leaving us feeling overstuffed. We’re fed up! No more Wrapped!

Till next year!