Pandemic Playlists

08 Jan, 2025

Some background

About 5 years ago since COVID started,¹ I was 17 and I was supposed to be taking my Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia², a nationwide examination for all 17-year-olds (or 18, in some cases) who are enrolled in public high schools are required to take. It occurred right before the intensive revision period my school usually does (approx. 1-2 months before the actual examination itself) and shocked many of us.

We immediately migrated to online classes, with some teachers taking opportunities to go missing or just to send over practice papers with the answer PDFs and have us go through them ourselves. It was not a fun time for me. The online class situation continued well into the first semester of the foundation/pre-university course I enrolled in.

Unsurprised to anyone, I felt incredibly depressed during this period. It was the same routine: wake up, attend classes (if any), do any assigned work, exercise in a small store room, read whatever I was reading, sleep, and repeat.

However, one thing³ brought me some joy, and sometimes catharsis. Music. I've been an avid listener of random⁴ indie pop music you'll see being played in the sidebars of YouTube. And I somehow went into the rabbit hole of listening to a whole bunch of music from there.

A little bit addicted

I eventually started to listen to whole discographies of musicians. I would sit through albums to know if they were any good like that random Redditor or RateYourMusic said they were. During the same time, I was bulk-downloading so much of these onto my computer and phone that I felt that every other day I was busy doing research on new artists and finding ways to get their music. I've moved on to streaming now, please don't sue me.

I would listen to music between classes, and I would listen to it when we were assigned to do our work while the lecturer waited for us to complete it in the Teams calls we had. I would listen before I went to bed, even with the exhaustion from the day.

And a lot of this music was more of a sombre type (I'm looking at you Matt Berninger and Julien Baker), and whenever I return to it now, I don't really feel the same connection I used to back in those years.

Moving away from it all

As the physical restrictions were removed and the transition to physical classes was put into place, I found myself reducing the amount of music I consumed. Of course, at first, this was not intentional but merely due to necessity. However, as my friendships grew, my attention shifted to other things on campus, and as my confidence steadily increased, I stopped using music as a crutch to distract myself from negative thoughts when I was at home.

I eventually switched over to Spotify after years of just ripping mp3s of the music. I felt guilty that my listens weren't being counted towards the artists, especially when I was listening to new music. It is the cheapest streaming platform available where I live; however, if and when I have the means, I would definitely switch to a more reasonable and artist-supporting platform⁵.

Another year, another playlist

Although I adore listening to albums⁶, I did start to create more playlists when I used streaming. I would organize them based on mood and the activities I might be doing while listening to them. At the beginning of 2021, I decided to create a yearly recap playlist for the year before. I chose the format "20 in 2020" because I thought 20 tracks were just enough to bring me that sweet, warm feeling of nostalgia without making me bored or forgetting that I was listening to a curated playlist.

Luckily, 17-year-old me signed up for an account on Last.fm and remembered to link it to my phone's music player as well as my Spotify account. I was able to access the statistics; tracks I've listened to, albums I've most listened to, and artists I've most listened to. I then chose the 20 tracks that I felt resonated with me the most. For the next years, I did a little differently: I would add a few songs per month instead of adding them all in one go at the end of it. This way I would be slightly less influenced by the recency bias that I believe the 2020 one did have.

I've done this since 2020 so I have five of them in total - not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but that's 22.72% of my life already! These playlists are all around 1-1.5 hours and I've found them to be so valuable when just wanting to feel immersed in a way I don't know how to describe.

Some highlights from the playlists

2020

In 2020, Phoebe Bridgers was all the hype on r/indieheads. I used to browse through a lot of the music there and I was already listening to Julien Baker, so I thought I would try her new Punisher album out. It turned into essentially my album of the year then.

The first song on my playlist was Garden Song. I chose this song because (a) it's a pretty good song, and because it was a song that starts soft and transitions into lyrics about growth and change. My sister was around me a lot when I was listening to Bridgers and in particular this song. She always described Bridgers as "oh, that's my nap background music right there," jokingly but recently she mentioned that whenever she listens to this album (and some Pinegrove tracks, out of all things), it always brings her back to the time when she was working on her thesis and how far she's come from then.

It was nice to hear that a random song I played back then could have such an effect on her now.

Another random memory that came to me as I was listening to the playlist is that I had My Own Soul's Warning by The Killers listed too. This song was the song I had playing in the background at 5:30 am when I was brushing my teeth first thing in the morning when I started having to commute to my college. It pumped me up for school and the energy got me surviving the first 10 minutes of my wakefulness.

2021

This was the year that I listened to Kanye West. And I think the only last time he ever did anything to my tastes (sorry, not sorry). I quite enjoyed his DONDA album that year - it was upbeat, and the lyrics were all alright. The production of it felt clean too. I managed to slip in the track Jail, right before my last track of the playlist, Empire Line.

"Empire Line" was always one of those tracks I would deliberately choose to listen to last, right before trying to sleep. I would put on my noise-canceling headphones, lie down, and let this track play. Matt's lyrics in this song resonated with me deeply - I felt disconnected from the people around me, especially my parents, and generally felt lonely. This song truly encapsulated those feelings.

2022

This was the year my partner and I got together after corresponding online in our online semester before meeting in college when it reopened! He loves David Bowie as his grandfather is the type to have music on, and Under Pressure was one of the songs he shared with me in a playlist of Bowie tracks (as a Get Started type of thing) he sent me.

This was also the year my partner's grandmother who he was very close to, and played a large part in bringing him up passed away. I was lucky enough to see her once before she passed. One of her and her husband's favourite songs was Take Me Home by John Denver. This was not a song that I would play on my own accord usually.

Her cremation was one like I've never experienced. As her family affiliated her with music so much, the entire session had her favourites being played. And as her coffin was being pulled into the cremation compartment in the hall, this song played. You could see the impact this woman made on her family when this happened. I wasn't close to her, but I could feel the love around her.

It was a beautiful moment, and although sad, I'm glad that her family, my partner, and even I have something to remember her by. I still get teary listening to this song, as I know how hard it was on my partner and how it impacted so much of his family and him when it happened.

2023

I also included 1-2 instrumental/non-vocal tracks on most of these, and for 2023, I included If You Leave Something Behind by Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen. The soundtrack to the movie Past Lives was replayed again and again during the last semester of my first undergrad year. It was an anxious time for me - with my partner, and with my academics, and I always felt a sense of comfort when the soft chime-like sounds played from this track in particular. I don't have the vocabulary to describe this track at all (as you can now tell, I presume) but it brings about an almost soothing vibe to me the instance I hear it.

I also had a cheesy Hippo Campus song, Probably, that I included! I quite like this band even though I don't like everything they put out, especially their more experimental or electronic-sounding ones. I loved their stripped-down moments, and this was a great example of it. I recalled thinking a lot about my relationship - an alternate universe or an outcome if things don't work out with my partner. It made me feel many things, but mostly, it reminded me to appreciate what I have with him. One of the best things music can do is remind you of what’s here in the world.

Ironically, as much as my younger self wanted music to be a distraction, most of the time it just reminded me of real life - for better or for worse.

2024

The first song I added here was No Escape by Darren Korb. One of the most recognizable tracks from the first entry in the Hades video game series. I loved this game. It was so infuriating, yet I played it almost every day during the semester of my internship.

My partner and I would carpool (he drove) to our workplace every day, and each morning I would take the first 20 minutes of the drive to play the game. I wouldn't be able to complete an entire run, but I would be close to halfway! I have so many memories of myself complaining to my partner, and he would ask me about my progress. Before I started bringing my Steam Deck with me for the ride, I used to take out my laptop and start doing some work, which my partner didn't quite like since I was working outside of working hours (albeit the work was for my side job), and it did tire me out during those first few weeks. I decided to change that by playing the game, and he was happy that I did!

Another song that I included was 金黃色的 by Enno Cheng. This one is quite interesting for me as although I am of Chinese descent, I can't quite speak Mandarin properly. I'm what Malaysians call "banana" as we're yellow (Chinese) on the outside but white on the inside. I speak very casually and with the vocabulary of an 8-year-old, probably, and can't read anything beyond kindergarten-level characters to save my life, but I was surrounded by friends and family who did listen to and consume Mandarin media.

And Enno Cheng was one of my discoveries earlier in 2024! Her music is a mix of Mandarin and Hokkien, the latter being a dialect of Mandarin that I could speak fairly fluently (a Malaysian variant of it, at least), and I found her music very intriguing as she managed to blend the two in some of her songs, while maintaining a very modern production style.

This song landed in the playlist because I ended up going to a gig she had here with my sister and my partner (both also Bananas), and I had such an amazing time. Her vocals were better than her studio recordings, and she had great energy. The only thing that didn’t work out quite well for us was that, since we couldn’t quite understand what she was saying most of the time, as she uses Mandarin during her speeches and in-between explanations of songs, we struggled to get through the pauses between tracks where she would share her thoughts, background, and process behind them.

Right after this gig, my grandfather fell really ill and had a pneumonia infection. We initially thought he would make it, as it seemed like he was recovering a little more after being brought home, but he passed very quickly after getting back. I stopped listening to Enno Cheng for a while after that, as her music is quite poppy and upbeat, and this event would probably be something I would remember when I think of the gig. But it is what it is.

The last track of 2024 was The Line by Twenty One Pilots. Yes, I know. This band is probably side-eyed by the elitists in r/indieheads but there's a good reason for it being here⁷. It was because of Arcane Season 2.

I'm a big fan of the series. In my opinion, it is the best animation currently out there, and I don't see anything surpassing it anytime soon. The second season was a little too fast-paced for me, but I still found the story and action scenes to be just as compelling as the first. And oh my, the music in this one is also much more memorable. This song, in particular, plays during a very important scene where an action by two key characters leads to the demise of another very important character. Apologies if that was too much of a spoiler. I hope you scrolled away in time.

The vocals, the strings, and just the vastness of the song are beautiful. It touched me a lot more than the other tracks, and I'm surprised that the band could pull it off. It doesn't sound like any other 21 Pilots song, as far as I can recall. And, after you listen to the regular studio version, please do yourself a favour and check out their 1st live performance here. Immaculate.

What now?

So that brings us to the end of the article. My approach to music is now a lot more natural, and I do a lot less "hunting" or research for new music these days. I mainly rely on my Spotify notifications to see if the artists I follow have released anything new, Reddit (with a grain of salt, of course), and Bandcamp articles. The latter is mainly during the end-of-year posts of the "Best Of" lists.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that my music tastes for new music have changed. I used to listen to a lot of melancholic, lesser-produced, or sparse-like music. I haven't stopped listening to the artists I enjoyed then: The National, Pinegrove, Bon Iver, Bright Eyes, Sufjan Stevens, Frightened Rabbit, and many more - but my relationship with them differs now. I find myself relating less and thinking more about the artist's personal experience rather than mine.

I'm also gravitating to poppier and catchier music! My top albums of 2024 were Billie Eilish's Hit Me Hard and Soft, and the very sing-alongable album, The Past is Still Alive, by Hurray for the Riff Raff. I also had tons of plays with the Fontaines D.C.'s Romance!

Relationship with the new stuff

My relationship with music has evolved, and I'm okay with it. I've always thought I would be the type to constantly look for new music, trying to consume it all and find hidden gems. In a way, I would still like to do that, but definitely with a lot more limits than what I did back in the day (the computer hard drive they were all downloaded onto is crying at the amount of space it took).

I really resonate with Skye from Professor Skye's Record Review. He shares in many of his videos that when he reached his 20s, he started discovering less and less music and stuck to the mindset that what he was listening to was the best. Eventually, as he entered his middle ages, he started rediscovering current music and found that he did, indeed, like it!

I don't know if that's going to be something that'd happen to me, but I do sometimes feel fatigued with the constant new artists popping out and new things to listen to. Either way, I’m okay with letting my relationship with music just be a natural process, and whatever comes my way, I'll try to have as much fun with it.

Thank you so much for getting through this long article! I haven't had so much enjoyment from writing in a while, and this felt almost like a mini reflection on the past years. I haven't thought much about the environment and situations I was in back then, and I'm really happy to see that I'm in a much better place compared to when I first created my playlists.

Please share your thoughts if you have any, and if not, listen on!

[1/100] for #100DaysToOffload

Footnotes

#100DaysToOffload #music #personal