I tend to make playlists based on whatever mood or vibe I happen to be in at the time. The names, however, are usually much more random.
One of my playlists is called I'm quirky. Another is simply woop. I have one called :(, and a couple that are nothing more than random emojis. My current playlist is called big bop, which probably tells you absolutely nothing about what is actually on it.
Honestly, I think part of the reason I give my playlists names like that is because I would be embarrassed to name one something like I'm sad. If someone happened to see a playlist with that title, I would immediately become self-conscious about the fact that I had apparently made an entire playlist announcing my emotional state to the world. Somehow, :( feels much less vulnerable, even though it is arguably saying exactly the same thing.
This particular playlist started mostly from vibes. Some of the songs have been part of my rotation for years, while others are relatively new discoveries that I came across through TikTok. There isn't really one specific genre or artist connecting everything together. What connects them is much less tangible: I like the way they sound, the feeling they create, or something about them caught my attention enough that I wanted to keep listening.
And the reason I like a particular song isn't always the same.
Sometimes it is the lyrics. There might be a line that immediately stands out to me, or an idea in the song that I find myself relating to or thinking about.
Sometimes it is the production. Maybe there is a particular beat, bridge, instrumental section, vocal delivery, or buildup that makes me want to hear the song again. In those cases, I might not even be thinking very deeply about what the lyrics are saying. I just like the way the song feels.
And sometimes, honestly, it is just the vibes.
There are songs on this playlist where I couldn't necessarily explain why I like them beyond the fact that something about them works for me. Maybe the production creates a certain atmosphere. Maybe I heard a particular section in an edit and it stuck in my head. Maybe I can picture an entire scene playing out whenever the song comes on. Sometimes a song doesn't need to have a complicated explanation for why I enjoy it.
Normally, I listen to this playlist on shuffle. There isn't a particular order, and I don't necessarily think about how one song connects to the next. One minute I might be listening to something upbeat and romantic, and the next I could be listening to something deeply melancholic. The playlist doesn't really tell a story when I'm listening to it that way.
But for the purposes of writing about it, I decided to change that.
Because there are too many songs and too many thoughts about each one to fit everything into a single post, I'm breaking the playlist into eight-parts. Rather than simply dividing the songs randomly, I'm grouping them according to the way I interpret them.
That means the order in these posts won't necessarily match the order they appear in my actual playlist. I'm rearranging them so that, instead of jumping randomly from one idea to another, the songs can create more of a story when they're placed next to each other.
Some of the groups have four songs. Some have fewer. One has only a single song.
That might seem a little strange at first, but the groups aren't based on trying to make the numbers even. They're based on what I think the songs are saying and how they connect to one another through my own interpretations.
And that last part is important: my interpretations.
I don't think any of these interpretations are necessarily the correct way to understand these songs. In fact, I don't think there has to be one correct interpretation.
A song can mean something completely different to two different people and still be meaningful to both of them. One person might hear a song and think about a relationship, while someone else hears the exact same song and thinks about a friendship, a particular period of their life, or something that has nothing to do with the lyrics at all.
That's part of what makes music interesting to me.
The meaning of a song isn't always limited to what the artist intended when they wrote it. Once someone else hears it, they bring their own experiences, memories, emotions, and imagination into it. A lyric can suddenly mean something different because of something you've experienced. A production choice can remind you of a specific place or moment. A song can become attached to a person or a fictional scene that never existed anywhere except in your own head.
So these posts aren't meant to be definitive explanations of what these songs mean.
They're just explanations of what I hear when I listen to them.
Some of these songs are going to be about wanting someone. Some are about relationships that never quite became what they could have been. Some are about knowing you should let someone go and being unable to do it. Others have less to do with the literal story of the song and more to do with the atmosphere it creates.
And eventually, one of them gets considerably more personal.
But for now, this is just big bop, a completely random playlist that somehow ended up containing enough songs and thoughts to become a eight-part series.
I normally let the playlist decide what comes next when I hit shuffle.
This time, I'm deciding.