I really didn’t see it coming. This year, I’ve listened to a lot of my beloved Britpop – having missed out on the Oasis tour – and my most-played artist was Lily Allen, on account of having her new album on repeat in the kitchen (you want to be wielding a sharp implement when “Pussy Palace” comes on). I hosted two summer barbecues and a first-birthday party. So imagine my shock to discover that Spotify thinks I’m 100 years old.
According to the streaming service’s Wrapped feature – a roundup of your most played songs and artists over the past 12 months – my “listening age” is roughly that of a centenarian. Older than Sir David Attenborough. I’m expecting a card from the King any minute. As one friend put it, when I shared the news on Instagram, “you’re the oldest on my timeline!” Thanks, I think.
Obviously, it’s all a clever marketing ploy by Spotify. Even so, my social media feeds are chocka with people sharing their listening ages, because it’s cleverly tapped into something we all want – to look cool, and, even better, to be declared cool by someone else. Hey, it’s not me saying that my music taste is that of a 25-year-old and my life is one “endless party”, it’s Spotify.
I saw one person post that their listening age was 17 – “Since you listen to mostly new music. Your taste is trending.” The ultimate humblebrag. And who cares if you’re not the one responsible? One pal was bestowed with a listening age of 29 thanks to her husband’s penchant for Taylor Swift and, inexplicably, Avril Lavigne. She’ll take it, thanks very much – compensation for all those hours enduring music better suited to a teenage girl.
I have noticed a distinct lack of anyone admitting to having a listening age in the forties, fifties and sixties. Who wants to be outed as middle-aged and middle of the road? “Mine is 46, and there is a lot of French electronica on there, which is peak midlife dad,” messaged a friend in the media who absolutely refused to share the information publicly.
Still, I’d have loved to be told my music taste was in line with my biological age and not almost 60 years above it. I thought I was quite current? I make an effort to listen to some new music. I enjoy podcasts, and none of them are about the Boer war. I can’t even really blame my mother-in-law, who shares the account, because she loves Slipknot and house music.
According to Spotify, it’s all calculated using the concept of the “reminiscence bump”. They look at the release dates of the music you listen to, work out which five-year period you engage with most and hypothesise that you were aged between 16 and 21 during that time, as we tend to be most nostalgic for the music of our youth. Which means I’d have been 16 in 1941. Crank up the wireless!
Others labelled geriatric are similarly outraged and vocal about it – and are using it as evidence that Spotify has got it all wrong and is spewing out bizarre verdicts based on the occasional blast of Bach while cooking dinner. One friend, appalled at having a musical age of 80, because she’s actually a lot cooler than that, thank you very much, did quietly admit: “‘The Girl from Ipanema’, though, come on…”
And isn’t that the truth? That for most of us it’s all a big cultural age mash-up? Gen Z are wearing Nineties and Noughties fashion, and listening to the music too, plonking them firmly in the same listening bracket as people in their forties and fifties. Many of us older millennials and Gen-Xers were raised with our parents’ Sixties and Seventies stuff and still have a soft spot for it.
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Putting us in musical boxes, according to age, fails to recognise the reality of how we listen and arguably the entire streaming platform model, which uses algorithms precisely to expand our musical horizons. Which is partly why my top genres are indie, soul, alternative pop, Britpop and electronica. It’s called having range.
So for every time I’ve listened to Lily Allen, I’ve also streamed Carole King, The Drifters and Edith Piaf (which was on my caesarean playlist at the hospital – thanks for being so judgy, Spotify). For every time I’ve played Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club”, my son has enjoyed a 1920s music hall version of “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” – there really should be an exemption for children’s music. Still, I suppose his newfound love for “The Wheels on the Bus” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” might help bring down my listening age for next year.