We just finished our latest playlist night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every year, Jessi and I finish our weekly \u2018Fridates\u2019 by sharing our top 20 songs of the year. Songs released this year, songs we discovered this year, songs we rediscovered this year\u2013if we listened to it during the calendar year, it\u2019s eligible for a spot on our lists. A few things are given: Jack White makes an appearance on hers, Beyonc\u00e9 shows up on mine; her\u2019s is rock heavy, mine typically has a soul-pop base; most of her artists are men, and most of mine are women. We find it equally as exciting when our tastes prove consistent as we do when we see each other stray from our typical listening fare\u2013sometimes into the other\u2019s territory. This year\u2019s top 20 Fridate found us unexpectedly in the same Florida city, wrapped in blankets, sipping tea, and baring our souls across 20 tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Initially, the Venn diagram of our music tastes barely<\/em> overlapped. Loving music as much as we both do, we decided to cultivate our friendship and get to know each other more deeply by creating collaborative playlists. We\u2019d each pick an artist we love, choose 10 tracks from their discographies, and listen to the 20-track playlist, alternating artists with each song. We\u2019d pair artists by similarity in sound, era, catalog size, or just because we really <\/em>wanted to share them with each other right then. In 2016, we\u2019d listen and discuss as we drove to Bananas Records Warehouse in St. Pete for a record shopping day, or on the trip to Orlando for an EPCOT afternoon. Aretha Franklin and the Beatles<\/a>; Janelle Monae and Prince<\/a>; Joss Stone and The Bee Gees<\/a>; Adele and Mumford & Sons<\/a>; Amy Winehouse and Nirvana<\/a>; Johnny Cash and Nina Simone<\/a>\u2026as disparate as they might seem, each playlist provided an enthralling and rewarding listening (therapy) experience. We soon added \u201cthemed\u201d collaborative playlists to our experiment, such as songs that discuss grief, songs that feel like winter, songs covered by our favorite artists\u2013whatever struck us. Even after I moved to New Orleans in 2023, we kept our weekly Fridates over Zoom sessions, continuing our playlists virtually. We\u2019ve each discovered new favorite songs, artists, and genres through this 7+ year experiment. We\u2019ve done almost 100 playlists together, over 300 hours of sharing music (and parts of ourselves) and we have music discussions planned through September of 2026. Out of everything I\u2019ve ever worked on in my life, this has to be my favorite thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our 2024 top 20 playlists proved to be pretty typically \u201cus.\u201d Having both experienced difficult stretches through the year, it was clear that we sought solace in the music that comforts us. Beyonc\u00e9 showed up on my list (#2<\/a> and #9<\/a>) and Jack showed up on hers (#6<\/a> and #10<\/a>); but this year, for the first time, Jack White landed on my list (#14<\/a>) and Beyonc\u00e9 on hers (#18<\/a>). This surprise was unsurprising, yet we still smiled like idiots when we played those songs for each other. Have we worn each other down? Maybe. I like to think we\u2019ve expanded as music enthusiasts and as people. I know we\u2019ve both started next year\u2019s playlists already\u2013 and I can\u2019t wait to see what overlaps in 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We just finished our latest playlist night. Every year, Jessi and I finish our weekly \u2018Fridates\u2019 by sharing our top 20 songs of the year. Songs released this year, songs we discovered this year, songs we rediscovered this year\u2013if we listened to it during the calendar year, it\u2019s eligible for a spot on our lists. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[12,9,10,13,8,7,14,11],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-introduction","tag-12","tag-beyonce","tag-fridate","tag-intro","tag-jack-white","tag-playlist","tag-ranking","tag-top-20"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonustracks.blog\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonustracks.blog\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonustracks.blog\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonustracks.blog\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonustracks.blog\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/bonustracks.blog\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/bonustracks.blog\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonustracks.blog\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonustracks.blog\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonustracks.blog\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonustracks.blog\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}