Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
The holiday season is, for many, the most wonderful time of the year. People are generally in better moods, the end of the year allows a lot of space for thinking about starting anew in the new year, and whether you celebrate Christmas or not, the spirit of giving and joy is hard not to get on board with.
For me, the highlight of the holiday season is the sheer amount of year-end roundups and reviews—sometimes comically wrong—and none is more enjoyable to me than Spotify’s Wrapped. Spotify’s Wrapped is an algorithmic analysis of an individual’s listening trends over the previous year on Spotify. Most major streaming platforms do some form of this now; Apple Music, Tidal and YouTube also have popular year-end analyses. But I use Spotify for 99 percent of my listening so as soon as I saw the first person share a list of their most listened to artists of 2025 on Instagram, I (figuratively) ran to Spotify, clicked on Wrapped and let the good times roll.
Before sharing some of my own results, I have to share why this type of stuff matters so much. For the better part of the past two decades, I’ve been a writer, documenting and discussing parts of the Black community I’ve found interesting and also, analyzing my own life at various stages. It’s fascinating to go back and read something I wrote in 2012 to see if I still feel the same way or if who I am now would even write that same thing. The ability to catalog one’s own existence and then compare and learn over time is truly a gift. To me, music is central to who I am as a person. There isn’t a single day that goes by where I’m not listening to music. To see what my habits were for the year (for better or worse, or even confusing, at times) is something I look forward to, especially compared to previous years. I can share this with my kids and inshallah, do the same ten years from now when they’re doing their own analysis.
Let’s start with what Spotify starts with because I found this to be the most telling (and frustrating for entirely ego-driven reasons). According to Wrapped, I listened to 25, 419 minutes of music, which translates to roughly 17 days. Um, EXCUSE ME!? That’s it? There were years where my numbers were in the 50,000 range; as I said there are no days where I’m not listening to music. But see..what had happened was, I listen to podcasts more than I listen to albums nowadays so that clearly has impacted my music numbers. I just want to make sure that the rest of the music head community understands what has happened here; I listen to A LOT of podcasts ABOUT music, though! I’m just saying; my 16-year-old daughter somehow listened to over 34,000 minutes and I don’t understand how and I felt some kind of way.
With my pride out of the way, I was accused of pop rap being the most popular genre of music I listened to but I don’t even know what that means…then again, according to Spotify, my listening age is 21 so….I don’t even know what to do with this. I did, though, listen to 4,067 songs which sounds like a lot but ALSO feels low. I feel like Spotify is coming for my music-card. But this is also where it gets really fun. For instance, I discovered that the song I listened to the most was “Perfect Combi” by King Promise and Gabzy, an Afrobeats record that I think is actually perfect, followed by “30 for 30” by SZA and Kendrick, “vanishing” by anaiis, “Black Pearls” a 2011 instrumental beat by producer Apollo Brown, and lastly a song that I literally have no idea how it ended up here. “Slipping Away” by the group Leisure is a record that I didn’t even recognize when I saw it, I had to listen to it more than once to figure out how in the world it ended up on my list. My guess? I run a lot of “song radio” playlists and it ends up on a lot because of my starting points. Wrapped, I see what you did there.
My FAVORITE list though is also the one I’m most proud of because it proves that I’m not new to this, I’m true to this. Because of the aforementioned “30 for 30” record, SZA’s “SOS Deluxe: LANA” album is my most listened to album, which feels off because I can’t name more than a handful of songs on it, however my number two album is Beyonce’s “Cowboy Carter,” which came out in 2024, but anybody who knows me will tell you that I run that album like it came out yesterday AND on the lead up to the “Cowboy Carter” tour I was a boot-stomping monster. But the one that really made me proud was Jagged Edge’s 2020 album, “A Jagged Love Story,” (which I contend is one of the best albums I’ve heard this century) is still in my top albums. I’m a Jagged Edge stan and listen to this album whenever I’m cleaning up my house. I clean up a lot. Shouts out to Jagged Edge and my continued, verifiable standom.
Another interesting wrinkle,that upon reflection makes sense is this: I listened to 2,145 artists this year, but the one I listened to most is a singer named anaiis, a French-Senegalese singer who popped up on a playlist I was listening to one day that changed my life. Anaiis is one of the few artists I discovered that I was pissed I didn’t know about before; Eryn Allen Kane is another singer I felt that way about. Either way, once I discovered anaiis, I went down the rabbit hole for days. I could not be more all-in on an artist and Wrapped confirmed that.
One of the funnest things that Spotify did this year (I don’t think they did this last year) was compile some interesting, specific highlights as well. For instance, February 18 was a repeat-heavy day for me, where I apparently played “Perfect Combi” and Jagged Edge for 316 minutes. Yowza. More fun than that was that on June 19, 2025, we had a Juneteenth party at my house and for 646 minutes (which is over 10 hours), we jammed out to straight cookout and afrobeat jams.
Obviously, there’s a ton more information to parse and I have done more and will continue to do more as I take a look back at my year in music and compare it to my history. For instance, in 2024, my top song was Muni Long’s “Made For Me”; in 2023, it was Michael Jackson’s “Bad,” which is a nod to the year when my second-oldest son intercepted my Spotify account. To wit, the first 5 songs on my top 10 that year are Michael Jackson…followed by Summer Walker, Noname, Victoria Monet and Lil Yachty.
See, that’s the fun part of this all, and the part I appreciate most. I can figure out what was happening in my life and my household just from jamming down the memory lane of my listening habits. In 2022, the “Encanto” soundtrack reigned supreme. Spotify’s Wrapped even makes sure I know what a good parent I was. With that said, shouts out to all the parents whose Wrapped is ruined because your kids use your Spotify and the entire K-Pop: Demon Hunters soundtrack dominates your 2025 Wrapped. You’re my soda pop, indeed.
If you are a personal history buff like I am, the ability to learn more about yourself is always on the menu, not just for purposes of growth, but for understanding. I know it’s just music, but baby, its muuuuusic. Music is life.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try to run up these 2025 numbers to get to a respectable 30,000 minutes listened.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
