Spotify Unwrapped: A Producer’s Perspective in 2022
It’s the most wonderful time of the year: Time for everybody to check their Spotify wrapped and, maybe, more importantly, their top song.
Spotify Wrapped creates a playlist of the top 100 songs you played from the months of Jan-Nov, and you can glean a lot from the peak of the playlist. So what does your top song say about you?
As a music producer, I love seeing some of my biggest musical influences over the years and how it’s shaped my style. So in this article, I thought it’d be fun to dive into my top song for this year on Spotify Wrapped.
Spotify Wrapped 2022: “People I Don’t Like” - UPSAHL
What Makes It Great: To the people who are done with drama, sick of shallow people, and bored with the groups of people desperately showing off for praise, this song might be for you. The story within this song details the first-person perspective of going through the motions and getting through the shallow groups of people in parties or other settings. Of course, everyone is trying to impress everyone, but UPSAHL shares a sentiment of frustration with fraudulent personalities.
“People I Don’t Like” is simple in structure but contains an incredible amount of character. The foundation is rooted in the song’s signature gritty bass line, a hook already catchy enough within itself. Layered on top is a bouncing background of bottle clinks and metallic hits, a sharper background sound that effectively adds contrast and space to the bass guitar's slightly muted and lower tone. Most notably in the track, center stage lies UPSAHL’s vocals. Parts of the pre-chorus and chorus are more akin to spoken word/rap and filled with a personality made up of sass, frustration and exhaustion, and playfulness. The more melodic vocals show impressive control and a smooth tone that travels through chromatic harmonies (a signature style of UPSAHL’s). This comes together on top of a consistent kick drum to create an addictive, masterfully mixed track.
How It’s Played into My Creative Style: This song has significantly changed how I look at bass guitars. I used to not pay much attention to them other than sticking in a simple bass line to support everything above it. However, I’ve learned in doing the opposite; you can get some gritty textures and new foundations to play with that are just as effective. It’s also eased me into incorporating more live bass instead of preset digital bass samples. Some elements of the strings being plucked, that acoustic snap and scrape, just can’t be replicated digitally with as much variation. A real bass guitar adds more tools to the toolkit and can be a great start to any song structure.
“People I Don’t Like” has also taught me to be more aware of sound contrasts in my production process. It creates distinction and an exciting dynamic in the mix. Lastly, chromatic harmonies are a tool that I don’t personally keep in my toolkit, but after listening to this song, I feel the urge to play around with the eery feeling it creates. I’m unfamiliar with incorporating that aspect, but part of the journey is constantly discovering, learning, and applying new skills. This song gave me the discovery portion and urged me into the learning section, which I hope to use in the application stage in future projects.
What It Says About Me: Whether it’s the catchy hook of a song, the emotionally moving progression, or the relatability (or story) in the lyrics, everyone has their reason for their top Spotify song in a way that connects to them. This song initially caught my attention because of the song's wonderfully produced bass guitar hook. No time wasted, jumping right into the theme; I was addicted in seconds. However, after a few more listens, I was further drawn in because I relate to the frustration of navigating shallow people.
Deep and meaningful connection is what so many of us look for yet rarely find. Relationships quickly become fleeting among those with a surface-level high school popularity mentality, leaving everyone exhausted in the search for connection. This song is a shoulder to lean on for those still searching for that connection. I’m grateful enough to say that I’ve been able to find these connections in my life (this is still a sick song, though, I can’t even lie).
So, what’s your top song, and what does it mean to you? Spotify “wrapped” is giving you a whole story to, well, unwrap!
