Five years of Spotify Wrapped

I love listening to music. I don’t UNDERSTAND music. I can’t sing or play an instrument, but music has been with me since I was a small child. When I’m running, walking, cleaning, cooking etc, I’m always listening to music.

I’ve written before about how much I love Spotify. It really helps lift my mood when I’m feeling a bit down. And every year I love to see my Spotify Wrapped to see what I’ve been listening to and how my listening has changed from year to year. I was pretty late to the party with Spotify and started listening in October 2020, so I’m pretty sure I didn’t have a Wrapped in 2020. If I did, I certainly can’t remember it!

2021

In 2021, my Wrapped seemed to sum up my musical tastes perfectly:

• Levellers
• The Wonder Stuff
• Ed Sheeran
• Pulp
• REM

I was loving rediscovering old albums from Pulp (Different Class and His ‘n’ Hers) and REM (Out of Time and Automatic for the People). Ed Sheeran had just released Equals and Levellers were my favourite band as ever. They’d also released their best new album in over 20 years – Peace, which I listened to a lot.

My top five songs for 2021 were: Four Boys Lost; Calling Out; Generation Fear; Albion & Phoenix; and Our New Day – all by Levellers from Peace.

My top 100 song were by Levellers, New Model Army, REM, Therapy?, Ed Sheeran, The Wonder Stuff, Pulp, Sam Fender, Manic Street Preachers, The House of Love, Ocean Colour Scene, Del Amitri, James and Lorde.

2022

I was surprised how much things had moved on for 2022:

• Yungblud
• The Wonder Stuff
• Levellers
• Coldplay
• Elton John

I saw all of those artists live in 2022, apart from Yungblud. I also saw Ed Sheeran live, but he’d clearly fallen out of favour slightly or, more specifically, I needed to ‘revise’ Elton John songs. I was surprised that The Wonder Stuff had overtaken Levellers in my chart, but can only imagine it was very close.

Yungblud came to me out of nowhere. I loved his single, The Funeral, when it came out in the spring, which I listened to quite a bit. Then when my son went to university, I started listening to his most recent album almost obsessively. It helped me through a tough time.

My top five songs for 2022 were: The Funeral; Tissues; Memories; Sweet Heroine; and Cruel Kids – all by Yungblud from his eponymous third album.

My top 100 songs were by Yungblud, Coldplay, The Wonder Stuff, REM, Ed Sheeran, Sam Fender, Levellers, Elton John, Pulp, George Ezra, Vampire Weekend, Elbow and New Model Army.

2023

Things had moved on again in 2023:

• Yungblud
• Levellers
• Ed Sheeran
• Travis
• New Model Army

I started listening to Yungblud’s previous two albums at the start of 2023 and continued listening to him a lot throughout the year. Three of my top 5 most listened songs were Yungblud, the others were Ed Sheeran and Travis. I saw Levellers, Ed Sheeran and Travis live in 2023. Travis headlined Wychwood Festival, which we go to every year. I’d never listened to them before, but loved their music. I listened to them a lot after that!

New Model Army are a band I listened to in 6th form and university, which I’d forgotten about until Spotify brought them back into my life. This year, I listened to them a lot more. I was surprised that The Wonder Stuff hadn’t just fallen out of my top 5 artists, their songs didn’t even feature in my top 100 for the year. But they were back again for 2024!

My top five songs for 2023 were: Eyes Closed by Ed Sheeran; The Funeral; Don’t Feel Like Feeling Sad Today; and Lowlife (all by Yungblud) and Writing to Reach You by Travis.

My top 100 songs were by Ed Sheeran, Yungblud, Travis, Levellers, Radiohead, New Model Army, REM, Various artists – The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack; Manic Street Preachers, The Cure, Nirvana, Suede, Elton John, Queen and Chumbawamba.

2024

In 2024, my top two artists stayed the same and The Wonder Stuff were restored to their rightful place on the list! 2024 was the year Kenickie came back into my life. Kenickie were a female-led punk pop group from the late 90s. Their lead singer was Lauren Laverne – the TV and radio presenter. I absolutely loved them and was at the gig where they split up. Getting back to their music was a joy. When I started listening to in the summer, their monthly listens were only about 7,000. Despite me putting a shift in listening to them, that was down to 5,300 by the end of the year!

Noah Kahan was kind of a shock entry into my top five artists. I was obsessed with his song Stick Season for much of the year. I listened to his album for two or three weeks at the start of the year, but didn’t love it and didn’t go back to it. But that combined with my Stick Season obsession put him in third place just behind my two absolute favourites:

• Yungblud
• Levellers
• Noah Kahan
• Kenickie
• The Wonder Stuff

My top five songs for 2024 were: Stick Season; The Funeral; Don’t Feel Like Feeling Sad Today; World Freakshow and One Way (both by Levellers).

My top 100 songs were by Noah Kahan, Yungblud, Levellers, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Travis, New Model Army, The Wonder Stuff, Radiohead, Ocean Colour Scene, Chappell Roan, Kenickie, Chumbawamba, Oasis, REM, The Cranberries, Coldplay, The Killers, Pixies, Queen and Pulp.

2025

2025 made it a full five years of Spotify Wrapped for me. And The Wonder Stuff had fallen out of my top five again! This year’s top artists were:

• Yungblud
• Levellers
• Pulp
• Simon & Garfunkel
• Suede

Both Pulp and Suede had new albums out. For me, Suede’s album was the better of the two, but Pulp had the best song – with Spike Island. We also got to see Pulp live, which was brilliant. I loved Simon & Garfunkel as a teenager (I listened to my parents’ albums). My husband didn’t actually know I liked Simon & Garfunkel. But he booked for us to see The Simon & Garfunkel Story (basically a tribute act with a background story) on our silver wedding anniversary – just because it was the only show on in Cornwall that night. It turned out to be a very good choice.

This year, Spotify Wrapped gave us our top five albums. For me, there could only be one which took the #1 spot – Idols by Yungblud, which was released in June. Apparently, I listened to it for 3,800 minutes. In total, I listened to Yungblud for 8,732 minutes, which was 5,000 minutes more than in 2024! It put me in the top 0.009% of fans globally. I was actually ranked number 3,397 in the world. Surely I should be able to meet him when I go to see him in Birmingham next year with those statistics?

The rest of my album chart was weird! by Yungblud, Antidepressants by Suede, More by Pulp and Construction for the Modern Idiot by The Wonder Stuff. Levellers didn’t make it into my album chart, because I probably listened to seven or eight different Levellers albums during the year.

My top five songs of 2025 were: Hello Heaven, Hello; Spike Island; Zombie; Lovesick Lullaby and god save me, but don’t drown me out. They were all by Yungblud, with the exception of Spike Island. Three of the four Yungblud songs were from Idols.

My top 100 songs were by Yungblud, Pulp, Noah Kahn, Kenickie, The Wonder Stuff, Levellers, Chappell Roan, Sam Fender, Mark Chadwick, Travis, Suede, The Cranberries, REM, New Model Army, Queen, Lola Young, EMF and Simon & Garfunkel.

So that’s five years of Spotify Wrapped for me. How does it compare to yours? Do your favourite artists and songs change every year or do they stay pretty much the same?