I have always loved music and hated New Year’s resolutions. My thought coming into 2023 was to do an experiment. This would be to create a playlist in which I add one song a day for the entirety of 2023.
There were no rules to this. The goal was simply to add songs to remember as many memories and days as possible, as well as to listen to a wider variety of artists. To reflect on this experience, I sat down and hit shuffle on this 20-hour long monster and wrote out my thoughts.
“More Than you Know” by Axwell L Ingrosso put a whiskey coke back in my hand from a night it decorated my time at the Little Dooey back in March.
“Wagon Wheel” by Darius Rucker sent me to Boot Scootin’ Rodeo on Bourbon Street at my fraternity’s formal, which became a hot spot that night for greek SEC student festivities.
“Sugar We’re Going Down” by Fall Out Boy was covered by Make it to May under the string lights of my fraternity’s courtyard during an event earlier this month. They played that night for 3 hours. Headbanging may have occurred.
“Eat Your Young – Bekon’s Choral Version” by Hozier played on repeat as I packed up my room to move out of my place at the end of junior year. My friend Corey and I used to play video games and yell across the hall at each other rather than using mics. After packing everything, he and I spent four hours on Fortnite trying to get one final win while living together. At 12:30 a.m., we accomplished our goal.
“No Sleep Till Brooklyn” by the Beastie Boys blared through the speakers of my hometown movie theater as my mom and I watched “Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3.” She remarked that it was her favorite of the trilogy.
“Jaded” by Miley Cyrus did not wake the sleeping dog tied to my group’s table while we got mimosa towers at The Klaasroom, but it did become a new discovery of mine that Sunday.
“Shakin’” by Happy Landing plastered dim lights across the ceiling and stuck a dingy carpet beneath me as “I see rivers, oceans, coastlines/Home is just a state of mind” echoed through Duling Hall. The line for the merch table that night seemed insurmountable.
“Another Day in Paradise” nearly broke my AirPods all the way back on Jan. 17, 2023 on the first day of classes. The sunlight was laced with serotonin that day.
These eight songs add up to a measly 31 minutes. In terms of songs, they are 2.1% of what this playlist will be when finished, and in terms of runtime, they are 2.4% of the time this playlist currently is.
This playlist became my own little reflection not only of my year, but of how I felt about a little bit of every single day.
The first home baseball game led “No Place like Hometown” by HARDY to join the playlist, and a conversation about dad rock got “Far Behind” by Candlebox added. New music drops got “Meeting the Master” by Greta Van Fleet, “Young Strangers” by Sea Girls and almost the entirety of “Unreal Unearth” by Hozier on the playlist.
I gained through this playlist not only dozens of new artists and bands to love, but a reflection of my year. Locked away are dozens, if not hundreds of tiny little memories and moments significant enough to be remembered through songs.
Of these memories the playlist holds, only two of them I would consider being big events. All others can be described in a sentence or two and never seem very important. That, in turn, is the beauty of this idea.
Joy, sadness, anger, love, pain and so much more encapsulate our every year. Having something to remember each individual moment of them not only adds to the healing but shows the beauty of those events months and potentially years later.