759 songs, 51 hours and 41 minutes. That is the current length of “Hazel’s Playlist,” the one and only playlist that I use. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried to be one of those people who makes cute playlists for studying, partying or their favorites of a specific genre. I really tried, but I always found myself coming back to this one. From the end of 2019 to today, I’ve added every song I enjoy to that playlist. The top being the oldest songs and the bottom the recents, I listen to chunks of the playlist in order on repeat. Eventually, I came to know the song order so intimately that I could anticipate the starting notes of each queued song blending into the last melody of the previous. Instead of a hyper-organized army of curated playlists that design an aesthetic listening experience for the summer, rainy days or my favorite classic rock songs, I have stuck — for almost six years — with this one playlist. In it, Pink Floyd sits next to The Marias and Neil Young next to The Dare. With my meticulously clean room and sorted Google Drive, my friends may find my half-dozen years of loyalty to disorganization out of character. However, the way I see it, sorting is organic in a playlist like mine. It is a chronological listing, a timeline, a relic. Each group of songs I listen to is a square on the quilt of my life. So maybe there’s valor in forgetting about organizing songs into specific categories or feelings to attach to while listening. Instead, music can just represent a memory, a reminder of who you were and what you felt when you first listened — a window into the past.
Music is a fluid art form that reflects the messiness of life for many listeners, so why separate it into uniform, aesthetically pleasing pieces? Scrolling through this singular playlist is like flipping through the pages of a trusted diary. There is no aesthetic categorization in the sonic timeline it creates. Life is not separated, so there is no need to insist on breaking up our life into chapters, these self-proclaimed “eras” of personality and perception. Really, life is one running clock, and the transitions are just as important as the eras themselves. My playlist celebrates this idea, and each scroll transports me to different yet connected seasons of my life — my obsession with The Beatles because of a then-boyfriend, my personal discovery of Bob Dylan while studying for a high school calculus exam, a car ride with my dad when I added recommended songs from his past job in a recording studio. These little moments of time where I connected with music and people around me sparkle with every scroll. Without even realizing it, my simple playlist became a record, with each song contributing as part of a larger story, the one of my life. What an easy way to remember! Looking back, I see songs from summers past, winters endured and challenges overcome. The feeling is innate and not calculated. It is a reflection of a different but same me, celebrating growth and change.
There is a beauty in the non-uniformity of a singular playlist, the unfiltered disorder that promotes the idea that not everything needs to be sorted. Life isn’t even sorted! Music doesn’t always match a prescribed feeling, sometimes it contradicts it. When I listen back to a song, I remember when I first heard it — how I felt, how I acted at the time. The scramble of contradictions that is my only playlist is almost a rebellion against the uniformity necessary for my life as a college student. Moreover, it inspires me to listen to new music and make a longer story to look back on. The art is not in my ability to sort, as it is for so many others. Rather, it is in my ability to remember.
At the end, all 759 of these songs blur into one — I know what was before, and I know what is coming next. It is not my playlist of party songs or chill songs, it is my playlist of life. It is my high school years, my transition to college and every summer I’ve remembered interacting with music. In this way, my playlist is a meditation, an act of reflection and remembrance that maps my life. So, maybe give the mega-playlist a try. It could be worth gifting yourself a low-effort, high-reward portrait of your life through a single mixtape. Maybe, just maybe, it could help you realize the memories that music really holds.
Hazel Tjaden is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at hlt43@cornell.edu.
