i have a big google doc of artists i want to try listening to. most of them i discovered by clicking through the “you might also like” thing on spotify and adding names to the document. it helps me make sure i never run out of new music.

the way i do playlists—it’s not really that interesting—i just listen to a playlist for a few months, get bored of it, make a completely new playlist, and repeat. but i usually don’t go back and listen to older playlists that much. and sometimes this is because i just don’t like the music anymore—i had awful taste in 2019—but recently i was like, hey, most of the stuff from the past year or so is still good, there’s no reason to not listen to it anymore. so i compiled it all into one big playlist (it’s about 12 hours long, which isn’t that long for some people, but it’s long for me). this starts with the music i liked in march of 2022 and i plan to keep adding to it as i discover new music.

the thing is, when you listen to a song or artist or playlist for only a short amount of time and then stop, you very strongly associate that music with that period of time. it’s sort of a timekeeping device for your life, marking the turning of the seasons. so even after listening to this new big playlist quite a bit, these songs will still have an association with the time when i first discovered them.

anyway, enough disconnected rambling, let’s go through this playlist! i’ve listed all the artists on it, with their genre, the time i discovered them, and an obscurity ranking. using the number of spotify monthly listeners (which i know isn’t the most accurate way to determine popularity but it’s the easiest benchmark to use), this ranks them from most obscure at #1 (at ~29 monthly listeners) to most well-known/popular at #16 (at ~4.4 million). without further ado…

beth torrance
indie-pop
spring 2022
rank 2

this music is the epitome of sad gay kid playing guitar in their bedroom. you can kind of only enjoy it if you’re a teenager, and sometimes it can be Kinda Cringe, but the songs are honestly beautiful and emotional. i listened to this a lot when i started dating my first (and only) girlfriend and was really relating to the Sapphic Yearning vibes of the songs, so i associate it with that. my favorite beth torrance song is probably ‘cemetery night walks,’ which is very much Teen Angst and just a little bit of existential dread, and my favorite lyric is “we can watch the stars and pretend that we aren’t who we are as we lay in the dark” from ‘arson and stars.’ that song might seem kinda cringe at first but it’s actually really pretty. and ‘lavender blue’ is a really sweet love song, and all these songs are fun for me to sing. this music makes me feel like i’m gonna sneak out late at night to hang out with my friends and smoke even though i’m a total loser and would never do any of those things (except the hanging out with friends part. i do that uhhh sometimes)

heder
indie-pop
summer 2022
rank 6

these songs are mostly just soft and bittersweet. they also have kind of a gay teenager vibe, but less angsty than beth torrance. this feels very cute and cozy to me. i associate this strongly with the summer of 2022, and also less strongly with pokemon, of all things, because i listened to this music a lot while playing that. this is the perfect artist to listen to when being a little bit lonely in your room waiting for your crush to text you back. ‘suddenly, heartbreak in october made sense’ and ‘cabin fever’ have that exact bittersweet loneliness to them, while ‘for you,’ ‘bubblegum,’ and ‘serotonin’ are love songs that make me feel happy :)

liana flores
indie-pop
summer 2022
rank 16

liana flores and hope tala were both recommended to me by my friend, and were both on the same playlist as heder, which i listened to that summer. all of them have similar associations for me, but the artists themselves have somewhat different vibes. liana flores’s music is really cool, it feels very comforting and very pretty, like a lullaby. or like i’m sitting on the beach on a cool cloudy day and crying. ‘sinal’ is one of the only songs on this playlist that’s in a language other than english, which is a fun fact i guess. ‘try again tomorrow’ has such interesting lyrics in the verses, i don’t know what all of them mean but they sound really cool. especially “walk the railway tracks until you’re home,” i just really like that one for some reason. overall, though, ‘rises the moon’ and ‘recently’ are probably my favorite songs from this artist.

hope tala
pop
summer 2022
rank 14

hope tala is probably the most pop we get on this playlist. some of it is a little generic in terms of lyrics, but it’s all bops so it’s fun to listen to in the sense that it makes you want to snap your fingers along to the beat. for a while i was planning on animating a whole sequence to the part of ‘all my girls like to fight’ where it lists all of the badass women and their weapons of choice, but of course i never got around to doing that. ‘cherries’ has a really pretty chorus but the bridge/rap section is sometimes a little uncomfortable for me to listen to since it’s so abruptly sexual. the song still slaps though. most of these songs are really fun to do a little dance to, and the slower ones like ‘mulholland’ and ‘drugstore’ lean into that Sad Gay vibe. this might not have been the kind of artist i’d listen to if they hadn’t been recommended to me, but i’m glad i was because these songs are fun.

enny owl
indie folk
autumn 2022
rank 3

oh, you wanted more sapphic yearning? here you go! enny owl’s music feels very fantastical, and perfect to put on your cottagecore lesbian playlists (for people who make those, idk, i don’t really make themed playlists like that). has the vibes of running away into the forest and meeting a fairy queen or a disguised princess or something. i have a lot of her songs on my playlist and i don’t really know if any of them stick out to me as my favorite, i just like how these songs sound as a whole. if i had to choose, though, ‘house on a garden’ is quite a bop, and in general i like her most recent album, ‘songs of a wallflower,’ the best. (also, this isn’t relevant but this singer’s hair is very pretty and colorful.)

in love with a ghost
electronic/lo-fi
autumn 2022
rank 13

sometimes it’s hard for me to get really that into music without lyrics. it can be very nice to listen to, but without words all the songs can sometimes feel very similar to each other, and i can’t latch on to any as my favorite. but i really like this artist’s music, and a lot of it is pretty unique and distinct. i love the little witch characters from the ‘healing’ album art, and the music itself is very nice and feels like it could be a video game soundtrack. ‘gay story’ is quieter and less distinct (although apparently it was made as a joke?? i don’t really know), but still nice. ‘let’s go’ has a very interesting sound to it, it’s not my favorite album but i like it. and everything from ‘playful spirits’ is short and sweet, and the song ‘funfunfun’ is a total banger. also, in general i just love when songs have titles that are far longer than any song title has the right to be. this music makes me feel like i’m gonna wander off into the forest and make some friends on a magical adventure.

madZ
lo-fi
autumn 2022
rank 1

while in love with a ghost is a little more quirky, madZ’s music is pure lo-fi. i will admit that i have trouble keeping some songs distinct, especially on the ‘beginning’ album. regardless, it just feels nice listening to this music. these songs feel like looking out the window on a rainy day, like waiting at a bus stop, like a really pretty digital painting, if that makes sense? the song ‘dandelion dreams’ is my favorite—the melody is just really beautiful and i like the way the song progresses and all the bird chirping sounds are mixed in. it feels like a wistful dream of laying in a grass field, closing your eyes in the sunlight, there’s a cool breeze and some clouds and it feels like a memory of home. i know that sounds dramatic but this song really makes me feel things for some reason. this artist also has a couple of songs with lyrics, mostly on their youtube channel, but i don’t tend to like those as much as the instrumental ones. notably though, this person did make a lofi remix of a (originally very angry-sounding) song by an italian rock band that my mom really likes, so that’s cool i guess.

celeste ost
video game music (electronic/instrumental)
autumn 2022
rank 11

okay, this one isn’t really an artist, but it was on the same playlist as in love with a ghost and madZ back in september, so it goes on the big playlist too (although i only kept my favorite tracks, which turned out to be most of them). i think literally everyone who’s played celeste has already said that the music’s really fucking good, but i want to anyway, so i will: celeste’s music is really fucking good. obviously they work best within the context of the game, but even outside of that context, most of the songs are really nice to listen to. my favorites are ‘resurrections’ (specifically the last section), ‘scattered and lost,’ ‘confronting myself,’ and ‘beyond the heart,’ which are all bops, and ‘exhale,’ which is the really pretty credits theme. the b-side remixes are also really cool, and my favorites of those are ‘black moonrise’ and ‘center of the earth.’ there’s not much else i can say about these that hasn’t already been said, but i just really like these songs. (also, wavedash.ppt is genuinely a bop.)

penelope scott
indie-pop-electronic (?)
autumn 2022
rank 15

now, this isn’t really the kind of music i usually listen to at all—typically, i don’t enjoy songs that directly reference very specific real-world things too much. but this artist was recommended to me, so i tried them out and i was like hey, this is cool actually. i relate to some of the songs, and even the ones i don’t are bangers, so very fun to listen to. sometimes i don’t really understand what some of the lyrics mean, but that’s okay. my favorites are probably ‘sweet hibiscus tea,’ ‘montreal,’ ‘rät,’ and ‘7 o’clock.’ ‘sweet hibiscus tea’ and ‘7 o’clock’ both have really cool imagery that i’m not entirely sure i understand the metaphor of but it definitely sounds cool, like the line ‘the artificial way the sunlight bounces of the glitching leaves.’ while most other artists on this playlist give a feeling of escapism and being gay in a forest or whatever, penelope scott brings it back to harsh reality. but the songs are bops, so it makes the feeling of Oh Fuck The World’s Fucked a little more bearable.

shadow community
indie folk
december 2022
rank 8

so, this artist is a side project of mid-air thief, who is a much more popular artist. i haven’t really listened to any of that music, and shadow community only has two songs on spotify. those two songs feel oddly nostalgic for me, although i’m not sure what specific vibe they give, and just sound really cool. they’re in korean so i don’t understand the lyrics (i looked up the translation and honestly i still don’t understand) but the vocals themselves sound nice. this was on a playlist with dream hotel, le siren, asi kemera, and girlfriend on the moon, seen below.

dream hotel
indie-pop
december 2022
rank 5

this person also only has two songs on spotify. they’re both very quiet, so i have to turn my volume way up to hear them. their first song, ‘cherry blossoms,’ is apparently a fan song for a ship from the anime sk8 the infinity, which i have never watched, but it’s a good song so i don’t care. it’s a sweet love song and is nice, although some lyrics do make it very obvious that it’s talking about preexisting characters. their other song, ‘kitchen timer,’ is more personal. these songs are catchy and easy to sing, which is fun. this almost has similar Angsty Gay Teen vibes as beth torrance’s music.

le siren
indie folk
december 2022
rank 10

i actually first discovered le siren’s music a long time ago, under their previous name, before i ever added it to a playlist. i’m glad i eventually did, though, because i like this artist. the singer’s voice is beautiful and full of emotion, the melodies are catchy, and the songs have a vaguely sad, nostalgic atmosphere to me. ‘far rockaway’ starts out fun and upbeat, but shifts into being sad and almost sounding like a different song halfway through. ‘line of the heart’ and ‘burnt sage’ are beautiful, and ‘dang.’ and ‘yikes!’ are catchy and angry, which is fun. these songs make me feel like i’m walking down a street at dusk and there are silhouettes of trees and power lines against the sky.

asi kemera
indie soft r&b (?)
december 2022
rank 7

asi kemera’s music is very soft and sweet. the vocals themselves are so soft that it’s sometimes hard to tell what the lyrics are (not helped by the fact that the lyrics aren’t even available online for some of the songs). regardless, they’re very nice to listen to, and despite having soft vibes some are actually kind of bops because of the beat. this music has the feeling of laying in bed in a very aesthetic bedroom and being in love. or of swimming in a pool on a summer evening. either way, these songs make me feel calm and a little sleepy.

girlfriend on the moon
indie pop-rock
december 2022
rank 4

this music has very Sad Lesbian energy. all the songs are about struggling with feelings and relationship issues and stuff, and they’re all very gay. they’re also all bops, and the electric guitar sounds cool. my favorites are ‘steady’ and ‘play the killer.’ the lyrics/vocals all have a very longing, somewhat spiteful and somewhat sad feeling to them, and are definitely full of emotion. i feel like i don’t really have much to say about this artist, but i really like their music.

ghost and pals
vocaloid/synthv producer
december 2022
rank 12

i found this artist via youtube, which is probably the best way to do so. this person has really cool music videos with illustrations of characters for each of their songs (and also the lyrics, which is helpful). most of the songs tell some kind of story, which is usually pretty dark but very interesting. the different synthesized voices mean that each of the songs sound very different and distinct from one another. and basically all of these songs are absolute bangers. ‘reckless battery burns’ is the biggest example of this, and while the lyrics were ai generated and therefore don’t really mean anything, they still sound cool and the music is so catchy. the character in the video has their own story and the song even got a sequel that expands on this story, which is cool. i think it’s fun when songs tell fictional stories like this, since it’s not really common outside of things like soundtracks. the video for ‘reckless battery burns’ consists of a bunch of references to various media, and that combined with the nonsensical but dark-sounding lyrics gives it the feeling that the character is wandering through some kind of mindscape or reality is unstable around them. ‘scapegoat’ was the first song of theirs i found, which is also a banger and has some really cool art in the video. ‘those who carried on’ and ‘aura’ are some other favorites of mine. ‘in iolite’ is much quieter than the others and has a very mysterious, nostalgic small-town feeling. all these songs have very different vibes, but all of them are cool.

riproducer
vocaloid producer
december 2022
rank 9

similar to ghost and pals, this artist also has cool illustrated music videos. their songs have very similar energy to ghost’s, but tend to be more personal. ‘it should’ve been me’ is a bop, and ‘fruiting bodies’ has really cool mushroom metaphors/imagery. all good songs to have a mental breakdown to.


and that’s it! for now, at least. once i get an itch for new music i’ll go into that big google doc and choose some to try out (and maybe i’ll make another blog post when that happens). but for now, that’s basically all the music i like!