Playlists for Life: Songs For My Teenage Self

Playlists for Life is a narrative playlist venture from Third Bridge Creative. Each month, a member of our team curates a soundtrack to a pivotal moment in their life, and writes about the circumstances and discovery methods that led them to these particular sounds. You can listen to last month’s playlist here.

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I was 13 when I began making playlists on my MP3 player. It started as a summer ritual: one playlist every summer with all the songs that spoke to me at the moment. Although my parents would send me away from home to spend time with other kids my age, I found most of that time was spent in my head. Music was a good way to categorize my feelings into a neat little list. I always titled them “Songs For [Blank]” depending on what had happened that year.

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When I was 17, the playlists got more involved. I got my own Spotify account so I didn’t have to share Rhapsody with my dad anymore, and I could organize it as I pleased. Instead of once a year, the playlists became evergreen; I would make a new one every three months titled with the year and season. It’s a format I still follow today. 

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I often look at my old playlists to see how my tastes have changed, sometimes for the better and others for the worse. My first Spotify playlist was a mix of who was popular on indie radio at the time and what CDs my dad passed down to me along with my first car. Parquet Courts, Sufjan Stevens, and Courtney Barnett mingling with the Pixies, Pavement, and Dinosaur Jr. This wasn’t how I intended the selections to fall at the time, but with hindsight, I see where the influences lie. Due to the passive nature of my selection process, solely based on what I’m “vibing with,” I believe these playlists are the truest snapshot of who I am at any point in time.  

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Reflecting on that first Spotify playlist, I wanted to put together some more recent songs that I think my teenage self would like, for the girl surviving her last year of high school by making pocket zines in her bedroom and piously reading Rookie Mag. Here are some tracks from the past few years that I wish she would have had the chance to listen to. When people say all the time that music keeps getting worse, I want her to know that’s not the case: there is a future where she can rock out.