Forty-one ways to find your next favourite song

Twenty artists you have never heard, and would love

None of these twenty appears anywhere in thirteen years of your history. Each one is reached by a path through artists you already play, and each comes with the one song to start on.

The thirty-song discovery playlist

Thirty tracks, thirty artists, none of whom appear in your history. Sequenced to be played in order: it opens after midnight, walks through France and Brazil, and ends on a dancefloor.

1. Apocalypse Cigarettes After Sex · The xx's Intro slowed to a crawl and given a voice. For the 94% of your Oh Wonder plays that happen after midnight.
2. Space Song Beach House · Dream pop with the organ tone of a Ghibli overture. If Intro is a mood, this is the room it lives in.
3. Show Me How Men I Trust · Montreal, like Cœur de Pirate. Soft bass, softer voice, the kind of track that gets 22 plays in one evening.
4. Maria También Khruangbin · Instrumental, Thai-funk-surf guitar. For the part of you that binges Cafe Music BGM Ghibli jazz.
5. Ylang Ylang FKJ · French Kiwi Juice: a Paris multi-instrumentalist making warm piano-house at cafe volume. Chet Faker's cousin.
6. Sorceress Jordan Rakei · Neo-soul that sounds like John Legend produced by Bonobo.
7. I Follow Rivers Lykke Li · Swedish, tribal drums, heartbreak. The song Loreen fans are supposed to know.
8. Dancing On My Own Robyn · You have played Calum Scott's cover thirteen times. This is the original, and it is a dance record with a broken heart.
9. Wait M83 · A French synth band writing a lullaby the size of an Imagine Dragons chorus.
10. Lisztomania Phoenix · The most joyful three minutes in French pop. Uptown Funk energy, Versailles accent.
11. 5:55 Charlotte Gainsbourg · Produced by Air, sung in a Hardy-like whisper. Your evening jazz-singer habit, in English.
12. Ex-fan des sixties Jane Birkin · A roll-call of the sixties sung by its most English Parisian. Made for someone who plays Tous les garçons et les filles 59 times.
13. Les copains d'abord Georges Brassens · Guitar, moustache, wordplay. You have Brel and Trenet; Brassens is the third pillar and the funniest.
14. La symphonie des éclairs Zaho de Sagazan · The 2023 French breakthrough: Christine and the Queens' theatricality with a Kraftwerk pulse.
15. Amour plastique Videoclub · Teenage synth-pop from Nantes. If you loved Angèle's Flou, this is its cooler cousin.
16. Je veux te voir Yelle · Rude, bouncy, unbelievably catchy. Tilted's chaotic older sister.
17. Samba da Bênção Bebel Gilberto · The Portuguese original of Stacey Kent's Samba saravah.
18. Corcovado Astrud Gilberto · The voice on The Girl from Ipanema, singing the quietest Jobim tune ever written.
19. I Fall in Love Too Easily Chet Baker · You played a jazz-trio version of this in 2020. This is the one with the trumpet and the ruined voice.
20. Feeling Good Nina Simone · Avicii covered it, Bublé covered it. Nina owns it.
21. Early Summer Ryo Fukui · Sapporo jazz piano, 1976. The record every Ghibli-jazz cover channel is secretly imitating.
22. Aruarian Dance Nujabes · Japanese hip-hop instrumental built on a Debussy-ish guitar loop. Lo-fi before lo-fi.
23. Dawn in the Adan Ichiko Aoba · From Windswept Adan, a concept album about an imaginary island. Hisaishi would approve.
24. Blue Bicycle Hauschka · Prepared piano: bottle tops and felt on the strings. Chilly Gonzales meets a bicycle bell.
25. Mykonos Fleet Foxes · Harmony folk with a second half that gallops.
26. Numb Elderbrook · You have heard his voice on CamelPhat's Cola without knowing. Solo he is Rudimental's melancholy side.
27. Swallow Monolink · Berlin melodic techno with a singer-songwriter on top. Ben Böhmer's neighbour.
28. No Captain Lane 8 · With Poliça on vocals. This is the 3am version of Firestone.
29. The One You Left Behind Yotto · Finnish, Anjunadeep, chords that resolve exactly when you want them to.
30. Because You Move Me Tinlicker · Dutch duo, piano-led progressive house. The playlist ends where TWO LANES' Movement begins.

Your biggest blind spots

Given everything you do play, these absences are genuinely surprising. Each is either wholly missing or present only as a stray play or two.

Artists who sit exactly between two you love

Fourteen pairs. For each, the artist in the middle inherits something specific from both sides. Play counts are yours.

How have you never listened to this?

Ten cases where the evidence is overwhelming. In most of them you have been circling the song for years through covers, remixes or its own sequel.

1. Soda Pop and Your Idol You played HUNTR/X's Golden 59 times between October 2025 and February 2026, and never once pressed play on the rival boy band from the same film. Saja Boys have zero plays. The soundtrack has a villain song and you skipped it.
2. Águas de Março Stacey Kent's Les eaux de mars: 13 plays. Pauline Croze's Les eaux de Mars: 1. Both are translations of this. Antônio Carlos Jobim: zero plays.
3. Rouge no Dengon Kanako Ohba's piano version, played 12 times in August 2026. Kiki flies to this song. Yumi Matsutoya wrote and sang it in 1975 and is absent from your history.
4. La Javanaise Juliette Gréco's version, Livia Blanc's version, and three plays of Je t'aime moi non plus. The man himself singing his own best song: never.
5. The Sound of Silence Disturbed's version via the CYRIL remix: 27 plays in summer 2026, never skipped. Plus Lukulum's extended mix and ONY9RMX. The 1964 original with two voices and one guitar: never. Your three Simon & Garfunkel plays are all Cecilia.
6. Skinny Love Birdy: 12 plays. David Fischbein: 8. A remix of Holocene: 2. The cabin-in-Wisconsin original that all of them are copying: none.
7. Running Up That Hill Four plays of Kilian K's Paul Kold edit in July 2026. You liked the tune enough to hear it as a house track. Hear it as a thunderstorm.
8. Teardrop José González's cover: 2 plays. The original, with Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins (who you also sampled in 2014): none.
9. Creep Karen Souza's jazz Creep (3), GAMPER & DADONI's dance Creep (8, still going in 2026). Radiohead's own Creep: none. Your four Radiohead plays were Hunting Bears, an instrumental, on one afternoon in 2014.
10. Orinoco Flow You have DJ BoerBeats' Only Time EDM (5 plays) and a mash-up of Only Time with Teach Me How to Dougie (2 plays, and I have questions). Enya: 3 plays of May It Be. Orinoco Flow is the one that was built for your sleep-tone hours.

One step outside the comfort zone

Each of these is reachable from one specific artist you already love. Nothing here requires a leap, only a slightly longer step.

Three steps outside

Bigger risks, each with the path spelled out. The last step in every chain is the recommendation; the first two are places you have already been.

The rabbit hole

One start point, ten hops, each one adjacent to the last, ending somewhere you would never have gone on purpose: from a French jazz singer to a synthwave car chase.

Five rabbit holes, five stages each

Five artists you love, each followed five stages out. Stage one is a small step; stage five is another country. Stop wherever it stops being fun.

From Chilly Gonzales 155 plays, weekends

From Kygo 85 plays, Firestone 48

From Madame Monsieur 145 plays

From Joe Hisaishi 164 plays across nine years

From The xx 40 plays, Intro 36 of them

Songs you should already know

Twenty-five tracks where the reaction should be "how is that not in my history". None of them is, apart from the odd cover.

1. Dancing On My Own Robyn · Thirteen plays of the cover, none of the original.
2. I Follow Rivers Lykke Li · Swedish pop for a Loreen and Tove Lo listener.
3. Midnight City M83 · The saxophone at the end is the most 2011 thing that ever happened.
4. 1901 Phoenix · Paris, guitars, joy.
5. Hoppípolla Sigur Rós · The BBC nature-documentary theme of your teenage years.
6. Chicago Sufjan Stevens · Trumpets, strings, a road trip.
7. White Winter Hymnal Fleet Foxes · A round for four voices.
8. Nantes Beirut · A Balkan brass band playing French chanson, from New Mexico.
9. In the Waiting Line Zero 7 · The Garden State song. Your Air and Morcheeba-shaped hole.
10. Porcelain Moby · Strings, a piano loop, a sample. 1999's Nuvole Bianche.
11. Thank You Dido · The template for every quiet British radio ballad you love.
12. Time After Time Cyndi Lauper · You have Iron & Wine's cover ten times and Mabel's advert version three times.
13. Linger The Cranberries · You played Abbie Callahan's Linger twice. This is the one with the strings.
14. Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) Eurythmics · A Callum J Wright acoustic cover is in your history; Annie Lennox's original is not.
15. Take On Me a-ha · Norway's first great pop export, decades before Kygo.
16. Like a Prayer Madonna · You own a house edit. Own the gospel choir.
17. It's Oh So Quiet Björk · A big-band showtune that explodes. Made for a Glee and Swing Republic listener.
18. Glory Box Portishead · Bristol, 1994, a voice like smoke. The Lana Del Rey origin story.
19. Ironic Alanis Morissette · The nineties radio staple you skipped (see section 22).
20. You've Got a Friend Carole King · The mother of the piano ballad.
21. How Deep Is Your Love Bee Gees · Falsetto harmony that Coldplay and Sam Smith both borrowed.
22. Feeling Good Nina Simone · Avicii and Bublé both covered it; you have neither cover either.
23. The Girl from Ipanema Stan Getz with Astrud Gilberto · You have three Getz plays from a live album. This is the studio classic (Getz/Gilberto, 1964).
24. La Femme d'argent Air · Six Air plays, none from Moon Safari. This opens it.
25. Alors on danse Stromae · Seven plays and you missed the biggest French-language hit of the decade.

One album for every year, 2014 to 2026

Each album is matched to what you were actually playing that year, and each is one you have never heard: the artist is absent, or every track on the album is.

Ten albums that could become all-time favourites

You play whole albums rarely, but when you do (x, Chambers, Vu d'ici, Amélie, Night Visions) they stick for a decade. These ten have that kind of staying power, and you have not heard them.

Albums to play from beginning to end

Records that only work as a whole, with the reason each one rewards the full hour. Play counts show how little of each you have touched.

Artists you have seriously underestimated

Every artist here has between one and five plays in your history, none of it sleep audio. The play count is shown, followed by exactly where to restart.

Give these another chance

Songs and artists you played once or twice, then left. Each one is unusually compatible with the rest of your taste, which suggests the timing was wrong rather than the song.

The second-chance playlist

Twenty tracks by artists you sampled (one to five plays) and never explored. None of these is the track you already heard.

1. Strong London Grammar · 4 plays, all a remix.
2. Youth Daughter · 2 plays.
3. Holocene Bon Iver · 2 plays of a remix; here is the song.
4. Mystery of Love Sufjan Stevens · 2 plays.
5. From The Start Laufey · 3 Christmas plays.
6. Eden Hania Rani · 5 plays of Glass.
7. Prelude Alexandra Stréliski · 3 plays.
8. La grenade Clara Luciani · 4 plays.
9. Peur des filles L'Impératrice · 5 plays of one song.
10. Comment est ta peine? Benjamin Biolay · 5 plays.
11. Green & Gold Lianne La Havas · 4 plays in 2015.
12. The Blower's Daughter Damien Rice · 3 plays.
13. Marea (We've Lost Dancing) Fred again.. · 5 plays.
14. A Moment Apart ODESZA · 2 plays.
15. High Hopes Kodaline · 5 plays.
16. Rain Song Emile Mosseri · 5 plays.
17. Fields of Gold Eva Cassidy · 2 plays.
18. The Look of Love Diana Krall · 5 plays.
19. Spiegel im Spiegel Arvo Pärt · 3 plays.
20. King and Cross Ásgeir · 2 plays.

One artist, the whole catalogue: Françoise Hardy

59 plays, and 43 of them are Tous les garçons et les filles in three different mixes. You have a two-song relationship with a sixty-year career. Here is the route through it.

Deep cuts from artists you already play

Cross-checked against your per-artist track counts. Nothing here is in your top plays for that artist; most have zero plays.

Neglected albums by artists you love, ranked by confidence

The number is my confidence that you will play the whole album at least twice. It is based on how much of the artist you already play and how close the album is to the songs you repeat.

B-sides, deep cuts and overlooked tracks

Twenty songs by artists you already like, chosen to avoid anything in section 18 and anything you have played more than twice.

1. Autumn Leaves Ed Sheeran · A + bonus track. The saddest song he has recorded.
2. Gravity Coldplay · A B-side from 2005, later given to Embrace. Piano and nothing else for the first minute.
3. Dream Imagine Dragons · Smoke + Mirrors' string ballad.
4. Sunrise Kygo · With Jason Walker. The last track on Kids in Love.
5. Wintermezzo Chilly Gonzales · Solo Piano III's coldest, prettiest minute.
6. Innocent Joe Hisaishi · The music-box theme from Castle in the Sky, the film you play through a military band arrangement.
7. Mrs Dalloway: In the Garden Max Richter · From Three Worlds, his Virginia Woolf ballet.
8. Pell Yann Tiersen · EUSA's opening piano piece.
9. Toilet Brushes Nils Frahm · Yes, played with toilet brushes on the strings. Live from Spaces.
10. Nyepi Ólafur Arnalds · From re:member, a Balinese day of silence turned into strings.
11. People, I've been sad Christine and the Queens · Half French, half English, all lockdown.
12. Smile Madame Monsieur · From Vu d'ici, which you played whole; this one somehow has no plays.
13. VCR The xx · The debut's happiest two and a half minutes.
14. I Wish I Never Met You Oh Wonder · The 2020 song for the after-midnight version of you.
15. Cycling Trivialities José González · Six minutes, one guitar figure, no chorus, hypnotic.
16. The Ice Hotel Stacey Kent · Lyrics by Kazuo Ishiguro.
17. Painter Song Norah Jones · The accordion waltz buried on Come Away With Me.
18. Lovesong Adele · Her bossa-nova cover of The Cure, from 21.
19. Diamond Heart Lady Gaga · Joanne's opener. A Shallow-era rock song before Shallow existed.
20. Obliviate Alexandre Desplat · The first cue of Deathly Hallows, the film where Hermione erases her parents.

Twenty songs from before you joined Spotify

Everything here was released before May 2013, and no song here is in your history (where the artist appears at all, it is a stray play of something else). They are chosen to fit exceptionally, not merely to be old.

1. Hallelujah Jeff Buckley · 1994. You have Hallelujah by 2CELLOS (9), Alexandra Burke and Tori Kelly. This is the one everybody means.
2. Hikōki Gumo Yumi Matsutoya · 1973. The closing song of The Wind Rises, in its original teenage recording.
3. Les Parapluies de Cherbourg Michel Legrand · 1964. The theme from the film musical every French jazz singer you like has covered.
4. Jungle Drum Emilíana Torrini · 2008. Two minutes of ecstatic scat-pop.
5. I'd Rather Dance with You Kings of Convenience · 2004. Two plays of another song; none of this one.
6. Breathe Télépopmusik · 2001. French downtempo, a whispered vocal, an advert you will remember.
7. Destiny Zero 7 · 2001. Sia's first great vocal, years before Chandelier.
8. The Sea Morcheeba · 1998. Slide guitar and a voice like warm tea.
9. At the River Groove Armada · 1997. A trombone and a Patti Page sample. Sunset music.
10. Santa María Gotan Project · 2001. Tango over a house beat, from Paris.
11. Fade Into You Mazzy Star · 1993. The slow dance at the end of every nineties film.
12. Lovefool The Cardigans · 1996. Swedish pop from Romeo + Juliet.
13. Torn Natalie Imbruglia · 1997. The best-written radio song of its year.
14. The Mummers' Dance Loreena McKennitt · 1997. Celtic harp meets a trip-hop beat. For a Kate Rusby and Enya listener.
15. Chariots of Fire Vangelis · 1981. Zimmer's synth-orchestra, invented.
16. The Way I Am Ingrid Michaelson · 2007. Ukulele pop from the era of Jason Mraz's I'm Yours, which you have 12 times.
17. Falling Slowly Glen Hansard · 2007. The song from Once. An Oscar and a whole musical came from it.
18. Sing Travis · 2001. Banjo, Scotland, and the band Coldplay admit they copied.
19. Wires Athlete · 2005. A song about a premature baby that fills stadiums.
20. So Far Away Carole King · 1971. For someone who has lived in three countries in thirteen years.

The decade you skipped: the 1990s

Your sixties are French, your seventies are ABBA and Elton, your eighties are Journey and Wham!, and your nineties are one December of Real McCoy and Culture Beat. The rest of the decade is missing.

The nineties were the decade when the things you love now were invented: trip-hop is the ancestor of your after-midnight listening, Britpop is the ancestor of Coldplay, and the Icelandic and French records of 1998 and 1999 are the ancestors of everything in section 1. Twenty songs to start on. None of the songs is in your history, and where the artist is there at all it is a stray play or two.

1. Unfinished Sympathy Massive Attack · 1991. Strings, a breakbeat, Shara Nelson walking down a Los Angeles street in one take.
2. Roads Portishead · 1994. Bristol at 3am with a string section.
3. Hyperballad Björk · 1995. A song about throwing things off a cliff before breakfast, and it builds like Sigur Rós.
4. Lover, You Should've Come Over Jeff Buckley · 1994. Grace's heart.
5. No Surprises Radiohead · 1997. Glockenspiel, a lullaby, the end of the world.
6. Dreams The Cranberries · 1993. Dolores O'Riordan's yodel over jangling guitars.
7. Sexy Boy Air · 1998. Moon Safari's single. Six Air plays and none of this.
8. Porcelain Moby · 1999. The piano loop that soundtracked every advert of 2000.
9. Svefn-g-englar Sigur Rós · 1999. Ten minutes, a bowed guitar, a sonar ping.
10. My Favourite Game The Cardigans · 1998. Their rock single.
11. No Ordinary Love Sade · 1992. You have one play of Christine and the Queens covering it live at RAK. Here is why she did.
12. Missing Everything But the Girl · 1995, the Todd Terry remix. A folk duo's sad song became a house anthem. It is your whole 2026 in one record.
13. Hand in My Pocket Alanis Morissette · 1995. Harmonica, lists, hope.
14. All I Wanna Do Sheryl Crow · 1994. Sunshine and a bar in Los Angeles.
15. Tom's Diner Suzanne Vega · The DNA remix, 1990. The song the MP3 was tested on.
16. Nothing Compares 2 U Sinéad O'Connor · 1990. Prince wrote it; she owns it.
17. Caribbean Blue Enya · 1991. Three Enya plays in your history, none of this waltz.
18. Sweet Lullaby Deep Forest · 1992. A Solomon Islands lullaby over French synths. Your 432 Hz habit has a nineties ancestor.
19. 6 Underground Sneaker Pimps · 1996. A John Barry harp sample and a trip-hop shuffle.
20. Rome Wasn't Built in a Day Morcheeba · 2000, just inside the decade's exit door. The happy one.

Backwards through music history

Seven of your favourites, each traced back through who they were listening to, ending on a record that predates everything.

Forwards from 2014

Your 2014 was Ed Sheeran, James Blunt, Coldplay, Imagine Dragons, Sam Smith, George Ezra, Avicii and Amélie. These are the artists who inherited each of those, and who you have not heard.

What 2014 Shannen would obsess over now

2014 you played x front to back, went through a James Blunt album in a weekend, and played Firestone 42 times the following year. These are the modern records that would have got the same treatment. None of the songs is in your history, and almost none of the artists.

1. Seventeen Going Under Sam Fender · The Castle on the Hill of the 2020s.
2. Messy Lola Young · 2014 you would have played this 30 times in a day.
3. Sailor Song Gigi Perez · A guitar, a voice, a chorus about drowning.
4. back to friends sombr · Bedroom pop with an Ed-sized hook.
5. End of Beginning Djo · Steve from Stranger Things, whose score you played in 2017, singing about Chicago.
6. Beggin' Måneskin · A Four Seasons cover that became a Eurovision-year phenomenon.
7. Valentine Laufey · Jazz-pop for someone who played All of Me 58 times.
8. I Love You, I'm Sorry Gracie Abrams · The Taylor Swift protégée.
9. Scarlett Holly Humberstone · Ella Henderson's Ghost, rewritten by someone from Lincolnshire.
10. House on Fire Mimi Webb · Radio pop in the Jess Glynne register.
11. greedy Tate McRae · Ariana Grande's Problem for a new decade.
12. Something About You Elderbrook with Rudimental, who you have 25 plays of.
13. Tearing Me Up Bob Moses · Guitar-house with a chorus, Disclosure's American cousins.
14. Brightest Lights Lane 8 · Firestone, aged ten years and grown wise.
15. Come With Me Nora En Pure · South African-Swiss, piano-house, a Kygo sunset with better chords.
16. Drinkee SOFI TUKKER · Portuguese poetry over jungle house. You have their remix of Trevor Hall already.
17. Saving Up Dom Dolla · The Hideaway of 2024.
18. Where You Are John Summit · With Hayla. Piano-house with a Titanium-sized vocal.
19. I'll Be Waiting Cian Ducrot · The Moon Landing weekend, if it were a single.
20. Cold Little Heart Michael Kiwanuka · Ten minutes; the first four are strings and no words.
21. Impossible Nothing But Thieves · Coldplay's Fix You, rewritten in Southend.
22. Strangers Sigrid · 3 plays of High Five. This is the hit, and it is Loreen-grade Scandi-pop.
23. Runaway AURORA · The Norwegian who sounds like a snowfall.
24. I Love You Riopy · The Amélie piano for a new film.
25. Voilà Barbara Pravi · The Mercy of 2021.

A playlist for 2026 you, chosen entirely by 2014 you

Something odd is in the data. On 19 August 2014 you spent an afternoon with Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Aphex Twin's Avril 14th, Julianna Barwick, Grouper, Message To Bears and Ólafur Arnalds. Twelve years before the sleep tones, 2014 you already knew what 2026 you would need. This is that afternoon, extended by 2014's other loves, and pointed at your Copenhagen self.

1. Midnight Coldplay · From Ghost Stories (2014), produced with Jon Hopkins. It is the closest Coldplay ever came to Ben Böhmer, and you have never played it.
2. Avril 14th Aphex Twin · 11 plays, all 2014 and 2015. Two minutes of player-piano. Bring it to Denmark.
3. An Ending (Ascent) Brian Eno · The ambient piece that makes the 432 Hz industry look silly.
4. The Pearl Harold Budd with Eno · 9 Budd plays in 2014 and 2015. This is the one.
5. Near Light Ólafur Arnalds · Your first Ólafur play was 19 August 2014. Two plays since. It deserves a decade.
6. Says Nils Frahm · From Spaces (2013). You found Frahm in June 2014 and never played his most famous piece.
7. Immunity Jon Hopkins · 9 plays of Small Memory. The ten-minute title track is the one to fall asleep to.
8. Cirrus Bonobo · 2013. Your two Bonobo plays were 2014 and 2016; Cirrus is the loop that goes on forever.
9. Sun Models ODESZA · You played Say My Name in October 2014. This is its sunnier neighbour.
10. Firestone Kygo · December 2014. Forty-eight plays and still counting in 2026. 2014 you was right.
11. Jubel Klingande · 2013. The sax-house track that 2014 radio played next to Waves and Prayer in C, and somehow missed you.
12. One Day (Vandaag) Bakermat · 5 plays of Teach Me. One Day samples Martin Luther King over a saxophone and is 2014's happiest three minutes.
13. Strong London Grammar · 2013. 2014 you heard a remix; 2026 you needs the original.
14. Coffee Sylvan Esso · 3 plays of Hey Mami in late 2014. Coffee is the single, and it sounds like TWO LANES with a folk singer.
15. Taro alt-J · 11 plays of Left Hand Free. Taro is the one with the tabla and the war photographer.
16. Cherry Wine Hozier · Your first Hozier play was October 2014, and every play since has been Take Me to Church.
17. Riverside Agnes Obel · You found her in September 2014 (16 plays since, mostly Chord Left). She lives in Berlin but is from Copenhagen. Welcome home.
18. Only Love Ben Howard · August 2014, 9 plays total. The song for the ferry.
19. Line of Fire Junip · José González's band, 11 plays in late 2014. Line of Fire is the song The Bridge used, which is the right show for Denmark.
20. Tenerife Sea Ed Sheeran · 10 plays, all from the x era. The quiet one. 2014 you would insist.

Your festival

Three days, six stages, every act drawn from your history except five, who have never been played and have earned their slot. Call it Jardin d'Hiver, after the song you own in two versions.

Your radio station

Radio Jardin d'Hiver, 96.4 FM, broadcasting from a conservatory somewhere between Singapore, London and Copenhagen. Its personality: a French cafe that turns into a Norwegian nightclub at 11pm and a Japanese forest at 3am.

Recurring specials

Eurovision Emergency (every May, 24 hours) · Bucko's Christmas (9 December, annually, all 55 songs) · The Believe It or Not Hour (one song, 32 times, once a year on 30 November) · 2CELLOS Memorial Weekend (February, marking the anniversary of the last play) · Ibiza Classics Sunday (orchestral dance with Magnus and Ingrid arguing about strings).

One full day: Thursday 3 September 2026

The soundtrack to your life

Fifty songs in chapters. Drawn from your history but deliberately not your most-played; where a chapter needed a song you did not have, one is added and marked. It is meant to be listened to in order, once, with the lights low.

Chapter one · Singapore, 2013 140 plays, the beginning

1. Intro Your second day on Spotify, 10 May 2013. It comes back 36 times in 2026. The bookend.
2. Don't You Worry Child 8 May 2013, the first week. Never skipped since.
3. Let Her Go 9 May 2013. The song of that year, in that heat.
4. Get Lucky 26 May 2013, alongside your first Queen play.
5. Reflektor 5 December 2013, the same night as your first Lana Del Rey.

Chapter two · Arrival, 2014 2,392 plays, the first big year

6. Tenerife Sea 11 June 2014, the day you found x.
7. Bonfire Heart One August weekend, a whole album, then silence.
8. Canon in D January 2014. Somebody was planning something, and you were the research department.
9. Waves (Robin Schulz Remix) The sound of British summer 2014.
10. Something I Need Native, played whole.
11. Avril 14th The August afternoon that predicted your sleep habit.
12. I Never Learn added The record 2014 was missing.

Chapter three · Grand Budapest and Firestone, 2015

13. Mr. Moustafa March 2015. Fifty plays of one soundtrack in one month.
14. Firestone 42 plays that year. The song that never left.
15. Gogol 25 March 2015, your first Gonzales play. Eleven years of weekends followed.
16. Livewire November 2015, after midnight, as always.
17. Chicago added The road-trip song for the year you settled in.

Chapter four · Piano and Ghibli, 2016 and 2017

18. Merry-Go-Round of Life (piano) July 2016. The start of the Ghibli piano years.
19. The Music Goes Round and Round Spring 2016, an electro-swing season.
20. Advantage Points Chambers, played whole, 2017.
21. Stranger Things December 2017, 33 tracks in one sitting.
22. Aussie Jingle Bells 9 December 2017. Fifty-five plays. No further comment.
23. Lone Digger added What your swing year should have ended on.

Chapter five · Japan and France, 2018

24. A West Ocean Waltz May 2018, the Japanese acoustic spring.
25. Light of the Seven June 2018, Game of Thrones in one week.
26. Le temps est bon 13 September 2018, then 21 times in one December day.
27. Christine 5 December 2018, your first play of hers. Tilted came later.
28. Les séquoias added The French December, completed.

Chapter six · Eurovision and cellos, 2019

29. Mercy (Eurovision version) January 2019 onwards. 113 plays across both versions.
30. July 15 January 2019. Forty-three plays in a week, never skipped.
31. Candlelight Forty plays in 2019, then gone.
32. Arcade May 2019, the year of 140 Eurovision plays.
33. May it Be 30 July 2019, the first of 319 plays. The musical ex.

Chapter seven · Inside, 2020 and 2021

34. The Mandalorian January 2020, before everything closed.
35. Blue in Green The jazz-trio year. This was the real one.
36. Petite fleur April 2021, the French-jazz spring.
37. Tilted 25 October 2021. Fifty-six times. A day that made the data.
38. Believe It or Not 30 November 2021, 32 plays in two days. Something happened.
39. Voilà added Your Eurovision 2021 without its best song.

Chapter eight · Equals, 2022 and 2023

40. Overpass Graffiti = played whole, and this is its best song.
41. Country Road (Whisper of the Heart) March 2022, your first Kanako Ohba play.
42. Friendships 16 November 2022. Sixty-six plays and rising.
43. The Shire 2023, the Fellowship in full again.
44. Le Mal de Vivre June 2023, the second French-jazz spring.

Chapter nine · Sleep and Wicked, 2024 and 2025

45. 9pm (Till I Come) April 2024, orchestral Ibiza. Seventeen plays.
46. Three Little Birds June 2024, eighteen plays in four days.
47. Defying Gravity December 2024.
48. Golden October 2025. Fifty-nine plays. The discovery of the year.
49. I Like Life 14 November 2025, twenty-one plays in an evening, never skipped.

Chapter ten · Denmark, 2026

50. Miss You added Copenhagen's own, for the last track. From The Last Resort. Everything after this is yours to find.

If your taste were a film

Title: Jardin d'hiver. A three-act film about a woman who keeps the same four songs for thirteen years and changes everything else.

If your taste were a city

Call it Shannenholm. A port city with a French old town, a Japanese garden, a conservatoire, and suburbs where ten thousand people sleep to the same tone.

Your taste as a fictional universe

A continent called Shannenia, mapped by play count. Its countries are your clusters, its wars are your skips, and its prophecy concerns a Brazilian nobody has met.

Rival factions and characters

The dating profile

If your music taste made a profile, this is what it would say. Age 13, born May 2013, three countries, looking for a Jobim.

The roast

Delivered with affection, from the data, and with the receipts attached.

Your taste on trial

The prosecution goes first and gives it everything. Then the defence, with exhibits.

The jury

Seven jurors, none of them real, all of them with a position. They were not asked to agree.

Predicting your star ratings

Twenty-five recommendations sorted into the rating I think you will give them, with the reasoning. Then you rate them, and the page uses the difference between my guess and your score to pick a second round.

Musical Twenty Questions

One question at a time, and the page narrows down to a single artist you have never heard. Twenty-three possible answers, none of them in your history. It rarely needs more than five questions.

The ten-round recommendation game

Ten rounds, three songs each. Pick your favourite. Your picks steer the later rounds, and at the end you get a profile and a ten-track playlist made from what you chose.

Five deliberately risky picks

Each of these makes no sense until you read why. Then it makes a surprising amount of sense.

Your missing link: Antônio Carlos Jobim

One artist you have never played, who connects more of your favourites than anyone else. You have been listening to his songs for twelve years in French, in English, in Swedish and on jazz piano, without once pressing play on him.

How this was built

The source is your complete Spotify extended streaming history, May 2013 to 31 August 2026: 42,193 plays with an artist name, 5,731 artists, 12,931 tracks. A first pass separated sleep and ambient audio (Miracle Tones and its relatives, about half of everything since 2024) from music, then grouped the music into the clusters used above and computed the behavioural facts: skips, repeats, time of day, weekday versus weekend, whole-album listens and per-artist track counts. Every artist described here as "never listened" was checked, case-insensitively and with accents normalised, against the full list of every artist you have played at least twice; every artist described as briefly encountered is in that list with the play count shown. Song, album and artist links are Spotify search deep links (open.spotify.com/search/...), which open directly in the app or web player, so no track IDs were guessed. The three interactive sections run entirely in this page and store your scores only in your own browser.

A closing note

Thirteen years of data say something simple: when you love a song you play it until it becomes part of the furniture, and when you love an artist you keep them for a decade. That is a rare way to listen, and it means the recommendations that matter are not the thirty-song playlists but the two or three names that will still be here in 2039. My money is on Jobim, Yumi Matsutoya and Lane 8. Play Águas de Março first. Then, at the weekend, Solo Piano II. Then sleep, properly, to Max Richter, and let the sine waves rest.