The highly anticipated tradition, “Spotify Wrapped”, was released Dec. 1, and music listeners everywhere were excited to see their year in review.

“Spotify Wrapped” started in 2015 when they released a “Year in Music.” It included statistics like the listener’s most played songs and how many hours of music they listened to in total. This feature has evolved over the last seven years as Spotify has tried to stay up to date with current trends to keep people interested. 

This year’s wrapped included fun transitions and visuals along with the listeners’ statistics. The stats include: the listener’s opening credits theme, minutes spent listening, top five songs, audio aura, top five genres, two truths, and a lie, top five podcasts, and top five artists. 

One new feature that people enjoyed was the audio aura. This aura was a mix of two colors based on the vibe of the music one listened to. Gracie Shattuck enjoyed receiving hers. She said, “ I was pretty happy about my audio aura. My top music moods were confident and bold.”

Shattuck also shared her overall Spotify Wrapped, “My top artists were Doja Cat, Luke Combs, Olivia Rodrigo, Ariana Grande, and Billie Eilish. My top song was ‘Kiss Me More (Feat SZA)’. I wasn’t really surprised that Doja was my top artist because I really do love her songs, but I was surprised that Nicki Minaj or Megan Thee Stallion weren’t on my list.” In regards to the layout, Shattuck said, “I think it’s really cool, and I love how it told us different things about our music taste. I also liked how colorful it was and the transitions were cool.”

  Braden Ball enjoyed receiving his “Spotify Wrapped” even though all of his top five songs were all the same artist. He said, “My top artist was Machine Gun Kelly and my top song was ‘Bloody Valentine’ by Machine Gun Kelly. I only listen to MGK so I wasn’t surprised. I thought the new layout was super creative for finding out your spotify statistics. My audio aura was blue and grey for mystic and hype.” 

One setback to the Wrapped this year was the cringe factor. All over TikTok you can see people complaining about how Spotify is trying to appease the young, hip audience but seems out of touch. Users have made fun of the slang that the Wrapped tried to use.  Samantha Burt agrees with these TikToks and said, “It [Spotify Wrapped] was cringey and they’re trying too hard to be relevant.

Some of these “cringy” sayings were: you deserve a playlist as long as your skincare routine, in a year like 2021 even your music gets a vibe check, and you have always understood the assignment. There have also been many complaints about the tacky font used for the top genres slide.