Article
Culture
Digital
Identity
Music
4 min read

What Spotify Wrapped really tells us about ourselves

We listen, therefore we are.

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A screengrab from Spotify reads 'your 2024 wrapped.
Spotify.

Since 2016, Spotify has offered its users an annual feature that gathers up and presents us with the details of our own usage, allowing us to look back over the year through the specific lens of our listening habits. While this may initially sound more than a little dull, it’s actually quite the piece of marketing genius. It’s the story of our 2024, as narrated by Spotify. The state of our souls, as outed by our devotion to Taylor Swift.  

Every year, ‘Spotify Wrapped’ becomes more and more of a social ritual.  

In fact, this year, people were actively waiting on it to happen, checking their app daily, longing for Spotify HQ to announce its 2024 arrival. News outlets were writing pieces on how to best engage with it – there were actual bets being placed on when the feature might drop. How crazy is that? Spotify Wrapped has become as synonymous with this time of year as advent calendars and getting Christmas decorations out of the attic. 

Bravo, Spotify. I hope whoever thought the whole thing up has enjoyed one heck of a promotion.  

Now, I’m very aware that this may be somewhat of a storm in a teacup, the teacup being Gen. Z. But it is a storm, nonetheless. And I think our ever-growing obsession with it has a lot to teach us about.. well… us.  

Because what’s even more interesting is that these deeply personal insights Spotify are offering us, initially manufactured for our eyes only, are being plastered on social media. Spotify Wrapped has become a kind of soft-launch of our own brand, a low-stakes way of putting ourselves out there. Over the past days, thousands upon thousands of people have taken the data provided by Spotify and shared it with the world, sort of as a means through which they are sharing themselves with the world. Their top artists, the songs they’ve had on repeat, the number of minutes they’ve spent in the company of their favourite albums and podcasts - their listening habits have been served to us on a lime-green plate.  

(I say ‘their’, not because I’m immune to the craving but more because my own data is too strewn with Taylor Swift and The Smiths for it to ever be something I’m eager to share with the masses). 

And, I guess I have a simple question: why? 

Why are we doing this? My instinct is telling me that the answer is an incredibly simple, albeit salient, one. My hunch is simply that we want to be known.  

I think it’s utter genius wrapped in a guise of triviality. It underhandedly nudges us to acknowledge that we want to belong.

We have a nagging need to show people who we are, in the hopes that we’ll be repaid with acceptance. Approval, even. Admiration, if we’re really lucky.  

It’s a symptom of what some (perhaps most notable, Charles Taylor) have labelled ‘expressive individualism’. We live in a cultural moment that tells us that we are tasked with discovering and defining who we are, it’s down to us. It’s the responsibility of each individual to build themselves up, from the inside out. And then we get to show the world what we have crafted – ourselves, made in our own image.  

We get to be the masterpiece and the master, the creator and the created, the poet and the poem.  

It sounds wonderfully freeing, doesn’t it? There’s just one problem, no person can actually bear the weight of such responsibility. It’s crippling.  

And so, if, once a year, we can outsource this monumental task to a Swedish streaming platform – why wouldn’t we? For a brief moment, we can put our existential-crisis-in-waiting on hold, we can put our feet up, sigh with relief, and simply declare - I listen, therefore I am.  

For one day only, we can let our music tastes define us, we can leave it to our streaming habits to imbue our lives with meaning.  

We can rest.  

I’m in no way belittling this. On the contrary, I appreciate it. I think that Spotify Wrapped shows us far more about each other (and ourselves) than how much Oasis we listened to this summer. I’m really grateful that it allows us to drop our façade for a moment, reminding us how much we long to know and be known, see and be seen, love and be loved. I think it’s utter genius wrapped in a guise of triviality. It underhandedly nudges us to acknowledge that we want to belong. And so, I’m not convinced it’s ‘individualistic’ behaviour at all - how about we call it a symptom of ‘expressive want-to-belong-ism’, instead?  

Spotify Wrapped’s success is wild.  It is a cultural moment, and its underlying heart-cry is a particularly loud one. Even louder than the three-thousand minutes’ worth of Beyonce I blared this year. Apparently.  

 

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Review
Culture
Digital
Fun & play
4 min read

The grand narrative that’s made it on mobile

The Serpent & The Seed is a welcome addition to the cosy games genre.

Giles Gough is a writer and creative who hosts the God in Film podcast.

A mobile game still shows a robin standing close to a seated man.
Mungo and Adam.

The Serpent & The Seed is a game with a difference: an imaginative retelling of the world's greatest story. In a world overtaken by an evil serpent, you play the character of Mungo, a young robin encouraged by his owl friend to read an old, mostly forgotten book that holds the promise for salvation.   

Released last Easter by Discipleship Tech (the creators of the Prayer Mate app) The Serpent & The Seed aims to tells the story of the Bible as a mobile adventure game. Turning the Bible story into an app feel like quite a novel idea. A cursory search shows that there’s no shortage of Bible based games to play on your phone, but most of them appear to be quiz or trivia based. Seeing this grand narrative, from creation to crucifixion, in game form feels both novel and inevitable, how you might imagine seeing the gospel story be put on film for the first time. “Throughout history, Christians have created, shaped and used technology for God’s glory” the Discipleship Tech website tells us; seen in that light, using a mobile game to deliver the gospel is simply the next step in a line of technological use that stretches back to the invention of the codex.  

Although the game has only been in development for just over four years, it’s had a much longer gestation period than that. “It's an idea I've had for about 20 years now,” says project leader, Andy Geers, “I grew up playing lots of computer games and knowing Jesus and getting to know the Bible better… So I kind of thought: wouldn't it be great if we could combine those two things?” Geers says that the catalyst for this game was a research project. According to the Bible Society’s Lumino research project, a quarter of the UK population are "open to the Bible and finding out more". The Serpent & The Seed is Geers’ way of meeting that need.  

This is clearly a labour of love for all involved and it shows. The dialogue sparkles with cheeky irreverence at times thanks to scriptwriting from Amy Green (BAFTA-winning writer/developer of That Dragon Cancer, the video game centring on the loss of her infant son, Joel). Ostensibly aimed for players ‘9+’, the narrative has to dance around some of the more unpleasant parts of the Old Testament, which it does so lightly and humorously. At one point in the Garden of Eden level, Adam tells our robin character Mungo, that naming things is hard work, and he needs a rest. Mungo then ponders whether Adam has any idea what hard work is! The framing narrative of talking animals in a world full of thistles and thorns ruled by an evil tyrant has shades of Narnia, which may have been an unconscious influence and is very much appreciated.  

One particular highlight is the musical interludes. The developers aimed for the music to be a leading character in this mobile game, and the score was composed by song-writing duo Poor Bishop Hooper. When you unlock another chapter in the game, the almost transcendent songs kick in, combined with the logo appearing in its beautiful lettering, creating an enjoyable experience. It also features music from Canadian artist Jim Guthrie, whose Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP was something of an inspiration for the atmosphere of the whole game.  

The game appears to be connecting with the public, many of whom are praising its art design. Greg Clifton’s illustrations are soothing and light-hearted (I’m pretty sure Moses is rocking an awesome quiff). “It seems to be pitched as a chilled, interactive story with some minor puzzle solving, a subgenre that is increasingly popular these days,” writes gamer and RS teacher Natalie Minaker. “I imagine that this game can provide a few hours of mental respite to any stressed-out Christians!”  

Unfortunately, the lack of challenge is hard to avoid mentioning. As this game is telling a very well-established story, there’s very little jeopardy and as a result, the pace lags a little in parts. “The gameplay is gentle and seems to promote a sense of mindfulness rather than any real sense of peril or challenge,” continues Minaker. In certain levels there are Christian themed takes on popular mobile games - Angry Birds, Flappy Bird, and even Snake (which will be a pang of nostalgia for those of us who had a Nokia in the 90s). What is clear is that playability takes a back seat to story here, and when that story is the Bible, that’s understandable. There’s also a distinctly estuary English accent to the voices shouting “hosanna” as Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey which might momentarily take you out of the story, but this is merely nitpicking.  

Whether it will effectively compete for pre-teens’ attention in a saturated market remains to be seen, but this is another useful tool to have in a kids or youth leader’s toolkit. It might also serve as the kind of homework an RE teacher could set that the students might enjoy completing! Older gamers or committed Christians might not find much of the content particularly revelatory, but they may find its gentle pace and soothing aesthetics a welcome addition to the emerging ‘cosy games’ genre. 

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