The Sunday Sermon: How to Make a Spotify List That Won’t Get You Dragged
**NOTE: Yeah I know it’s Saturday. Even though at any given moment I might forget. Sue me. I’m dropping the Sunday Sermon a day early because I dropped the last one so late.
So I was minding my own damn business this morning, scrolling Twitter when what did I see pop up on my TL.
It’s always great whenever someone I know drops a Spotify list. It’s like a window into their soul. I mean, taste in music is what helps define us as people. Unless, of course, your name is John Henry Feitelberg, who let slip on Friday Night Pints last night that he doesn’t really listen to music.
WUT.
He explained it had to do with his parents blasting music all the time when he was a kid. I hate to disparage the good Mr. and Mrs. Feitelberg, but WTF kind of musical taste must they have that 25 years later their precious son is so scarred he has to sit around his apartment in silence? WOW.
But back to Steven Cheah. I eagerly clicked on it and boy, by the time I got to the end, did I ever wish I hadn’t.
Ugh.
The reaction was immediate and let’s just say STRONG, and kept on coming.
"FINALLY COMPLETE"?
This muthafucka Cheah put THAT playlist on Twitter! CHYEAH lol more like CHNO. That’s a playlist of someone with ADHD (no disrespect to ADHD).
It started out with promise. Outkast: Intl players anthem was the first thing my eyes went to. Great start. And then from there was a mish mosh of different tempos, genres, with no rhyme and no reason. Jumping from Kanye West to Incubus, then to Miley Cyrus? David Blattman (5 time Emmy winner NBD KBD) said it best:
WILD MOVE.
A move he had the nerve to defend.
Incredibly, Steven Cheah later tried to explain what he thought made his playlist bang:
Are you kidding me? Song starting fast? Sing along? This isn’t Disney, Cheah. And any playlist you know all the words to beforehand isn’t a good playlist; it’s a greatest hits album.
And that ladies and gentleman, is the jump off to my Sermon. How to make a Spotify playlist that is worthy of sharing on the internets.
A Spotify playlist is the updated version of the venerable Mix Tape, which has gotten more dudes laid over the past decades than almost any other single item. The Barstool boys are HUGE fans of the mix tape. KFC is on record as saying they are integral to him getting some top:
And our fearless leader Dave has stated many times (most recently during the Unboxing) that the mix tape is the #1 move to make if you want to slide into some hot chick’s life.
As an aside, this last tweet was from 2012. 3 likes. What kind of world were you savages living in where Dave Portnoy got THREE LIKES on a tweet? SMDH at you OG stoolies..
Back to making the perfect playlist.
The first thing is to assess what the playlist is for. Is it for doing chores like in Cheah’s case? Is it for sex like Josh wrote about?
Is it for lounging around the house on a Saturday morning, where you need to groove without getting into the lyrics because you're blogging about proper Spotify playlists techniques?
All of these things matter.
Because the purpose of a playlist is to create a vibe that sets the tone and environment that matches your current life state. Some of my best nights of sex were accompanied with a fire mixtape. I remember vividly listening to “They Like It Slow” by H-Town and similar type of songs like “Knocking The Boots” and “Meeting In My Bedroom” when I was hooking up in my mom’s basement (not a Robbie Fox reference (TBH I think he’s still a virgin)).
And nothing says mood killer than someone putting on misogynistic 90s gangster rap right when you’re trying to be vulnerable, romantic and intimate.
Yeah, that’s happened too. A story for another time.
So let’s for a second say that this list is for “mowing the lawn” where, like Cheah, you want to shuffle with reckless abandon and cut down that bent blue grass that is growing like wildfire in front of your single family home. I believe the vibe you’d want to create for mowing a lawn is happy, productive, and uptempo. It’s going to be fucking hot today, so efficiency matters, especially with that poor excuse for a lawn mower.
If that’s your motivation or vibe while mowing the lawn, then the playlist should be akin to an outdoor workout playlist. So if you want to shuffle, keep every song either in the same genre, or in a similar range of beats per minute (BPM). Probably like 95-100. Pop, hip hop, maybe something in the vein of Bruno Mars “Finesse Remix”, or Dua Lipa’s “New Rules” or maybe even something like Bad Bunny featuring Drake in “MIA”
BUT maybe to you, mowing the lawn is your little piece of serenity. A meditative experience. Zen like. THEN I would recommend something more downtempo and chill. Maybe something more acoustic or ethereal, like you’re inside of your own little world while getting your home in order, the place where your toddlers play. Where the feel of freshly mowed grass between your toes transports you suddenly to a simpler time and place, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average. Maybe you take one of the 3Chi gummies and just go to town.
Something like “Marijuana” by Riles or in the vein of “Saturn” by Sleepermane might do the trick.
See what I’m getting at?
I could spend days getting into the nuance of keeping instruments the same, creating a crescendo throughout the playlist, and putting an artists’ songs together, but this is the basic way to construct a playlist. We all LOVE Steven Cheah because he’s one of the nicest guys on the planet, but his mowing playlist is GARBAGE. It’s not well thought out, nor does it have ANY rhyme nor reason. The fact that he repeated Gin and Juice on there just SHOWS he wasn’t paying attention (and that he’s just a HUGE Doggystyle fan).
A playlist HAS to be a MOOD creator. A vibe. And Cheah’s mowing playlist was a vibe killer. A fucking hodgepodge filled with songs that could only be described as flies in the ointment or the fruitcake at the Christmas dinner table. It was YUCK.
I promise you guys if you take the time to create a playlist that makes sense, it will enhance every aspect of whatever you’re doing with it on, whether it’s a chore, a quickie, or a sensual night of romance on your anniversary.