Endless Thread - Snacktime: Weird Spotify Playlists

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

Fun fact: Ben wooed his wife with a mix CD, and Amory's husband wooed her with a mix CD. The lesson? Never underestimate the power of a good playlist. But if it's a "Weird Spotify Playlist," the object of your affection better have a sense of humor. In this episode, Amory introduces Ben to the fast-growing "Weird Spotify Playlists" Twitter account and subreddit, where song titles are way more important than the songs themselves.

Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

Ben, could you use a snack? I mean... You shouldn't have to think about it. Well, it's like, it's real hot in here in my little foam booth. Uh-huh. So, like, I was just trying to picture which one. And I, yeah, like, you know how some days someone might say, like, I could drink a thousand beers right now.

Uh-huh. No, but sure. Like, I could eat a thousand popsicles right now. Oh, that's good. And I want that for you. And we should say, snack time, aka right now, this is when we bring you a little snack-sized episode while we work on our meal-sized episodes. Yeah, there's a veritable feast coming.

A feast. Yeah, I was going to say, like, is it a... A cornucopia. Is it a buffet? Is it a... It's an all you can eat buffet. Orgus board? Is it a many-course meal? Yeah.

But for right now, we have a hopefully satisfying snack to hold you over. And we're going to kick things off by dusting off the old time machine. Can you do that for me, Ben? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Didn't even have to ask you for a sound effect. You'd be ready. Dusted right off.

Okay. Can you turn it on for me? Thank you. Okay, we've arrived back to Tuesday, January. Wait, wait. I got to put on my seatbelt. Hold on. my God. We're already here.

Click. You blew it. All right. Sorry. Fortunately, we landed safely back at Tuesday, January 16th, 2018. Do you have any idea what we were doing that day? Or that night, actually. Oh, God. January 16th, 2018. I feel like we launched our show January 12th or 11th on 2018.

It's the 12th, but I'll give you a hint. Snowstorm. You got nothing. Wow. Snowstorm. I don't know. You were driving back from Rochester, New York. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

After just having talked to a guy named Alex for our episode kicking it, which, by the way, if you haven't heard, get on that. Yeah. But what do you remember about that drive back to Massachusetts? You and I created quite a monster mix going back and forth, picking songs together. There were a lot of snacks. Jira Deli's special select. No, it's Gardettos. Cardettos, whatever it is.

Those bagel chips. And I feel like it was also somewhat terrifying of a drive because there was snow everywhere and everything was slipping all over the place. Very good. I was like, man, I hope I don't kill myself and my partner in podcasting during the first, during the second week of us working together officially on this show. And you didn't that time. Yeah, we co-dijed the drive. You'd pick a song, I'd pick a song. And it went on and on like that for like six white knuckle slow and steady hours on the road. And I look back on that so fondly because even though it was very scary, And we didn't really know each other that well at that point. Our collaborative playlist made for conversation. It was like a good distraction.

Yeah, we vibed. It was good. We vived. And I don't remember anything that we played for each other, but I'm guessing it was a good playlist. It was good. I think it was good, yeah. So I'll circle back to the idea of collaborative playlists in a little bit.

But my story for you today is really just about playlists. Not just any playlists. Weird-ass playlists. Even more specifically, weird Spotify playlists. Have you heard of this phenomenon? No, but I wooed my wife with a playlist, so. I was wooed by a playlist, too. All the best relationships.

That's right. Okay, so I heard about weird Spotify playlists from a dear friend. We'll call her Madeline. Madeline sent me a link to a tweet from an account called Weird Spotify Playlists. And the tweet was a playlist titled, POV, or point of view, you're walking through Ohio. She sent this because I'm from Ohio. There are six songs on this playlist.

The titles of those songs in order are, Track one, This Place Sucks. Track two, There's Nothing to Do. do. Track three, all caps. Well, would you look at that? Track four, a well-dressed pack of dogs in Ohio. Track five, that's nice. And track six, this place is nice. Really takes you on a journey, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. And I like where the journey ends. So even though I don't know who made this playlist, shout out to Constantino Papalidis. Oh, I'm so sorry if I'm misproncing your name for his song, this place is nice because I agree.

This place is nice. So Ben, this is a thing. Weird Spotify playlists. I mentioned it's a Twitter account with last I checked, they have like 450,000 followers and growing, which is impressive because it just launched in May. A few less than the endless threat account, but yeah. Just a few.

Couple two, three. There's also a subreddit, which was just started earlier this month, and that's approaching 11,000 subscribers at the time. or taping this at least. And the subreddit is described as, quote, a place where people can post their weird Spotify playlist names. But Ben, I call Malarkey.

Can you guess why from the playlist that I've shared with you thus far? Because you, for some reason, stick to the idea that Ohio doesn't suck. And so the first song in the playlist is Anathema for you. Okay, that is true, but that's not why. It's because these playlists, at least I'm guessing, the vast majority of them, I think, are bogus. I think they are not designed for the sick jams and the perfect segways from one song to the next that you or I might take so much pride in when we're making a playlist. They're designed for the lulls. And I'll give you another example here, okay?

Oh, of course. Of course they are. Why wouldn't they be? Well, here's one called POV. you're an alien pretending to be a human, in parentheses, poorly. So like normal? The track list is one. What is up?

Two, females and males. Three, what are you listening to? Four. Ah. Five. Music. Six. I love music.

Seven. This is a party, right? Eight. Very cool. Very swag. Nine. One thing I love. 10.

It's a party. 11. Hey, human. 12. When the party's over, 13. Let's go for a drive. 14. In my spaceship.

15. I mean, 16. In a car. So it's really all about the track titles. All about the track titles. And Spotify allegedly has 70 million songs on it. As of March of this year. Which means you can make a playlist for anything.

If you can dream it, you can make it. And coming up, Ben, we're going to do. do just that. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers.

And hopefully, make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's business partnerships team. Become a thought leader.

Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org. So Ben, I told you we're going to make a playlist, and we will. But first, a pop quiz. Okay. So I started by giving you the names of weird Spotify playlists and then reading you the track listings.

But now I'm going to give you the track listings, and you're going to have to guess the name of the playlist. Okay? Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. We're going to start easy. Level beginner. Track one.

Bread. Two. Cheese. Sandwich. Very good. Three is lettuce, four is chicken, five is mayo, six is bread. Back to bread. Very good. Okay, next up, intermediate level.

Track one, wow. Track two, wow. Track three, wow, with two wos at the end. Track four, wow, all caps. Dosh. I don't know, that was my first guess, yeah. Okay. I have a friend who's going to help me out with the rest of the track list.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Do you know who this is, Ben? No. No. No. You've never heard the Owen Wilson Wow. Mashups. Oh, man. I've seen a lot of mashups, but no Owen Wilson mashups. I'm sorry. But did you know that that's a thing that Owen Wilson says wow a lot? And he says it strangely? He does say well a lot.

So that one, that playlist is called Owen Wilson walking through an art museum. That's good. Okay, last one, level expert. Here we go. Track one. We are. Two. No.

Three. Strangers. Four. Two love. Five. You know. Six. The rules.

Seven. And so do I. It seems like it's lyrics from a song And I want to say that it's like What I'm feeling I'm bad at this because like I don't I'm one of those people who like I never pay attention to lyrics I only pay attention to like production and melody That like I'm like one of those people who just like doesn't know what the song is actually saying So like you know for like for a long time I thought like

that Venus, like, I'm your Venus. I'm your fire. It's your... I thought for a long time it was, I'm your fetus. I don't know why. I just thought it was the song was, I'm your fetus.

So I'm bad at this. But I'm going to say like hauling outs. That's just a random kind of shot in this general zone. Okay. Well, I have another friend to help us out here. Okay. I thought maybe it was Rick. I thought maybe it was Rick, but I wasn't sure.

That playlist is called Not a Rick Roll. And consider that a hint about our upcoming season. That's all I'm going to say. But speaking of which, Ben, I made a playlist about how that's coming along in case listeners are curious. You want to hear my playlist? Sure. Okay. It's called E.T. Deadlines.

Oh, no. Track one. It's good. Under pressure, all right. Yep, that's track one. Or is it vanilla ice? No. Track two, so far behind.

Track three, just kidding. Four, we'll be fine. Five, right? Six, it'll be great. Seven, hold tight, hold tight. Eight, something's coming. nine, you're going to love it. That's good.

I like it. I like it. So wait, I have some questions about this. Yeah. Not about your playlist, which is great, but like about how these are generated. Because like I'm going to guess that because it's Spotify, there's like, is it possible that there's like a bot generating these or like there's some algorithmic?

It's a good question, which is why. Hello? Our producer Dean Russell made a phone call because we had some questions. I just finished my dinner, but go ahead, ask away. This is Charlie. He's from Tampa Bay, and he's the admin of this wildly popular Twitter account.

His Twitter name is troll-face incidents. And Ben, we needed parental permission to talk to Charlie because he's only 16. What? Yes. Oh, my God, Charlie. is running a Twitter account. Finishing up his peas. He just has to finish his peas before he leaves the table.

To deal with his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. Oh, Charlie. What a gem. True gem. True, true gem. So first to answer your question, Charlie said, no way are these playlists made by bots. These playlists are submitted to them by living, breathing humans. Yeah, regular people. Regular people on Twitter, on Reddit. and Charlie and his co-conspirator Matt, who actually started the account. Both of whom are, by the way, themselves bots, but go on.

Could be. They spend their days sifting through thousands of playlists that have been submitted to really find the cream of the crop. I get a lot of requests of what to post, but I'm not going to post something that will make me laugh, let alone we'll make other people laugh. I choose most of them, and I know it will be funny and what I'll be funny and what I'll be. to be good. It just has to be relatable. It has to be funny. It has to be something that other people will get and that they've seen before. Yeah. Charlie and Matt know what's funny. Yeah. It seems doable. Yeah. And they confirmed my suspicion that the point isn't to make a playlist for music's sake. It's for the laughs. It's all about the names, yeah. I mean,

the good ones are usually shorter. If it's going to be long, it has to be funny. And it's It's not just going to be a bunch of random songs. Like one of the ones I got around 210,000 likes is how you be a bee. And you know, the song I'm a B by the Blackoutes, basically just, it's basically a play on words. That playlist is actually called P-O-V, you're a B, like the insect. And it's just that one song, I'm a B. And it's Charlie's favorite playlist of all of the thousands of playlist that he's posted so far. It's pretty good.

It's pretty good. I like it. I have two questions, though. Okay. Question one. Did Matt or didn't he bite Charlie's finger? Question two. Man, we blew it. We didn't even ask.

Question two. Who came up with this? Like, where did this come from? Ah, okay. So Charlie's friend Matt, who lives in Europe, and he says is also a teenager, Matt starts a lot of these kinds of accounts, and he basically is just trying to see what sticks. He usually based all of his accounts off Facebook groups or Reddit groups.

It's really not that hard. I mean, find an idea, like the weird Spotify thing, had a lot of followers on Facebook. I mean, we're also going to maybe do another account called Bathroom, or Threatening Oras. It has about 200,000 Facebook members. You can't even explain any of these. Bathrooms with threatening auras, Ben.

I've seen some of those in my days. Yeah, I've been in a few of those. So I just love this. I feel like this is comedic innovation meets the power and reach of the Internet. Also, like, I also feel like it's like people in people who are like full-fledged adults are always like, what's viral? How do you go viral? And like these 16-year-olds are James are like literally like, it's not that hard. It's really not that hard.

Yeah, but also, right. It's like there's a whole generation of kids who are like, yeah, whatever, I'll be a little naus X. No problem. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I do. And they also get that like you have to try a lot of things and see what sticks. You know, they're not taking it for granted that they can make something viral. They're just, they're willing to do the experimenting that I think a lot of us are like, oh, well,

That didn't take off. Well, I give up. I'm just not funny enough. Or I just don't, I'm just not internet-y enough. But yeah, I love that. You just, you never know in the crapshoot that is the internet, nobody knows what will catch fire, not even Charlie. I never thought the account would do that good.

Yeah, man. I mean, you're out there. You're trying hard on stuff. And then you just come up with a one-song playlist called I'm a B and you're into the stratosphere. I love it. Okay, so now that we know the origin story, Ben, back to our collaborative playlist making, which we're so good at, we're going to make a playlist together right here, right now. Okay, what should it be? What should it be about? What should it be called? I've got Spotify open, so I'm ready. How about just like how work goes every day for us?

About our dynamic, which is hard to capture, but I believe in us. Yeah. Okay, well, oh, I've got track one. Go, okay Track one is Where is Ben? Because Because you're like a few minutes late to everything

Which, you know, some of us are. That's track one. You pick track two. Florence in the Machine, hiding. Hide, okay. Good, good. Okay. Track three.

I don't know. I always have like a mid-morning snack. So maybe I'll look up morning snack. Yep. I got a song right here called Morning Snack by Francesco Como. Excellent. What about you? I'm just going to do Dam, Kendrick Lamar. Damn. Mm-hmm. Because I just saw your snack. And I'm like, damn. I like it. then there's a Marvin Gay song called Let's Get It Oh no I thought it was going to say I thought I was going to say let's get on it

I just had a dyslexic moment Let's get on it The one where Amory reads out a Marvin Gay song As if she's never heard it before In a way that's definitely inappropriate Keep that one in. That's got to survive the cut. I'm working on my reading skills.

That's so good. There's a song called Enough for Today. Yeah, you can end it there. You can have the last two. You can have the last two. Enough, enough for today. Okay. Well, I think.

think now we should turn this over to you out there. A challenge for the listeners. We want to see your endless thread related weird playlists. So they can be about your favorite episode or about how much you hate when we go on break or anything at all that you think we'd like. You can post them to our subreddit. You can tweet them at. Like Marvin Gaye Songs that we don't know about. I do know about it. I just, I just, okay. We're at endless underscore thread on both of those platforms. Or you can email us if you know how to read and write like I don't. You can email us.

Yeah, let's get on it. Let's get on it. Let's get on it. Her email addresses endless thread at wbUR.org. I'd say let's go out on let's get on it, but it doesn't exist. So maybe we'll go out on something else. That's it for today. Enough for now. Go listen to some weird songs on some weird-ass playlists. I highly recommend let's get on it. We'll keep working on the new season over here and we'll see you back here in a couple weeks for another snack. Bye.