As the leaves and the weather change, so do many people’s music listening habits, and I have something to confess about it — I’m a horrible sinner. Not only am I a Spotify user, but my main music-listening habit is the egregious sin of shuffling my 594 liked songs. I’ve been told that doing this makes people anxious, but I just can’t quit.
As I write this, I am listening to Lenny Kravitz’s “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over,” a staple on this playlist for a few years now, but I just skipped past “FE!N,” Cody Carnes’ “Firm Foundation” and the Glee Cast cover of Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out of Heaven.” All these songs are wildly different from each other, and I could go on, but my point is this — I get my money’s worth out of Spotify Premium by being able to skip, and I truly am happy to listen to anything pretty much year-round. (Feel free to stalk me at “Ten Apple” on Spotify.) I am not an album listener, nor do I spend much time listening to the twenty-something playlists I’ve created, but I can try to unpack the different vibes that I gravitate to as the seasons change.
My go-to genre is funky music, which I usually love either when I’m happy or when spring rolls around (these usually coincide, but I’m not trying to dive into the seasonal blues here). Think Silk Sonic, Stevie Wonder and Remi Wolf — anything with a great hook, a unique sound and a great bass line. I do my best to keep my listening habits relatively upbeat due to the connection between what you listen to and your mental state. Some artists, however, stick with me into the colder seasons, like COIN, TV Girl, Clairo, Tyler, The Creator and Laufey, either because they are just that great or because their discography has songs for any season.
When the air gets colder, I start gravitating toward songs with slower tempos and softer tones that usher in a natural rhythm shift in my life. I skip past my favorite funk, opting for muted keyboards and longing, pining vocals that fill my ears with their ache. Out of the woodwork come my other favorite artists, like an old photo album from the attic — Lizzy McAlpine, Adele, FINNEAS and anyone else who creates this drawn-out, emotionally provoking music. In fall, the sadder side of Laufey’s discography always makes an appearance in my queue. When the leaves change, my daylists are always something scathingly exposing like “lovesick single friday night” or “hopeless romantic pining on a tuesday.”
I always come back to one song, though: “Harvest Moon” by Neil Young. It’s a beautiful song that I first heard when watching one of my favorite movies, “A Quiet Place,” and I’ve chased the love that is apparent in that scene and in “Harvest Moon” ever since. The peaceful guitar and mandolin, the ghostly vocals and drum brushes capture an inward shift that many people can resonate with. It’s music that sounds like gentle change, or even decomposition. This song feels like a crisp autumn evening, slow dancing with someone you love deeply in a field of wheat under the moon, hearing the stalks brush against each other under the starlight. The “decomposition vibe,” as my roommate called it, doesn’t just come from the music, but from fall asking us to let certain things fade.
This is one of the beautiful parts of fall to me — that even our playlists learn to let go. And maybe that’s why so many of us have fall playlists — not because the songs change, but because we do. The light shifts, the air cools and suddenly everything sounds a little more meaningful. We start noticing the sound of leaves crunching underneath our shoes, the allure of fall drink flavors and that maybe today we can wear a sweater to class. Summer flies by in a bright and upbeat blur, but fall nudges us to slow down, notice and reflect. Music gives the season texture, shapes the spaces we inhabit and is the perfect vehicle to bridge the seasons together.
But even if I’m shuffling my 594 liked songs, when “Harvest Moon” comes on and I don’t skip it, it is officially fall. It is a signal that the season, just like a really good playlist, can hold layers of joy, memory and melancholy all at once. Sometimes letting go is exactly what we need to feel most alive.
