Defeated Joy: The Playlist

On my FiveThirtyEight podcast “What’s The Point” I recently spoke with the New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff about music discovery, taste, and algorithmic listening. Here’s a bit of our exchange.

Jody: You write about the match between the listener’s experience, and mood, and what an artist brings to the table, and the alchemy that happens when those two meet.

Ben: There’s emotional programming: music for sad moods, or happy moods.

Jody: There is a mood tab on Spotify.

Ben: Yeah. But in reality emotions are paradoxical. For instance, you can feel a kind of defeated joy. That’s actually how emotions work. But the streaming services are not going to be able to sell that to you because that’s too complicated an emotion.

Jody: You know what? I bet “defeated joy” will be a tag on Spotify within the next five years.

Ben: Maybe! I think the big idea underneath my book is that listening to music is a really creative act. It’s not just passive. Listening to music is one of the things that helps you discover your humanity.

Challenge accepted. The spotify robots may not have a defeated joy playlist yet, but I (with your help) took a crack at creating one. Here it is.

If you have any songs that you think should be added, get in touch. Or make a playlist of your own and I’ll embed it below.