2016: An audial ode

To live and cry in Bollywood.

Here’s the deal — like we said, this year SUCKED. If I felt like someone had been chewing me up for the past 21 years of my life, 2016 was finally being spit out and stuck on the underside of some unfortunate-looking desk in my high school Econ class (the ugliest class for the ugliest of subjects). Processing all of this hurts, but music helps.

I specifically love Bollywood music’s ability to work through emotions quickly: like tongue-in-cheek sadness or songs about love that make you want to yell and cry in rotation. And then, of course, there are the songs at the end of a movie you just cried at that can feel like forcing a smile through the hurt. 2016 often felt like smiling through the hurt.

This playlist needs you to carry yourself through it, like a Bollywood-y “stages of grief.” It’s about watching the world burn around you while you dance. Then, sadness. A slowing. To sit down at the end of a party you hated being at, after a long week. To just do that for a while.

And then, finally, the end of the movie.