You should make a "heard in the wild" playlist.

“I haven't found any music in a while.”

This is something people say to me fairly often. Friends, family, even other musicians. Curious, this line of thinking, in an era of total comprehensive availability. Every song written since the dawn of creation, just a quick search away - the cannon at your fingertips and yet... 

Maybe it’s a conundrum of choice. Maybe you’re like me, standing in the shampoo aisle at CVS, thinking to yourself, “Okay, I understand intellectually that I’m looking at colorful plastic tubes of post-capitalist chemical gloop, all of which serve a nearly identical purpose. I understand intellectually that the architecture of this moment is deliberate, that the sheer volume of product is meant to make me feel as though this decision matters greatly. I understand intellectually that in fact, this decision doesn’t matter in the slightest, and yet, here I stand, staring, “shopping.”

Author’s Note: Please allow me to check my privilege here. I am lucky to possess what I have been told is “easy hair.” I wash it maybe once a week, and I am plagued by zero scalp-centric struggles. I do not wish to offend any readers by calling their post-capitalist gloops post-capitalist gloops. If you need a specific gloop to keep your noggin tip-top, I levy neither judgment nor verdict. I may be more empathetic to your plight than you imagine- I am exceedingly particular about deodorant. Rite Guard makes a very good gloop.

And so, I step warily forward toward total personhood by way of scalpal salvation, and I pause. “This time you’ve gone too far,” rasps over the pharmacy speakers, a warm, familiar gravel to the sung phrase.

No matter- important choices are to be made. Labels must be read and considered- words like jojoba and keratin could be the keys to finding meaning in this life, so we must think carefully!

And then, another pause. “Wow, that guitar tone is gorgeous, even in this CVS. Maybe a strat through a JC-120, hell yeah.”

And just like that, I am awake again. A sheriff of songs in the days of dueling, I am quickest to the hip and smoothest with the draw. My revolver is my iPhone, and it’s loaded with the most underrated ammunition that many of us forget we have in our arsenal.

I aim, cock the hammer, pull the trigger, and blast a cold chunk of leaden Shazam into the heart of the buzzing speaker. I rarely miss my shot, and the payment of bounty pings my account instantaneously. “Of course!” I cry out in rapturous ecstasy, “Peter fucking Gabriel!” I add it to my latest heard in the wild playlist, I grab whatever shampoo is on sale, and I clear just a little bit of the post-capitalist gloop out of my brain. 

I am of the opinion that music is meant to be heard in the wild. When I’m looking forward to listening to something, I’m thinking mainly about the context I will attempt to create around my listening. Where can I walk around where these songs make sense? When it works, it works, but it’s nearly impossible to engineer. As a person of Scottish descent with no real cultural ties whatsoever, I can’t even begin to describe what it was like, discovering Frightened Rabbit while playing a festival with them in Leeds, and then accidentally ending tour with a week off in Edinburgh, spent oscillating between hammered and hungover wandering the endlessly weaving city with “The Midnight Organ Fight” blaring in my headphones.

Author’s Note: I didn’t mean it when I wrote “I can’t even begin to describe what it was like…”. What I actually meant was “I’m not going to describe what it was like in this essay. I’m going to write an entire essay on this, which you will be able to read soon if you LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE BABY. Look at me, I am doing internet things.

So, here we stand, in the most infinite aisle of the most infinite pharmacy, trying to find something new to listen to. We have the world at our fingertips, but the world is too noisy, so we put on the noise we’re most comfortable with and we “go on about our business.”

Thankfully, my shampoo analogy is about to fall apart, here’s why:

The songs aren’t the gloop, your algorithm is. It is a useful and elegant marvel of technology, to be sure, but its methodology is no longer a thing of great mystery, and its goals are clearly defined. Streaming algorithms have been optimized to deliver you more of what they know you like, with the express intent of keeping you on their platform for as long as possible. 

Here, we arrive at the dingey bottom shelf of the most infinite pharmacy aisle. Here lies the downside of having every song ever released wading patiently just upstream of your algorithm. You know that album you love, the one you had on loop back in the day? There are hundreds of thousands of songs that sound a lot like it. A reeking landfill of .mp3s that you will probably like, that will also, crucially, not pull at your attention or challenge you in the slightest. 

After years of streaming, we’ve effectively self-reported what we think we prefer, what we know we have always liked, what we probably want a lot more of. And yet,

“I haven’t found any music in a while.” 

And so, I propose a new approach, one I have found helps me to transcend this dynamic- pay attention to the music you notice in the wild. Not the music you hear in the wild, as there are shards of song flung at us from all directions, all the time. I’m not talking about the cliche smooth jazz punishing you from the elevator speaker, I’m talking about the 1992 Peter Gabriel masterpiece “Digging In The Dirt” that reaches out from the heavens to give you a gentle, loving tap on the shoulder to remind you that you are alive. I’m talking about the not-so-rare piece of music that can remind you that life is short and capable of intense beauty and that you might not want to waste too much time on gloop in CVS.

Make sure you don’t stop at the Shazam- add that song to your heard in the wild playlist.

Maybe, like me, you can’t help but notice music erupting from car stereos at near-impossible volume 20 times a day. Usually, it’s background noise, but occasionally you’re dodging wild chickens while prowling the streets of Ybor City at 2:30 am on the fourth Friday of a five-week tour, the clouds part, and the god of bangers reaches downward with a shimmering Sistine finger outstretched. In a world of trunk-rattling 808s, one melody cuts through, for whatever reason, and thanks to your deftness at coming up off the hip before the red light can turn green, you’ve captured something real from your moment. A piece of art now belongs to you just as much as it belongs to anyone else. 

If you’re anything like me, you will probably enjoy revisiting this song for years to come, not because you love the genre or tend to listen to similar artists, but because this song, at least to you, is powerful enough to steal your attention away from all the other stimuli without even trying. You’ve already unwittingly pressure-tested the song’s ability to whip you into presence, now get to know it a little better and see where it takes you.

These songs may also gain geographic significance as you continue to develop the habit. Anytime I listen to “Love & War” by Lil Poppa, I’m back in Ybor City, and I’m enveloped in this memory thanks to an artist from Jacksonville with 386k monthly listeners that the algorithm wouldn’t have served me in a million years.

The geography doesn’t even need to be interesting to stick, and although I can mentally retrace countless adventures through my playlists, if I’m honest, a lot of the songs take me back to CVS or somewhere like it.

That is also okay with me, because at least it means I walked away with a bit more than the post-capitalist gloop I came for. 

Here’s a link to my latest heard in the wild playlist. I start a new one each time the season changes, more or less, so stick around if you like it.

Here’s a link to my new single. Play it loud enough to make sure everyone around you has no choice but to add it to their heard in the wild playlist.