Music and smells are two of the most effective ways to re-experience the emotions of a specific time in the past. Listening to a song from a particular time of my life brings me back to how I felt at that point in ways photos can’t. Sometimes I can even recall exact visuals of what I was doing or where I was walking when listening.
Over the last 10 years, I followed a system that allows me to re-experience any specific time of any year.
Every January 1st, from desktop/web, I:
- Create a new playlist. Title it the past year.
- Copy all of my liked songs and paste them into the new playlist. This will maintain the order.
- Empty my liked songs.
- Save an out-of-bounds backup of the new playlist, in case my Spotify account messes up in the future. I select all & paste it into a sheet in Google Drive.
- Start listening to new music, like them over the year.
Since the archive saves the order of likes, it grants more granular access than just years. For example, if I want to re-experience how the fall of 2016 felt, I open the corresponding year’s list, scroll 1/4 down from the top, and start listening.
During the year, when I listen to my liked songs, I usually start from the top of the stack, without shuffle. This is natural for me, since the newly saved songs are the ones I like the most at a given time. This causes me to listen to a “rolling window” of my liked songs as time passes, linking specific music to specific dates.
In addition to saving songs that I find myself and particularly like, I like to save songs that are playing around me, on the radio, or at places I visit, and somehow stand out. Even if I might not fully like them at first, I find that they serve as great anchor points, and they usually grow on me after a few listens.
To maintain the integrity & not override the memories associated with specific songs, I rarely listen to or re-save songs from the past years. Sometimes I give myself exceptions, though, especially with remixes. ;)
See my last 10 years: https://open.spotify.com/user/xdavidhu