BWW Blog: An Unexpected 2020 Spotify Wrapped

My Spotify Wrapped every year has too much Broadway to be shown in public, but I felt that this is the appropriate forum to share my showtune-centric Spotify Wrapped.

To come clear right at the beginning, my top artists were Anaïs Mitchell, Hadestown, Jessie Mueller, and Reeve Carney (my fifth one was Thomas Newman, who wrote a majority of the Pixar film soundtracks, so I didn't even have a buffer artist that was remotely cool). When I saw Hadestown and Waitress as a large part of my Spotify Wrapped story, I will admit I was surprised. Call me a fake fan, but I really haven't listened to Hadestown or Waitress (or too much more Broadway, to be honest) since the shutdown, yet somehow they took over my entire year.

When I think back to the time in my life where I couldn't stop playing these soundtracks, it brings me back to my trip to New York City a year ago. I saw both Hadestown and Waitress during my trip to the Big Apple, and actually saw them both the same day (a Hadestown matinee with the OBC, a quick pretzel, a trip to the Rockefeller Christmas tree where I proceeded to watch ice skaters for thirty minutes, and then to the Brooks-Atkinson for the closing weekend of Waitress). Obviously, I had been binging these two albums plenty before I got there, but after seeing them live, I couldn't stop listening even more. I now had the context of all these songs I had been listening to.

I must have listened an incredible amount between January 1st and January 8th, because my first stream of my most played song ("King Kunta" by Kendrick Lamar, which also came out in 2015 so you can tell how behind the times I am) was on January 8th and quickly overcame any other song I could play that year. But, that glorious weekend in New York (and the depressing plane ride home) was filled with those two amazing soundtracks.

Here are the Broadway songs that made it in my Top 100 from the year:

1. All I've Ever Known - Hadestown

2. Bad Idea - Waitress

3. Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down) - Hamilton

4. She Used To Be Mine - Waitress

5. Come Home With Me - Hadestown

6. You Matter To Me - Waitress

7. Everything Changes - Waitress

8. Wait For Me ("Hey, the big artiste...") - Hadestown

9. What's Inside - Waitress

10. Chant - Hadestown

11. It Only Takes A Taste - Waitress

12. Epic II - Hadestown

13. A Soft Place to Land - Waitress

14. Never Ever Getting Rid of Me - Waitress

15. You Will Still Be Mine - Waitress

16. Just A Moment - High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (I'm counting it)

17. On The Radio - Summer: The Donna Summer Musical

18. I Didn't Plan It - Waitress

19. Dear Baby - Waitress

20. Epic I - Hadestown

21. Take It From An Old Man - Waitress

22. Opening Up (Finale) - Waitress

So over 20% of my Top 100 songs are Broadway. I'm not ashamed.