Monica’s Top Genre: Reggaeton
Top Artists
- Bad Bunny
- Rauw Alejandro
- Myke Towers
- Ariana Grande
- Anuel AA
Top Songs
- Bandido
This year, Monica’s top artist was once again Bad Bunny. If you’ve listened in to the show this semester, you might have picked up on this too. Bad Bunny has been one of her top artists for the past three years. We’ve talked throughout the semester about how Bad Bunny’s rise to fame is largely due to his growing popularity in the United States. His top single Dakiti has played on mainstream pop radio since it was released in 2020. According to Spotify, Bad Bunny holds the number one spot for the most streamed artist in the world for both 2020 and 2021. This is huge news for the Latino community.
Contemporary Reggaeton artists Rauw Alejandro, Myke Towers, and Anuel AA were also among her top artists in 2021. Throughout the semester, Monica highlighted some of these artists by playing “Experimento” by Myke Towers, “Todo de Ti” by Rauw Alejandro, and “Tiroteo” featuring Rauw Alejandro. Needless to say, Reggaeton is a huge part of Latino culture, especially today, with the genre gaining fans in the United States like never seen before. Finally, for a little sprinkle of her American side, Monica’s Spotify Wrapped wouldn’t be her own without miss Ariana Grande. Each year, since about 2016, Ariana has consistently been one of her top artists.
Helen’s Top Genre: Korean Rap
Top song: Just like this (ft. George)
Top artists: Loco – 0.05% of listeners
Helen’s top genre, song, and artist all show one thing…. That she is absolutely in love with Loco, her favorite Korean artist, and will marry him in 5 years. It’s on the bucket list and she will manifest it to happen. This is definitely not a joke. Helen has been a loyal, faithful fan of Loco since 2017 with the song “We are”. Helen wasn’t always exclusively a Korean rap listener, but somehow she’s here sitting with her top genre being Korean rap. For the most part, Helen’s standards for songs and artists are just if she can resonate with the energy of the song or not. But she realized this year that most of the songs she loves from Loco and other Korean rap artists share powerful and motivational messages. For example, the song, “We are,” that started it all off for her talks about the day-in-day-out hustle towards achieving a goal. Another song, “Rising Star” (her 3rd most played song), by TOIL talks about the imminence of his stardom that comes from years of hard work and grit. Helen resonates with this mindset of hard work to fulfill one’s dreams. She talks about the motivation to succeed as an immigrant/hyphenated American in the United states in various episodes, and sure enough her most played songs represent that kind of determination. Helen will continue to stay faithful to the songs that motivate her to race towards her dreams as should we all!
Kaizz
Genre:
- Lofi
- Melodic Rap
- Korean Pop
- Rap Pop
- Japanese Chillhop
Songs:
- Stay by The Kid Laroi
- Way 2 Sexy by Drake
- Sheesh! By Surface
- Fair Trade by Drake
- Heartbreak Anniversary by Giveon
Kaizz’ top songs really show that he’s still experimenting with his music taste. His top genre was lofi which listens to as background noise while he studies so we can ignore that for now, but the songs he did listen to were from the Spotify generated playlists as he tried to find what songs he did like. He didn’t really start listening to music until recently and only tried to listen to whatever was trending. It wasn’t until the COVID lockdown did he start trying to find what he actually liked. His top genres were all over the place ranging from Melodic Rap, Korean Pop, to Japanese Chillhop (whatever that is). This kind of parallels how Kaizz is at the moment. Not really knowing what he likes and who he is and just trying to figure that out whenever. Go with the flow, basically. He’s slowly forming his musical identity as he gets closer to clearly figuring out what he does and doesn’t like which is very similar to how he is slowly forming into his own self and not what he thinks people would like. Maybe that person will be a big hybrid of everyone and everything he has encountered or maybe it’ll be a completely unique thing altogether. Maybe his musical identity will be all over the place somewhere down the line or maybe it will be something no one has ever heard of. Only time will tell what’ll happen.
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