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Make that five somethings strange.
I call them my secret Spotify songs.
Spotify had killed the snobby record-store employee and taken his place.
What was going on?
The company also uses a technology that trawls internet text and users playlists for descriptions of songs content.
Ignoring this quite reasonable hypothesis, I pressed forward with my pet theory.
There are millions of songs that could be served up to Spotify listeners at any time.
Rhodes is a vocal dead ringer for Paul McCartney.
Of course, the algorithm wasnt doing this on its own.
I started calling up the people responsible for putting music in things.
I wasnt always off base in my suspicions.
The shows music supervisor, Maggie Phillips, confirmed my theory.
Its hard to escape.
I cant even say somethings my idea.
Its a computers idea.
By this point, every mention of the label had me ready to break out the yarn and corkboard.
All of them specialize in unearthing music that would otherwise have been lost to time.
Numero wasntnotinterested in talking to me, but a representative explained it was just a busy time.
(The more I followed up, the less responsive Numero got.)
But Anthologys Zack Stafford was happy to chat about the relationship between crate-digging labels and streaming services.
Labels hoping for a prime playlist placement for one of their releases will pitch to the streamers.
We kind of just have to hope that they like it, Stafford said.
It helps if the old music sounds like stuff thats popular now.
(Spotify loves playing me his Biding My Time.)
Still, Stafford said, its a surprise when something hits in the algorithm.
All unbeknownst to me, whod imagined them an artifact from the past, locked away in a vault.
Watching a TV show suggested by Netflix or buying a sheet pan suggested by Amazon causes no agita.
Encountering a secret Spotify song in the world broke the spell.
It made me feel like a widget too.
Even worse was finding out some people were listening to the same songs I was the old-fashioned way.
Tracy, the Great Georgiana owner, prides himself on the idiosyncrasies of his playlists.
I love Beyonce; I love Fleetwood Mac, he told me.
But you didnt come here to hear that.
We want to give you the opportunity to hear something you havent heard before.
it’s possible for you to listen to Beyonce when you go home.
Three nights a week, the bar hosts DJs legit ones.
Amanaz he got into through a Zambian guy who used to work for him.
Phil Cordell was a suggestion from his ex-wife, Georgia Fulton, who works at the Long Island Bar.
How did Fulton hear about him?
I called her up, and she remembered it clearly.
Phil Cordell came on, and I remember the song just fucking blowing my mind, she said.
I played it on repeat like it was a tape recorder.
I knew that feeling.
My dad loved Nick Lowe too.
Like Tracy, Fulton puts a lot of stock in a great playlist.
Some of its stuff shes heard from friends, some of its from the algorithm.
Its classic bar music, she said.
To me, its timeless.
I feel like I could be anywhere in the world and it would make sense there.
There were 177 songs in all.
Twenty-seven of them were by artists Discover Weekly had gotten me into.
Thirteen of them were the exact same song.
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