Why Are My Secret Spotify Songs Following Me Around?

At bars, with friends, on TV, I kept hearing the same music from my “Discover Weekly” rotation. So I tried to peer inside my bubble IRL.

- NATE JONES

A FEW WEEKS AGO, I was at a Brooklyn cocktail bar called the Great Georgiana when I heard something strange. Make that five somethings strange. Over the course of the night, the bar played “Khala My Friend,” by the ’70s Zambian rock band Amanaz; “Like a Chicken,” by witch, a more popular Zambian band from the same era; “Red Lady,” a B-side by psychedelic rocker Phil Cordell, whose only No. 1 hit came on the Swiss charts; “Good Time,” by Donnie and Joe Emerson, two Washington State teenagers whose 1979 home-recorded album was essentially unheard for decades; and, at least twice, “Somebody Made for Me,” by the singer-songwriter Emitt Rhodes, once hailed as the “one-man Beatles.” It was a motley collection of tunes, but I knew them all by heart—because at one point or another Spotify had served them up to me on my “Discover Weekly” playlist, a set of personalized music recommendations updated every Monday. Whenever I hear one I like, I save it to a playlist; since I started back in May 2017, I’ve collected more than 370. For the most part, these are semi-obscure tracks that, because I am mildly uncool, I am hearing for the first time—foreign music that sounds western, vault tracks from artists who were little known in their own times, a depressingly large number by singers who died under tragic circumstances. I call them my secret Spotify songs.