I listen to a lot of music. About 100-hours per month. And this is mostly in album form rather than song shuffling. I’m still old-school. Yesterday, Apple Music released a “Replay All Time” playlist for subscribers. I was really curious what it might produce for me, and if it accurately represented my listening history. Keep in mind this is only the past 10-years since Apple Music launched.
I was unsurprised to see Tool “Fear Inoculum” (2019) because that album is phenomenal and I’ve listened to it tons. And although I am a huge Radiohead fan, I was completely surprised to see so many tracks from “A Moon Shaped Pool” (2016). Suppose I listened to it a lot back then. I did expect to see the U2 boys in the top list of tracks but nothing. Hearing the Ryuichi Sakamoto track “The Revenant Main Theme” (2015) made me really happy. Such a beautiful track! And a few tracks from Chelsea Wolfe’s “Hiss Spin” (2017) brought out the metal in me. The top 25 was rounded out with a Peter Gabriel track from his 2023 triple alum release “I/O”.
But then moving further down the track-list, there was a bit more variety. For example, David Bowie “Blackstar” (2016), JFDR “Brazil” (2017), The National “I Am Easy to Find” (2019), Steven Wilson “To the Bone” (2017), Nick Cave “Ghosteen” (2019), and Underworld “Barbara Barbara, we Face a Shining Future” (2016).
So much music to love and revisit. If you have Apple Music then you should checkout your playlist.
I use another app called Albums and it tracks my full-album plays. In June, I listened to 60 unique albums. From that list, the top played albums this past month are Larum “The Music of Hildegard von Bingen, Part Two” (2025), Van Morrison “Remembering Now” (2025), Abul Mogard “Quiet Places” (2025), Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe “Luminal” and “Lateral” (2025), and The Cure “Mixes of a Lost World” (2025).
What are you listening to? What brings you joy in music? I hope some of this will inspire you to dig into your collection and to also explore new music.
Enjoy. And I’ll try to blog a bit more.