The Night the Playlist Died

So here’s the pub-worthy point: music gets better when it risks starting a row. Not because conflict is clever, but because taste is one of the last honest forms of personality. Your favourites say what you crave, what you miss, what you’re trying to outgrow. The playlist era sold us smoothness; the next era belongs to edges. To records with a point of view, to nights with one designated lunatic on aux, and to the old-fashioned thrill of hearing a song that makes you demand, immediately, “Who the hell is this?”