Spotify Wrapped 2025 was supposed to be the big comeback. After last year’s “AI fever dream” edition — the one that felt like a chatbot stole your diary and tried to rap about it — Spotify promised something cleaner, calmer, and more human. And for the most part, they delivered. Until a new slide arrived. A new slide that stared into the depths of your soul, opened a calculator, mashed the buttons with greasy thumbs, and proudly announced:
Your Listening Age.
Within minutes, the internet erupted like someone had plugged a cassette player into a nuclear reactor.
Listening Age is Spotify’s attempt to tell you what era your music taste belongs to. Not your real age — just the age your vibes align with. Spotify takes the release years of your most-played tracks, tosses them into an algorithm that may or may not be powered by a Magic 8-Ball, and spits out a number that supposedly reflects your “musical self.” The logic is based on the “reminiscence bump,” a fancy psychology term that basically means: whatever music you fell in love with between 16 and 21 becomes your lifelong emotional kryptonite.
Lovely idea. Extremely wholesome. Also wildly unprepared for how humans actually listen to music.
Because users everywhere opened their Wrapped to find they apparently have the listening habits of a retired lighthouse keeper. Twenty-two-year-olds were suddenly sixty-seven. Teenagers were spiritually ancient. One person claimed Spotify aged them so much they needed to schedule a doctor’s appointment. Meanwhile, actual sixty-year-olds discovered their Listening Age was “17 — emo era,” forcing them to confront the possibility that they may be living out a secret second puberty.
The internet seized the chaos instantly. X/Twitter burst into memes:
“My Listening Age is 73. Guess I’ll go water the tomatoes and complain about the price of bread.”
“Spotify said I’m 58. I’m 19. Should I start taking vitamins?”
And the classic: “Apparently I’m a Victorian chimney sweep.”
A big part of the problem is that Spotify seems to assume if you like old music, you must be old. Enjoying Fleetwood Mac? Congratulations — you’re now collecting pension checks. Into 70s funk? Please enjoy your new orthopedic shoes. Dare to play classical? Spotify Wrapped would like to assign you a ghost.
It doesn’t help that some users didn’t get the feature at all. Their Wrapped just breezed past Listening Age like, “Nope, not today.” This created a whole different kind of outrage: the FOMO generation. Suddenly people were begging Spotify to tell them how old they “listen,” which says a lot about the human need for validation from a music app.
And yet, despite the confusion, frustration, and digital aging crisis, many users have embraced it. Listening Age has become the personality test of the season — chaotic, inaccurate, but deeply entertaining. It’s like horoscopes, but instead of telling you you’re a passionate Scorpio moon, it tells you you’ve been listening like a divorced dad from 1984.
The truth is, Wrapped has always been part data, part drama, part meme circus. It’s less about scientific accuracy and more about giving everyone something colorful to post on Instagram before quietly realizing you’ve listened to the same three songs since March. Listening Age just adds a spicy new layer: existential dread with a soundtrack.
Spotify may have intended this feature to help users reflect on their “musical identity,” but what it really did was spark a global identity crisis sprinkled with disco, indie sleaze, and Lana Del Rey throwbacks. Still, it’s hard to be mad. If anything, Listening Age reminded us that music taste doesn’t follow age, logic, or algorithmic boxes. Sometimes you’re 25 with the soul of an 80s rock dad. Sometimes you’re 40 blasting K-pop. Sometimes you’re just a confused 30-year-old whose Spotify thinks you’re 12.
Whatever your Listening Age says, wear it with pride. After all, nothing makes you feel more alive than being collectively roasted by an app that still can’t shuffle properly.
