The Video Messages from My Top Artists on Spotify Wrapped, Graded

Alternate title: I felt like sharing my Wrapped but I didn't wanna be basic about it.

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Spotify Wrapped needs no introduction. The annual music statistics breakdown has dominated social media for exactly one day near the beginning of the holiday season every year since its debut in 2016.

That day is not today—in fact, it was a few weeks ago already—so you’re more than welcome to question why I waited until Christmas weekend to write about it. I’ll tell you why.

Seemingly every year, Spotify adds something new and eye-catching to Wrapped. This year, the pièce de résistance was a short video thank you message from one of your top artists. Mine was from Carly Rae Jepsen, who was my #1 artist this year (and I can safely say she’s been in my top five for all eight years of Wrapped without bothering to go back and look it up). She thanked the fans and noted that she’d never enjoyed performing as much as she did in 2023. It was wholesome and an overall welcome surprise.

So imagine my surprise on Friday when I got a push notification from Spotify saying I had video messages, plural, from even more of my favorite artists!

Joining Carly, whose message was still there for me to view, were 10 more of my favorite musical acts. All of their messages showed flair unique to themselves; I’m not sure Spotify gave them any creative guidance aside from a 30-second time limit and perhaps a “no cursing” rule.

As a result, some of these messages were considerably better than others. Overall, they ran the gamut from being genuinely heartwarming, funny, and/or impressive to just seeming like ho-hum tasks to be completed for a job. This wide range of effort intrigued and amused me and, though these top artists are specific to me, I thought others might get a kick out of it too.¹

So here are all 11 of the video thank you messages I received from my top artists on Spotify, graded on how well I think they understood the assignment.

1. Carly Rae Jepsen

Transcription: “Hi, my name is Carly Rae Jepsen and I wanna thank you all so much for listening to my music this year and being such supporters of this project! It has really been the loveliest time and I mean that so sincerely. Um, eh…I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed performing so much and that’s all thanks to you! So, looking forward to whatever’s next to come and I will see you there!”

Sitting on a long, stone staircase outdoors, Carly thanks her fans for listening throughout 2023.

She spent the year supporting her sixth and seventh studio albums, The Loneliest Time and The Loveliest Time, which released last October and this July, respectively. The wordplay on the latter is a nice touch, a cherry on top of the cheerful thank-you sundae.

Unfortunately, I can’t quite give this full marks because whoever is filming the video breathes really heavily around three seconds in and it’s pretty impossible to ignore.

Grade: A-
Album recommendation: See below
Song recommendation: “Kollage”

Before we move on, a ranking of Carly Rae Jepsen’s seven studio albums:

1. Emotion (2015)

2. Dedicated Side B (2020)

3. The Loneliest Time (2022)

4. Dedicated (2019)

5. The Loveliest Time (2023)

6. Kiss (2012)

7. Tug of War (2008)

If I was to count her 2016 EP Emotion Side B—which is eight songs and almost 28 minutes long, so basically a short album—it’d slot in between The Loveliest Time and Kiss.

None of these records are bad, though you can clearly tell Carly was kind of a novice songwriter on her debut and she made up for that on Kiss by drowning it in polish. I’d say everything from Emotion on is a must-listen.

2. The Go! Team

Transcription: “Wow! That’s it! It’s done! It’s a wrap! Thank you all so much for supporting The Go! Team in 2023. It’s been an amazing year for us. Keep following, keep listening, see what we’ve got planned for 2024.”

I’ll be generous and give it about a 5% chance you’ve heard of these guys.

The Go! Team are a genre-mixing band from England who unexpectedly became indie darlings with their 2004 debut album Thunder, Lightning, Strike. They’ve relayed that early success into a long career with a cult following.

Count me among that following. Thunder, Lightning, Strike is my favorite album of all time (for reasons I explained when we reviewed it for The Daily Spin back in July). When the band announced they’ll be playing the album in full for one night only next February in London, I seriously considered spending an unjustifiable amount of money to go see it.

Thankfully, they later announced they’ll be taking a rare North American tour in May. They’re only going to the Pacific Northwest, so I still have to fly to Seattle, but this is the first time they’ve been stateside since 2018 and it’s anyone’s guess when they’ll be back. I’ve never seen them in concert. I have to do it.

What was I talking about?

Oh, right. The video.

The woman delivering the message is lead vocalist Nkechi Ka Egenamba, better known by her stage name Ninja. In an uncharacteristically subdued tone, she imparts a fairly standard note of gratitude. She’s held up by some very energetic video editing and a neat opening/closing animation in the style of the album art for Get Up Sequences Part Two, the band’s seventh studio album which released this February.

The stylistic choices are nice, but I expected a little more energy from the message.

Grade: B-
Album recommendation: Thunder, Lightning, Strike
Song recommendation: “Junior Kickstart”

3. CHVRCHES

Transcription: “Hey, this is Lauren from CHVRCHES and I just wanna say a big thank you on behalf of myself, Iain, and Martin for listening to so much CHVRCHES this year. Apparently we’re in your Spotify Wrapped, so thank you very much for being here. We really appreciate it! Especially this year: the 10-year anniversary of The Bones of What You Believe. We will see you soon!”

Frontwoman Lauren Mayberry delivers this message and seems to be a little surprised she’s doing so.

CHVRCHES, my favorite pop band since a friend introduced me to them in 2016, have resultantly ended up on my Wrapped every year the feature has existed. They comprise Mayberry, instrumentalist and sometimes-singer Martin Doherty, and composer Iain Cook.

Mayberry is the only one here because the band is currently on hiatus. They’re not done-done, they’ve assured us that much, but after they completed all their tours in support of their fourth studio album Screen Violence (2021), they released one non-album single (ominously titled “Over”) and then Mayberry stepped away to launch her solo career.

The single was released in February and Mayberry announced the split in July. All we’ve gotten since then is a 10th anniversary re-release of their debut album The Bones of What You Believe, which is essentially just the same record with a few C-tier demos tacked onto the end.

So it’s excusable that Lauren seems a little shocked the band would end up at the top of anyone’s list, but it’s still kinda hilarious to me that this message includes the word “apparently”. At least she makes up for it by talking with her hands.

Grade: C+
Album recommendation: Screen Violence
Song recommendation: “How Not to Drown” ft. Robert Smith (of The Cure)

4. Roosevelt

Transcription: “Hey, what’s up? This is Roosevelt. I just want to thank you all for listening to my music in 2023 on Spotify. It meant a lot to me. You guys killed it. You streamed all the year. So thanks so much. I’m working on new music already and I can’t wait to share it. See you guys soon.”

Roosevelt is the stage name of Marius Lauber, a German trance pop composer, instrumentalist, singer, and DJ. Back in undergrad, I heard a song of his in the wild (at Qdoba of all places) and I knew I needed more. I listened to his self-titled debut album not long after and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Lauber is seen here walking city streets while he thanks his fans for supporting him throughout 2023, a year in which he released his fourth (and possibly best) studio album Embrace.

He doesn’t sound very excited, but that’s just kind of the way he is. From the start, he’s seemed hesitant to be the face of his own music,² preferring to let the tunes do the talking. He doesn’t do much press and when I’ve seen him in concert he pretty much never talks on stage. I’m kinda surprised he agreed to do one of these video messages at all.

He’s just here to play music, and he’s already back in the booth working on new bangers. That doesn’t make for the best thank you message, but it’s respectable nonetheless.

Grade: C
Album recommendation: Embrace
Song recommendation: “Yucca Mesa” and “Paralyzed” (the former is an extended intro for the latter)

If any GeoGuessr pros can locate the city he’s walking through, I’ll give you 5000 points.

5. Paramore

Transcription

Hayley Williams: “This year we put out our first record in five years. It’s called This Is Why. And actually very recently we put out a companion to it that is remixes done by friends and artists that we really love and care a lot about. And you guys made this year very, very memorable not only because you bought the record and you listened to it, but because you showed up to the shows and you made some of the most memorable shows of our band’s career.”

Taylor York: “Hayley, you took the words right out of my mouth.”

Zac Farro: “Thank you, and we love you, and hopefully we see you very soon.”

After a four-year hiatus that saw frontwoman Hayley Williams focus on her solo career (resulting in two excellent albums), Paramore began working on their sixth studio album This Is Why in 2022 and released it to widespread acclaim this February.

The vibes on This Is Why were pretty much the exact opposite of After Laughter (2017)—the album that cemented my Paramore fandom after years of pretending I didn’t like them—but I enjoyed it almost as much regardless. I even saw them in concert for the first time this year. I was one of the only people in the crowd not wearing black, so clearly I missed a memo somewhere, but it was an outstanding show.

I wish I could say the same about this video message, which mostly features Williams dully droning over B-roll footage. Guitarist Taylor York and drummer Zac Farro pipe up in the final six seconds. The message feels impersonal, centering themselves instead of the listeners they’re thanking.

But the band spent the entire This Is Why Tour relentlessly thanking the fans and bringing them on stage to sing “Misery Business”, so it’s not like their hearts aren’t in it. I’ll give ‘em a pass.

Grade: D-
Album recommendation: This Is Why
Song recommendation: “The News”

6. Taylor Swift

Transcription: “Oh hi! This is a special message from me to you…basically a thank you note, honestly. It looks like you listened to a lot of my music this year. Doesn’t matter which era you were listening to; I’m very, very grateful to be on your Spotify Wrapped. (kiss)”

Statistically, this is the video you’re most likely to have seen already.

You don’t really wanna listen to me talk about Taylor Swift. You either like her way more than I do or you’re sick and tired of her. I’m in the middle ground where I think the fatigue is entirely warranted but I still like her music enough for her to end up on my Wrapped. An enlightened centrist, if you will.

Her voice is clearly shot in this video; touring for months on end will do that to ya. Despite this, her message is one of my favorites simply because I get the impression she means what she’s saying. At the very least, she can put on a bright face for 16 seconds and act like it.

Grade: B+
You also don’t need me to recommend you an album or song from the most famous person alive, so I’ll spare you.

The era I was listening to was 1989, for the record. Not Taylor’s version, though.

7. Metric

Transcription

James Shaw: “Thank you! If you’re seeing this, you are one of our top Spotify listeners…and followers…so you—

Emily Haines: “Or just, like, a straight-up person, like, just listening. (laugh)”

James Shaw: “—probably, like, did, like, a lot of Metric listening on Spotify this year, which is really cool and we really appreciate it—”

Emily Haines: “Deeply.”

James Shaw: “—and thank you.”

Emily Haines: “What a year! That’s a wrap.”

James Shaw: “Wow.”

Emily Haines: “Thank you very much.”

You’ve probably heard of Metric. They’re a Canadian indie band who’ve been going strong for over 20 years now. They started out as post-punk rockers who’d write songs in blunt opposition to the War on Terror, but they gradually moved away from being overtly political. By the 2010s, they’d leaned into a poppier, less outwardly abrasive sound while still retaining a bit of an edge.

If you’ve heard one song by them, it’s almost certainly either “Help I’m Alive”, their most successful single which made it onto the soundtrack for NBA 2K10 (this was my introduction to them), or Brie Larson’s cover of their song “Black Sheep” from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

The two people you’re looking at are the two members who founded the band in the late ‘90s: lead vocalist and keyboardist Emily Haines and guitarist James Shaw.³ In this video, which I’m willing to bet was shot in one take, they awkwardly thank their listeners for streaming them throughout 2023. They began this year supporting their eighth studio album Formentera (2022) and capped it off by releasing their ninth, Formentera II, in October.

The video is great. It’s endearingly dorky and it seems like they’re just talking to me as normal people without putting on a front.

Grade: A
Album recommendation: Fantasies if you’re not already familiar with the band / Formentera if you are
Song recommendation: “Help I’m Alive” / “False Dichotomy”

8. Arlo Parks

Transcription: “Hey everyone! It’s Arlo Parks! Thank you so much for letting my music be a part of your journey this year and having me on your Spotify Wrapped. (kiss)”

The first artist on this list who is younger than me, 2000-born Arlo Parks—which I’m legitimately just now learning is a stage name; her given name is Anaïs Marinho—is an English indie pop artist who earned wide critical acclaim in 2021 for her debut album Collapsed in Sunbeams.

This May, she released the moderately less impressive but still worthwhile follow-up, My Soft Machine.

I’m putting minimum effort into this blurb because she seems to have put minimum effort into her message. At just eight seconds long, it’s only half the length of my second shortest message (Taylor Swift, 16 seconds), and it’s only three sentences long, two of which are just her saying hello and stating her name.

Grade: Incomplete
Album recommendation: Collapsed in Sunbeams
Song recommendation: “Too Good”

9. MisterWives

Transcription

Mandy Lee: “Hello, Spotify fam! It’s your friends MisterWives (and Frankie) here to thank you for getting us on your Spotify Wrapped. Whether you just started listening to us or have been with us for 10 years, we can’t thank you enough for all your support. And we’re actually making new music for the new year right now—”

Etienne Bowler: “Yeah, but IT’S NOT READY YET! DON’T—”

Mandy Lee: “—but you can’t look.”

Etienne Bowler: “—DON’T LOOK AT IT!”

Mandy Lee: “It’s not ready.”

Etienne Bowler: “OR LISTEN! IT’S NOT READY!”

Mandy Lee: “Have a happy new year! We—”

Etienne Bowler: “IT’S NOT READY!”

Mandy Lee: “—can’t wait to see you in 2024! How is it 2024? I don’t know. This crazy.”

I’ll put it at coin flip odds that you’ve heard of MisterWives. “Reflections” and “Our Own House”, off their 2015 debut album Our Own House, were pretty big in the pop music sphere for a minute and are still fondly remembered by indie pop fans almost a decade later, but most of the rest of their work never really found a mainstream audience.

Which is a shame because it’s good music! I think. They released their fourth studio album Nosebleeds in July of this year and, to be completely honest, I haven’t even listened to it yet. Call it a casualty of listening to an album a day for an entire year, I guess. But I evidently listened to their first three records enough for them to show up on my Wrapped!

And how delightful it is that I got to see this message. Lead vocalist Mandy Lee thanks us for listening to their music this year and alludes to new music coming in 2024 while pointing to a screen behind her that shows a work in progress. Then, drummer Etienne Bowler screams at us for trying to look at their music before it’s ready.

These two are divorced! You’d never guess!

And there’s a dog in the video! Extra points! This is easily the best one.

Grade: A+
Album recommendation: Our Own House if you’re not already familiar with the band / SUPERBLOOM if you are
Song recommendation: “Reflections” / “muse”

10. Yuna

Transcription: “Hey everyone! What’s up? It’s me, Yuna. I just wanna say thank you so much for making me your top artist for Spotify Wrapped 2023. I’m so honored! Um, thank you for the love and support, and keep on listening to my music. More music coming out soon. And, uh, hopefully I get to see you guys when I go on tour in your city. So take care! (kiss) Love you! Bye!”

Yunalis binti Mat Zara’ai, who goes mononymously as Yuna on stage, is a Malaysian singer-songwriter who started out making pretty standard indie pop and then took a hard turn into R&B about five years in and never looked back. If you know her for one thing, it’s probably “Crush”: her 2016 single that included a feature from Usher back when he was still kind of a big deal.

In case you haven’t noticed by now, I’m an indie pop guy way more than I’m an R&B guy, so her early work is more my speed. My favorite project of hers is her second international studio album Nocturnal (2013). Per my own suggestion, we reviewed it on The Daily Spin back in April, then I played most of it on repeat again for weeks after the fact. That’s how she made it onto my Wrapped.

The way Yuna’s message is worded is kind of a giveaway that fans were originally just intended to see the one from their #1 artist of the year. The rest of the message is…fine? It sounds heartfelt enough, but she spends a little too much of it imploring us to keep listening to her music and come see her on tour.

I wonder if she’s coming to Minneapolis.

Oh.

Grade: C-
Album recommendation: Nocturnal
Song recommendation: “Mountains”

11. The Happy Fits

Transcription

Calvin Langman and Luke Davis: “WHAT UP!?!?”

Calvin Langman: “Thank you so much for being a top listener this year on Spotify! It really means the world to us. Very excited to see what 2024 brings.”

Luke Davis: “Heck yeah.”

Calvin Langman: “But keep streamin’ our music! Keep supportin’ our dreams! It really means the world to us.”

Luke Davis: “We love you. You’re the best.”

Calvin Langman: “For real! From the bottom of our hearts. We will see you in 2024.”

Luke Davis: “Bye!”

Calvin Langman: “BYYYYYE!”

The Happy Fits are an indie pop-rock band from New Jersey. I was introduced to them this year through our friend Preston Pack, who suggested we review their second studio album What Could Be Better (2020) for The Daily Spin back in April. I loved it, and I don’t think I’ve stopped playing it since.

The two men you see here are lead vocalist Calvin Langman (who also plays the cello) and drummer Luke Davis. They very excitedly thank their fans for all the streams in 2023 and hopefully beyond.

Luke chiming in with “heck yeah” about halfway through seems super unnatural and is what made me believe artists were given a “no cursing” rule for these messages. I’m also still not a fan of using a thank you message to ask your fans to support you even more, but it comes across more genuinely from Calvin than it did from Yuna.

Otherwise, I love this message. The energy matches what they put into their music, and that energy is why I love their music in the first place.

Grade: A-
Album recommendation: What Could Be Better
Song recommendation: “Moving”

12. Eli Powell

Transcription: “Hey, this is Eli Powell. I just wanted to relay my heartfelt thanks for all of your support on my work in 2023. This was a big year for me; the Name-a-Day Calendar is easily the biggest project I’ve ever done and I definitely couldn’t have finished it without all of your support. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. It really does mean the world. I’ve got a lot of cool stuff coming down the pike in 2024 and I can’t wait to share it with all of you, but until then: Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and thank you.”

This took four takes.

See you in 2024!

1. If nothing else, it’s a unique way to share my Wrapped with you!

2. Ignoring that his face is prominently featured on the cover of the self-titled debut.

3. Both of these people are also members of Broken Social Scene, in case you’re somehow familiar with them but not Metric.