I Lost My Motown Spotify Playlist In A Breakup
I am a pioneer in post-breakup asset division.
To know me well is to know that I loooove Motown.
I’ve been to the Motown Museum. I own a ton of Motown records. I have the Motown coffee table book. I have even gone to…a wake (I guess?) for the last surviving member of the Four Tops. I didn’t know the wake was a wake until I was looking at the guy’s body. ‘Twas not advertised in the Motown Museum Instagram post. I thought everybody was just gathering to honor the Four Tops, but then we all went inside and there he was. To be clear, it was an event open to the public; I didn’t crash some guy’s private family affair.
I digress, but yeah, I love Motown.
And of course, I had the luxury of curating the perfect mix of Motown thanks to Spotify. And I did a fantastic job; just one banger after another.
Unfortunately, I made the playlist on my ex-boyfriend’s account. Right now I’m like, “Why the hell did I do that??” But when we were dating, we were together all. The. Time. Like, we’d spend one night apart each week to catch up on laundry, then be back together first thing in the morning (hard to believe we aren’t even connected on LinkedIn now lol). So we were in and on each other’s Spotify accounts when we’d listen to music together. Plus, I could just invite myself as a collaborator and save the playlist, no big deal.
Fast forward to this past weekend: it’s been almost a year since our breakup. Sunday night, I’m lying outside wrapped in a blanket, wanting to listen to Motown. So I look for the playlist, but I must have at least 100 saved. I scrolled through my long-ass list but couldn’t find it. But then I was like, “[EX-BOYFRIEND] probably doesn’t have a lot of playlists. It will be much easier to find it looking through his Spotify.”
So I unblocked him, and sure enough, it was right there. Except I wasn't a collaborator, and I didn’t have it saved. I thought it was just oversight, but now that I’m typing this out, I realize that I more likely severed any connection I had to the playlist by blocking him. Whoops 😬
But I can’t save the playlist now because, according to my googling, it will alert him.
So I have effectively lost a playlist in a breakup. I am a pioneer in post-breakup asset division.
At the end of the day, it’s not really a big deal. I can just take a screenshot of the playlist and recreate it.
But if I can get sentimental for a moment (my horoscope said I would today): a month into the relationship, we had gone to see The Temptations and The Four Tops (both Motown groups). Months later, he told me that was the night he fell in love with me. Kinda makes the lost playlist feel almost poetic.
Continuing with sentimentality, I’m also thinking about how crazy it is to go from in love to being blocked on Spotify in less than a year. And the crazy thing is: we have never once fought or yelled at each other. Up until the day we broke up, we said it felt like the honeymoon phase had never ended, even after 2 years together. I know hearing that makes the stomachs of people in happy relationships turn. But that is a reality you should be aware of: you can be completely in love, have a great relationship, and still have it go to shit.
Advice: date brave men. You cannot and will not have a successful relationship with someone who can’t summon the strength to have difficult conversations and avoids hard things. It’s essentially why we broke up, and it’s why we aren’t speaking now.
And worst of all, it’s why I can’t just save an existing and perfectly curated Motown playlist!!!
Post-editing note: I have recreated the playlist - please see below.