These Tunes Were Made For Walking

I promise I didn’t plan on starting this article with a RuPaul’s Drag Race quote, but in the evergreen words of Kenya Michaels: I feel amazing because I love to walk.

And it’s true! It’s one of my favorite aspects of living in a quote-unquote walkable city—and part of filling the time I spend meandering or stomping from place to place is listening to music. Yes, walking with music can supplement idle transit periods, but just the act of schlepping and witnessing everyday life wherever you live at ground level is a tactile way to experience your surroundings and see how society moves around you in real-time.

In the past few years, I've noticed a trend of "pod walks" usurping music as the audio stimuli of choice, stifling the emotional release we often crave from email/creative job fatigue (even if you happen to love your work like I do with PR). I’m not denying that a podcast can be filled with information or offer a good chuckle, but it hardly grants a respite from the professional realm. A podcast can sometimes feel like replacing one form of office, cafe, or co-working space chatter with another, like doing homework while on vacation.

In a sense, this phenomenon encroached into the “hot girl walk” and has pushed everyone into succumbing to the ambient buzz of Call Her Daddy on the way to and from Pilates. And I think that needs to change. No shade to the podcast economy or to people still trying to start one, but if you’re going to talk at me, it should be about something worth hearing.

The numbers don’t entirely back me up here (apparently, 88% of people aged 15-34 still listen to live radio, who knew). However, this vibe observation isn’t really geared toward the masses in that sense. But anyone with an interest in music, cultural exploration, or tapping into daily catharsis should be going on playlist walks and know how to make it creatively stimulating. The first step to making a walking playlist that gets your neurons firing, however, is to go beyond the alluring call of your streaming service’s homepage.

The Algo Of It All

Fine, you’ve turned off Throwing Fits or Nymphet Alumni (shoutout) and queued up your Discover Weekly or weird AI-generated uncanny valley moodboard playlist on Spotify. Hold it right there!!! That’s not what this exercise is about.

Take it from a tech publicist: a lot of people are working really hard and spending a lot of money to have algorithms rule our lives in any way they can. Not for some nefarious reason; they mainly just want you to buy things or spend more time on their app so you can generate ad revenue. While that might create a charmless app experience conducive to nodding off on the subway, you’re not really getting any sort of meaningful stimulation.

But by taking the time to make your playlists manually—tailored to something you actually want to hear or want to explore—you inadvertently make yourself unknowable, or at least less knowable, to these algorithms. You get the satisfaction of yanking back the reigns on what you enjoy and guiding your consumption more carefully.

The Challenge of Playlist Alchemy

I consider playlist-building to be a sort of techno-dharmic potion-brewing. Based on how these apps work, the sky is really the limit unless your tastes are in music completely untethered to the digital world.

But in essence, playlist alchemy requires you to do something for yourself and work out your discovery or introspective muscle. Think of a mood you want to tap into—what songs instantly get you in that headspace? Think of a year in your life—what song did you hate back then? Do you still hate it now? Throw it on a playlist and see.

A fundamental of building taste is understanding why you like or dislike something; you’ll never know if you don’t try things out. There are no real parameters on this either; you can be completely ruled by your mood and tolerance. For instance, all my playlists are either sharply crafted 12-13 song jaunts or sprawling mood pieces with tracklists stretching to the hundreds; there’s no in-between. Treat it as your very own Music For Airports.

You can also extrapolate playlists as a taste talisman or a little cultural gift for a friend by making one for them. Act as their algorithm. Show them what you’ve been vibing with, and maybe they’ll hit you back with something cool.

I guarantee they’ll appreciate the effort even if they think what you’ve sent them is bizarre.

Step Into Your Life

Ok, so where does walking play into all this?

Getting into the habit of going on playlist walks lets you go on a journey without a set destination. It gives you a chance to block out the world and lock into your surroundings in a more freeing way. Basically, affording yourself more time.

Walk to a cafe you were never planning on going to; take the scenic detour through a park; go window shop; take an hour to get to your workout; just give yourself a chance to actually experience what’s going on around you outside of whatever is happening at point A and point B. Then, playlists can morph into a soundtrack that colors your interactions in a very real way—even if it’s only real to you.

Cry in public, hum along, pump to the bpm, maybe even sing if the street is empty.

Ultimately, we’re all looking to assert ourselves as people who don’t need everything sanded down and spoon-fed to them. Little things like playlist walks are a small step to breaking out of the habit of cultural complicity and sparking a curatorial spirit in your everyday life. It instills a habit of making things strictly for yourself to enjoy and enjoying private luxuries that fulfill your inner world—even if it is simply consuming the art that others make.