Music and Memories - My 2025 Apple Music Replay

It’s always fun to visualize the music I listened to over the last year and see what shifts have occurred in my listening habits.

Last week, my Apple Music Replay 2025 popped up. Of the last four years, 2024 was the most musical. I listened to about 210 hours of music. In ‘25, it was just about halved, down to 106 hours.

That makes sense. In 2024, I was immersed as a full-time stay-at-home dad for the majority of the year. I had found a rhythm with it all, and while it wasn’t always easy, it had become a routine that I was good at. I spent a lot of time around the house or running errands, and was also doing more writing and creative work, all while listening to a lot of music.

One constant was going for a drive so my son could nap. I did this basically every day last year, except on some weekends when my wife would take the drive. I drove so many miles along the same carefully planned route, a loop on a relatively quiet stretch of a divided two-lane highway that I could access easily and quickly from the busier multi-lane highway that runs through the city. Over time, I knew the timing so well that I would choose a different exit depending on how long he had been asleep. Whenever possible, I chose the rotary-style exits to avoid waking him.

I have many memories of that time. The seasons were passing as we went along, and I remember days when I’d go out to cool the car down in the summer, and days when I’d go out to a flat, grey sky and flurries to warm it up. There are songs attached to those memories. I remember days when I was so tired that I needed a coffee to keep me on the road, and days when I was deeply content with my place in the world. I remember, too, the days when I just wanted him to sleep in his little bed so I could do the laundry or the washing up. Some days were frustrating; others were easy.

Of course, like so much of what we take for granted in the moment, I miss those days. In hindsight, it’s so easy to see how important that time was, and how lucky I was to be given that gift. There’s little that’s more important to us than time, and yet there are few things that we pay less attention to as it passes.

In all of it, I am thankful for the memories and the music.