Chromatypes Spotify Playlists

Hello! Here I will describe my methodology for choosing which songs are in which Chromatype Spotify Playlist (White, Blue, Black, Red, Green). This way more songs can be added once you’ve gotten the hang of it, and the methodology can be questioned! Perhaps a song is not where you would expect it to be. 

I tried to add variety to each playlist, to showcase the ways that each Chromatype can be lovesick, mad, betrayed, passionate, disciplined, smart. This is why I tried to have at least one sad song and a club song in each! I also wanted you to have a song you like under each color, that is fun for you to think about because you like it. 

If I pick a band, I would try to check if their other songs are of the same color. It is not always the case that if you generally practice Blue in your life, that you would make Blue music, but insofar as music is hard and people are “trying to do a thing in music,” it would be surprising if a band had only one Blue song, and not any other Blue songs at all. That would suggest to me they may not actually be doing a Blue thing. And so I would check a few songs and see if the pattern I think I see, I also see in some other songs by the same artist. Some songs are are dual-colors, but I placed them in one playlist for simplicity’s sake, but if you think “oh that seems Blue/Black” it might be. Some songs meanwhile are that straight color. 

BLUE

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2zeXhLff4TnzExHpMMmR50?si=3a22234463d249f2

BLACK

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3tnn4ITe24ruXhuFj78ltG?si=c00f7483ee9d4a6d

GREEN

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7jLjng45Y8RHLy8qFjaNDF?si=c53d800bc3fc4e2f

WHITE

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3JbL9XfceZJZoApwHK5Pow?si=6d7a11ba6d924b4e

RED

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7xRLnAyDQosl2jjKsRL7Gb?si=e6876a8a669d4bee

Additional “instrumental only” Playlist with one song for each color, in a melancholy mood. Can you guess which song is intended for which color, based on what it does with its melancholy mood? Ask me for answers!

INSTRUMENTAL ONLY

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0jx3c8aortqNjFPKXuCjdd?si=6c20f3a91adb4045

I do think each color has “bleakness” that it tries to tap into with music–its own kinds of existential despairs and hopelessnesses that get “metabolized with its music” as part of the larger system of existing in that color space. In part, I am also looking at “what gets metabolized” when distinguishing colors of songs. 

I also want to mention that I am by no means a musical connoisseur. My database of music is not particularly large! Most of this music is from my existing playlists over the years and bands I happen to know, with me going through and listening to songs, and then thinking “where would this go?”. 

I do think there are patterns in lyrical themes, but this is in beta! 

Green 

The timing of green tends to “go back to a central point.” You see that even in the intense song, “Cool for Chaos,” by Nostalghia that the song returns back to its center. 

Lyrical slices of Green songs sometimes do have a pattern of noticing the individual’s relationship to a much larger whole. 

All music “moves forward” because of how time works, but for Green, there is often a symphony of sound, or a circularity of sound, to create a feeling of “staying still with something” and to slow down time. “Paris, Texas” by Lana Del Rey is a playful, trickstery song, but it still has these features and that is why I put it in Green. 

The “whole feeling” and circularity does not have to lead back to something “stable” or nice feeling, necessarily, which is why I included “Mot Mot” under green. A hurricane is “whole” but not pleasant! There are a lot of sharpnesses in this song, but it still follows this. 

Sad Green songs can sound “swampy.” 

In “Young and Beautiful,” the lyrics seem to be talking to another person, “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?” but the core emotions in the song are rooted in these lines: “All that grace, all that body. All that face makes me wanna party. He's my sun, he makes me shine like diamonds.” Green lyrics tend to revolve around the inner experience of the experiencer, as related to something much grander. 

Red 

Red is experience-maxxing. If the song lyrics really are not making sense, then there’s a good chance that it’s Red. For Red, the lyrics are there to make an experiential point. It’s the most likely of the colors to include a line “because it sounds good” or because it makes a good joke, squeezing the other musical elements to “make it make sense,” and Red can have “non-sequiturs” in the lyrical narrative. In this way, Red is big on something approximating “instantaneous time.” 

If a song seems like “you have no idea how it is even hanging together” then it is likely Red. 

I included some sad songs, “Compliments” and “Signs” by Bloc Party, to show that a Red song does not necessitate certain kinds of intense passion or electric guitars and loud drums. 

Red can be punchy about its bitterness. Of all the types, Red can tune most precisely into acrid bitterness. You can see this in The Mountain Goats’ song, “No Children” – “I hppe you die, I hope we both die.” Red can also be trickstery, such as in “International Small Arms Traffic Blues” by The Mountain Goats. 

Red songs have a lot of “You” lyrics – a theoretical experiencer, a somebody being directly spoken to, and if there is a situation, it is often the insinuation of a hyper-specific situation. 

If there is repetition in Red, it is often that the repeated part is the “feature.” If many parts seem like they are repeated, that is because they are all the feature. “Hands In The Dark” is like this–each repeated part seems like it is the “favorite part,” even though this means the entire song is composed of favorite parts.  

Black 

Black songs can be complicated, but you still get a sense that you know where “everything is” even when there are harmonies. Though there is merging, you can track things down if you are trying to. It is easy to picture a very well-organizeed DJ, adding more and more complications just because they know how to and so they can. A good example of what I mean is “HERZ” by RYSY.  

The lyrics of black are unusually straightforward. “I like the way you kiss me, I can tell you miss me. I can tell it hits, hits hits hits.” “Do I stress you out? Can I help you out? Does it turn you on when I turn you around?” 

The clarity is the point and the art, for black. If you find yourself taken aback by seemingly simple or almost childish lyrics, there is a good chance this is Black. Black can be fun and trickstery, but it is different from Red because Red goes more for immediate effect and sharpness, and Black goes for more joint understanding of the joke.

Black does a kind of “communicative self-awareness” as seen with Lorde. 

If there is repetition in Black, it is to double down and clarify. If you weren’t paying attention the first time, or did not understand what was happening, the repetition is to give you a few more tries to localize your awareness of what it’s showing you. In “Hangry,” the same main melody is repeated, and other instruments are harmonized to show you just what that melody is like and what it can do next to various other things. The main vocals come in a minute before the song ends, after a 5-minute set-up.  

Blue

Blue songs are the most “forward-moving” and the ones with the most straightforward relationship to linear time. The harmonies and lyrics form a “braid,” like paths elegantly crossing. Imagine a person scoring a song on their computer, each recorded instrument one at a time, with the different tracks in Logic, satisfied with each one individually, and then pleased with how they work when they are all played together.  

If there is repetition, the point of the repetition is that “the second time is different, because time had passed” and including it a second time showcases the difference and the passing of time. Sometimes it is to drive momentum to get to a different part of the song (“Midnight City”). Blue is most likely to have a thread stop, so that another thread can come in and shine. 

I included “Disarm” by Smashing Pumpkins because this a song that feels like it could be Red or Black, but actually it is passionate Blue. You can tell based on its patterns of strain. 

Blue plays around with actions, generally, as its main substrate. In music, Blue aims to connect the actions to deeper meaning and deeper feeling. In “Disarm,” the lyrics strain to make sense – but they still have not given up making sense, and are still constrained to the general “process-focused” orientation of the song. There are no lyrical sounds that are “out of place.” 

Lyrical themes are often about “things happening” or the possibilities of things happening. Either a regretful past or a hopeful future, with some pauses to describe the present. 

Blue can include large anthem qualities, like White, but for Blue there is often a distance in the parts of the song, between a grounded reality and the “hope” of the Anthem Wholeness. Rather being “present,” the wholeness feels somewhere in either in the future or “higher up.” 

When Blue is instrumental, the different sounds can sound like a “conversation is happening in sound.” It almost sounds like a conversation that could really happen. 

White 

Like Green, White has a lot of “Whole” sounds, but in White, there is a dissolving into the Wholeness, rather than a return to a central point (a return to “origin”). For white, there is no “origin” – rather the base point are the layers of the personal and the interpersonal that sometimes lead to positive intimacies. 

Unlike black, the complexity is harder to pull apart. Everything seems to “just be happening” and knowing what is happening is not prioritized. 

White songs give enough structure that you are not lost when the dissolving happens. Usually there is either a “trickstery” part of the song to return to, or a repetitive “grind” that the song returns back to. Some of these elements are well-articulated in “The Lost Soul Down” by NBSPLV, which has only one repetitive line as a lyric, “You love me.”

The priority on “the wholeness” versus on “the grind” varies between songs. “Over and Over” by Hot Chip focuses quite a lot on the grind. 

If for Blue, the repetition is to showcase change across time, for White, the repetition is to emphasize sameness across time. If something is a good thing, why not have it again, exactly the same? The point of the famous accordion hook in “Stereo Love” is not for it to be different each time – it’s a cool sound. Let’s hear it again! 

Lyrics often engage the personal and interpersonal layers of the social experience. This includes themes of uncertainty, expectations, and the pursuit of the “perfect, beautiful” fleeting intimacies in relationships. This can include frustrated individual separation from the whole interpersonal complex, or separation from one special intimacy, with an allusion to what the whole feeling is supposed to be like (such as in “Miss You”). 

Compound Colors 

Now that you have some impression of the colors, we can think about the compound colors. Often thinking about compound colors is easier than thinking about the self-consistent system of one color by itself! Red Hot Chili Peppers are Red/Green a lot of the time. You can tell with their punchy lyrics of red, and the uncomplicated, big sexuality of Green. “Pay to break the spell of aging” in “Californication” is mocking blue. It’s Green/Red making fun of dreamy Blue. A lot of Aphex meanwhile is Anti-Green.

The Killers - Blue/White

M83 - Blue/Black

Smashing Pumpkins - Blue/Black 

Aphex - Blue/Black, usually 

Analogue Bubblebath and Polynomial C - Unusually Blue 

Lots of metallica is Red / Black

Nirvana feels Blue / Black like Smashing Pumpkins, sometimes Red

Pixies very Red / Blue

Meat Puppets Red / White

The Ramones just Red

The Strokes just Red

Queen is Red / Green