Kasey’s Playlist: Music For Any Situation
Have you ever been in a situation where you wished you had a playlist to convey your feelings? Well, Kasey Gelsomino probably has one.
The 21-year-old New York City resident noticed last spring that content about new music or playlists performed well, and she was no stranger to showing others music.
“My friends always came to me for recommendations, and obviously I ate that up because I love attention,” she said. “I started making a weekly or monthly playlist just for my friends to listen to. Then it became a thing I was doing for more people on TikTok.
Both Gelsomino’s TikTok, @kaseys.playlist, and Spotify, kasey gelsomino, have over 50,000 followers each, and her TikTok has over 1.6 million likes across all videos. Her content includes new music recommendations, features of her playlists, and chats about what she’s listening to.
The playlists, which are often for very specific moods such as “oat milk lattes in the mountains” or “3 am, windows down,” are based on followers’ requests and her own experiences.
“My followers on TikTok do a lot of requests for different themes, different genres, stuff like that,” Gelsomino said. “Beyond that, I honestly just kind of use the situations that I run into and make playlists based off of that.”
Gelsomino finds new, often less mainstream, music from a variety of sources. She will use Spotify’s editorial playlists, like Lorem, for inspiration, as well as content from her friends who are also playlist curators. And although her friends rely on her for recommendations, she does the same for them.
In her personal life, she listens to music within the indie folk-indie pop spectrum, including more traditional folk, indie rock, and hyperpop. Some of her recent favorites include Del Water Gap, Ben Kessler, and HAIM. Her go-to playlists depend on her mood or what she may be doing at the time.
“My go-to if I’m in a good mood is called ‘sitting on a brooklyn rooftop (@ sunset),’ and that’s very lowkey, vibey, feel-good kind of stuff. I usually put that one on during the day if I’m just doing work,” she said. “On the other end, I have one that’s called ‘lying in the street in the rain just to feel something,’ and it’s just the saddest of the sad—Phoebe Bridgers, Bon Iver, literally will make you cry on the spot. Whenever I’m just reading or something, I’ll put that on.”
Gelsomino has no personal experience with making her own music, but it’s been a part of her life in many ways.
“I come from a very musical family,” she said. “My grandpa was a professional musician, my dad was a drummer, so I was very ingrained in it always. I was also a dancer, so I was involved in music in a way that wasn’t making it.”
Going forward, Gelsomino is in the midst of transitioning her TikTok page to incorporate more voices into her content, other than her own.
“Right now, I’m trying to figure out a way to bring artists into it. I want to figure out a way to do really quick, one-minute interviews of some kind, as opposed to it just being me talking about music.”
With TikTok being a determining factor in what music comes to the mainstream today, Kasey’s Playlist has the ability to give lesser-known artists a wider audience, as well as introduce listeners to their new favorite music.
If you’re ever unsure of what music to play with friends, at a dinner party, or to exude hot girl energy, look no further than Kasey’s Playlist.