Spotify has curated playlists reflecting the local flavor of each stop on HuffPost’s “Listen to America” tour using location-based data to find out what people are really listening to in 20-plus cities. Check back for more from Sept. 12 through Oct. 30.
As the home of Ole Miss, Oxford, Mississippi, also hosts a buzzing music scene where up-and-coming bands from around the South stop by to play local venues. (One spot was once part of a stable owned by William Faulkner’s family.)
Featured below are local acts including folk artist Sanders Bohlke (whom Paste magazine described as a mashup of Bon Iver and Bhi Bhiman), the experimental Ben Ricketts, producer Lo Noom and garage-rock group Bass Drum of Death. Singers Rae Sremmurd and Faith Hill hail from places nearby the liberal arts enclave, too. But as a testament to the state’s diverse landscape of taste, we found that Mississippians are partial to a mixed bag of genres: Kurt Vile’s lo-fi rock, Yo-Yo Ma’s classical cello, Bethany Dillon’s contemporary Christian and Tamar Braxton’s R&B all cropped up during research.
All that and more ― including a few of the summer’s most inescapable hits ― can be heard below.
Spotify playlists for the “Listen to America” campaign were created by looking at each location’s most popular songs (streaming in the highest numbers at time of publication), distinctive songs (currently being streamed more in this city compared to all other cities in the world) and tracks from local artists. While many picks are data-driven, some songs are handpicked from data lists to assure the playlists reflect a variety of genres and decades, as well as a healthy gender balance.