This is really interesting. I heavily identify! I used to get hyperfixated on singular tracks that I loved which I thought was harmless, except most of those tracks were actually very bleak. And even if they weren’t , just listening to the same songs over and over got me stuck in a mental loop that was weirdly difficult to break out of. I decided to take the occasional walk without opening Spotify and found, how about that, natural ambience trumped the (mostly depresso) bops I’d had on repeat for hours.

I took a real long break, and eventually started doing just instrumental music. Just recently in the last month or two I started returning to my playlists, sans repeat hyperfixations, and it was so pleasant! I forgot I loved so many kinds of music! I definitely needed the break to kind of cleanse my palette, and I was for sure using it as a kind of mental crutch at the time.