Mamma mia!
Barilla's Spotify playlists end when your pasta is ready
C'mon people, you should know that all pasta is ready in twelve minutes.
Barilla, the company that sells dry pasta in those distinctive blue boxes, has created some gimmicky playlists to aid the Spotify generation in their cooking — al dente jams, if you might.
Cute marketing — Titled "Playlist Timer," the series of eight playlists are timed to match the ideal cooking time for different pasta shapes including spaghetti, linguine and, my personal favorite, penne. The playlists have cute names like "Mixtape Spaghetti" and "Best Song Penne." Incredibly there's no playlist for bucatini; seems like a missed opportunity.
Ok, maybe it's cool — Most pastas cook in eight to twelve minutes. Couldn't you just set a timer on your phone and taste test along the way? But hey, most people also suck at cooking so if this helps, that's great. And who doesn't like to listen to music while they cook? Barilla is taking an existing habit and inserting itself as a useful helper — something that maybe you'll remember next time you're in the pasta aisle of the store, because this is all about making money after all.
A cooking time of 8-12 minutes isn't very long, so neither are the playlists, at usually 3-4 songs each. The tracks are all PG-fare as you'd expect, like an assortment of Harry Styles and Dua Lipa. There are also some hits from Italian artists thrown in there.
According to Barilla, you should hit play when you get your pasta boiling and then drain when the music stops.
Here's the full set of playlists:
