I would presume it’s entirely subjective and the significance of each song is encoded in the context of life at that particular time.
There were a couple of months this year where my kids wanted to listen to Sesame Street “Letter L” and “The Word is No” while commuting. Hearing those songs on a playlist would remind me whatever was happening, but would have absolutely no significance to you.
Absolutely.. I do this monthly/yearly thing primarily for me. Some of my friends follow along because I listen to a lot of music so I'm sort of a recommendation engine for them, but I never think about that when I am adding stuff to these playlists.
It's purely to recall and revisit what I was personally enjoying at the time.
I don't really connect music to life events though, like if I go back to May 2022 for example I won't listen to those songs and think "oh I remember XYZ about that time"... It will just be re-discovering some music I had perhaps forgotten about, since I listen to a lot of music and can't really remember all of it.