Graph Nerds, Meet Music Nerds
May 5, 2016 8:46 AM Subscribe
Polygraph presents a visualization of all the Billboard Top 5 songs as they rise and fall, with the songs playing as they reach #1.
I'm not sure I like what that bit about not arguing about whether popular music was ever good is implying about Johnny Horton's Battle of New Orleans.
posted by Copronymus at 9:51 AM on May 5, 2016
posted by Copronymus at 9:51 AM on May 5, 2016
Also, Chubby Checker had a song called Pony Time that was #1 for longer than The Twist or any of his desperate twist-themed knockoffs?
posted by Copronymus at 9:53 AM on May 5, 2016
posted by Copronymus at 9:53 AM on May 5, 2016
holy cow this is amazing
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:57 AM on May 5, 2016
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:57 AM on May 5, 2016
(and wow flipping through 1998-2000... so many sudden flashbacks to nightclubs)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:59 AM on May 5, 2016
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:59 AM on May 5, 2016
I got it to play 1956-1957 the way I assume it was supposed to, but then it stopped, and when I tried to play 1958, all it does is play one snippet of one song. Is anyone else having this problem? Because this is seriously cool, and I'd love to go through the whole thing.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:19 AM on May 5, 2016
posted by jacquilynne at 10:19 AM on May 5, 2016
Thanks! I skipped ahead to 1989, which was the year I first joined Columbia House and got 12 tapes for a penny, and now I'm waxing nostalgic.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:31 AM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by jacquilynne at 10:31 AM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
So the music people like has mostly been likeable and I was an idiot when I was 17. Neither of these facts is news but it's useful to have an illustration!
posted by howfar at 11:13 AM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by howfar at 11:13 AM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
So music started in 1956. Who knew?
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:16 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:16 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
Nah.. it all kinda sucked until 1964 when The Beatles fixed it.
;-)
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 12:48 PM on May 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
;-)
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 12:48 PM on May 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
So music started in 1956. Who knew?
1958, actually. Maybe that's why the hangup in the graph.
posted by Etrigan at 12:52 PM on May 5, 2016
1958, actually. Maybe that's why the hangup in the graph.
posted by Etrigan at 12:52 PM on May 5, 2016
So I went through the months before, after, and during a few really really big events like JFK's assassination and 9/11 to check: could one possibly observe some kind of interesting effect in the charts in the aftermath of these events? . . . .And natch, not really on a pure observable scale aside from maybe increased instability (a lot of bouncing around in the month afterward instead of 1 holding steady.) Although for those who like to correlate stock markets with real world conditions, the charts just prior to Black Friday, '87, went nuts with change. Anyway, if it's there it would take more than just watching or maybe an algorithm could catch it. OTOH, a lack of immediate observable change could also be interesting, maybe.
posted by barchan at 1:13 PM on May 5, 2016
posted by barchan at 1:13 PM on May 5, 2016
Interesting to see how management and PR took over in the mid-70s where there was a long string of songs that only spent a week at #1 then dropped like a stone.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:40 PM on May 5, 2016
posted by ob1quixote at 10:40 PM on May 5, 2016
Also, I guess I was a little surprised at the number of songs past about 1992 that I'd simply never heard before. It's a hard, hard thing to realize you checked out of popular music more than two decades ago.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:26 PM on May 5, 2016
posted by ob1quixote at 11:26 PM on May 5, 2016
I just watched and listened from January 1960 through January 1991, which corresponds to my ages -4 through 26.
The 60-68 music is familiar to me, but in a secondhand kind of way. The sixties is interesting in that through the whole decade, really, there's this easy listening and country stuff showing up along with the rock'n'roll and then rock. But, wow, doesn't (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction seemingly come out of nowhere? It's a sea-change to my ear and ahead of its time with regard to the other top five singles for several years. And the Beatles just exploded all at once in '63 and then often had most of the slots in the top five on numerous occasions.
I was surprised that starting in about 1970 the music was viscerally more resonating for me -- it's stuff that I was really hearing and listening to as a young child, but only beginning around five or six years of age and not really as much before that. And all of the stuff from 1970 through 1977 is that way for me, so say, first grade through seventh grade is when I was listening to the radio all the time, at home and in the car with my parents, wherever. All of the songs in that period are intimately familiar to me and very evocative of memories.
It surprised me to see how little the more guitar-centric late-60s and early-70s rock showed up as #1 singles, there wasn't much. And then I was again surprised that disco didn't really show up as a #1 until about 1977 and even then it took another year or so before it began to dominate the top slot. And then it mostly disappeared around 1980. Small window for something that looms large in my memory and culturally. It was a big deal to me partly because disco corresponded precisely with my junior high (7th and 8th grade) and freshman years in high school and I was going to sponsored school dances every Friday night. Lots of angsty young teen memories from that time, let me tell you.
But otherwise, from about 1978 onward I was no longer listening to radio music and was buying albums. I became progressively disconnected from anything that would ever be played on pop radio all the way through high school and through the entirety of the 80s, so I noticed that as the 80s stuff continued to play, I had a more and more difficult time paying attention because I had less and less a connection to any of the music. Not that there wasn't some good stuff and not that I missed everything entirely. I was watching for Madonna to appear in late 1984 because I have a strong memory of that. But, really, the whole period of about 1985 through 1990 is just completely forgettable and I don't think that's just me. Okay, maybe it's just me.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:24 AM on May 8, 2016
The 60-68 music is familiar to me, but in a secondhand kind of way. The sixties is interesting in that through the whole decade, really, there's this easy listening and country stuff showing up along with the rock'n'roll and then rock. But, wow, doesn't (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction seemingly come out of nowhere? It's a sea-change to my ear and ahead of its time with regard to the other top five singles for several years. And the Beatles just exploded all at once in '63 and then often had most of the slots in the top five on numerous occasions.
I was surprised that starting in about 1970 the music was viscerally more resonating for me -- it's stuff that I was really hearing and listening to as a young child, but only beginning around five or six years of age and not really as much before that. And all of the stuff from 1970 through 1977 is that way for me, so say, first grade through seventh grade is when I was listening to the radio all the time, at home and in the car with my parents, wherever. All of the songs in that period are intimately familiar to me and very evocative of memories.
It surprised me to see how little the more guitar-centric late-60s and early-70s rock showed up as #1 singles, there wasn't much. And then I was again surprised that disco didn't really show up as a #1 until about 1977 and even then it took another year or so before it began to dominate the top slot. And then it mostly disappeared around 1980. Small window for something that looms large in my memory and culturally. It was a big deal to me partly because disco corresponded precisely with my junior high (7th and 8th grade) and freshman years in high school and I was going to sponsored school dances every Friday night. Lots of angsty young teen memories from that time, let me tell you.
But otherwise, from about 1978 onward I was no longer listening to radio music and was buying albums. I became progressively disconnected from anything that would ever be played on pop radio all the way through high school and through the entirety of the 80s, so I noticed that as the 80s stuff continued to play, I had a more and more difficult time paying attention because I had less and less a connection to any of the music. Not that there wasn't some good stuff and not that I missed everything entirely. I was watching for Madonna to appear in late 1984 because I have a strong memory of that. But, really, the whole period of about 1985 through 1990 is just completely forgettable and I don't think that's just me. Okay, maybe it's just me.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:24 AM on May 8, 2016
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posted by The Bellman at 9:01 AM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]