When I enrolled at Yale in the fall of 1984, I was undecided between majoring in political science or mathematics. A less-than-stellar experience in Math 230—required for freshman mathematics major—quickly decided me: political science, it would be.
Luckily, two courses I took sophomore year taught by Professor Edward Tufte—Data Analysis for Politics and Policy and Politics and the Economy—allowed me to merge these interests. They expanded my knowledge of advanced statistical methods, a branch of applied mathematics which would undergird a two-decades-long career as a health-related data analyst[1].
One textbook from the former course fundamentally altered how I viewed the aesthetics of data presentation: the landmark Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Tufte’s purposes for graphical display[2] have informed every chart, graph and map I have constructed since:
- show the data
- induce the viewer to think about the substance […]
- avoid distorting what the data have to say
- present many numbers in a small space
- make large data sets coherent
- encourage the eye to compare different pieces of data
- reveal the data at several levels of detail […]
- serve a reasonably clear purpose: description, exploration, tabulation, or decoration
- be closely integrated with the statistical and verbal descriptions of a data set
This is data presentation as art…or data art.
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In two previous posts, I described…
- How I manipulate mix tape/CD/iTunes playlist data to generate lists of favorite tracks (a term I prefer to “songs”), albums and artists, organized by year and musical “genre,” and
- My desire to create a visual representation of my iTunes data (as of March 6, 2018), displaying the number of tracks released each year (if any, 1721-2017) by an artist/in a musical genre.
I actually started the latter project in May 2014 before abandoning it the following month. Recently, however, I devised a simpler way to generate all necessary cell entries using the statistical software package SPSS.[3]
Before I present the final chart (the first of two I intend to create), just bear with me while I briefly detail some necessary prior data organization steps.
Feel free to skim the next section.
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The raw data consisted of 9,552 tracks (40,610 total “plays” beginning in January 2013, when I purchased this computer) performed by 1,311 unique “artists.” However, many “artists” are simply variations on what I call a meta-artist. For example, I subsumed the 23 tracks by “Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band,” eight tracks by “Bob Seger” and one track by “Bob Seger System” under the meta-artist “Bob Seger (+).”
Applying this logic to all 1,311 artists yielded 1,217 meta-artists; please see attached PDF for details.
Similarly, I collapsed 242 musical genres—based upon with the first listed “Genre” on the track’s (or parent album’s) Wikipedia page, supplemented as necessary by its AllMusic page—into 89 meta-genres. For example, I subsumed all “Darkwave” (n=15), “Neue Deutsche Welle” (2), “New Romantic” (3) and “New Wave” (1,098, most by far) tracks under the meta-genre New Wave/Darkwave (+). Please see attached PDF for details.
To keep the chart from becoming unwieldy, I settled on a maximum of 200 rows (i.e., meta-artists/meta-genres). With up to 89 meta-genres, that allowed me 111 meta-artists.
I began with the 76 meta-artists with ≥20 tracks AND ≥100 total plays. An additional 157 meta-artists had ≥20 tracks or ≥100 total plays. Of them, I selected 13 meta-artists (Modest Mussourgsky, Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky, Bessie Smith, Fats Waller (+), Sergei Prokofiev, Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, Spike Jones and His City Slickers, Charlie Parker (+), Nat King Cole (+), Dave Brubeck Quartet, James Brown (+), Frank Sinatra (+), John Coltrane[4]) whose first track in my iTunes was released before 1960. I then selected two meta-artists (Geoff Martin (+), Steve Hackett) whose first track was released after 2000[5].
These “expanding the musical horizons” additions put me at 91 meta-artists.
A total of 99 meta-artists had a “Product” (number of tracks * total plays) of at least 2000 (i.e., 20 * 100). Of those, 20 were not among the 91 meta-artists I had already selected for inclusion. I rejected a) Mark Isham (19 tracks, 294 plays, all from his 1992 The Public Eye soundtrack) and b) Abba, ABC and Altered Images (artificially-inflated play counts from inadvertent iPod [treasured classic fly-wheel model] plays in order of artist name, starting with A3).
That left 16 additional meta-artists (increasing my total to 107): Tony Banks, Bee Gees, Berlin, Blondie, Kate Bush, The Cure, Chris Isaak, Gary Numan/Tubeway Army/Dramatis, Oingo Boingo, Robert Palmer, The Rolling Stones, Todd Rundgren (+)/Utopia, Simple Minds, Suzanne Vega (+), Violent Femmes and George Winston.
I rounded out my selections with three meta-artists with Products between 1972 and 1978: Marvin Gaye (+), The Motels and Thomas Dolby. This gave me a total of 110 meta-artists and up to 89 meta-genres, or 199 possible rows.
Perfect.
I constructed the chart this way:
- Each selected meta-artist (n=110) had his/her/their own row. Cell entries are number of tracks released by that meta-artist in a given year, if any. Years go from left to right.
- Remaining tracks are enumerated in a separate “Miscellaneous” row for each meta-genre.
- Cell values between 10 and 19 have a thin black border; cells with value≥20 have a thick black border.
- Meta-genres are color-coded (different colors for cell and text) as shown in the attached meta-genre summary.
- Meta-artist name and track total (1st 2 columns on left) of the 110 are color-coded according to the predominant meta-genre of their tracks (g. “Genesis” and “288” shaded Progressive Rock [6] because 57.3% of tracks have that designation[7]). I used total plays to break ties.
- Each cell is color-coded the predominant meta-genre of tracks released by that meta-artist in that year (g., 12 of 15 tracks released by Talking Heads in 1978 are Post-Punk/Revival[8]). Every meta-artist/meta-genre cell between first and last release is color-coded[9], even if no track was released in a year in that range.
- All text is Palatino Linotype Bold. Any row (meta-artist/meta-genre) with <10 tracks was 13 point, increasing as follows: 10-20 tracks (14), 21-40 (15), 41-60 (16), 61-80 (17), 81-100 (18), 101-150 (23), 151-200 (28), 201-400 (32), >400 (36).
- Any column (year) with 0 tracks has width=6. Years with 1-10 tracks has width=10, increasing as follows: 11-20 (11), 21-50 (12), 51-100 (13), 101-200 (15), 201-300 (17), 301-500 (19), 501-600 (21), >600 (23).
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At 137 columns and 195 rows[10], the final chart does not fit onto one page for printing; the best I could do was “Fit All Rows on One Page,” which still requires two pages to print. Ultimately, I will have this chart professionally printed as a large wall poster.
My printer is low on cyan and magenta ink, so I took this (cropped) photograph of my computer screen (magnification=12%).
This piece of data art, if you will permit some self-congratulation, is gorgeous AND serves its purpose—to display the key artists, genres and chronology of the 9,552 tracks in my iTunes—very well.
Your eye is naturally drawn to the vibrant yellows and blacks of the 1ate 1970s and early 1980s, an era musically dominated for me by variations of Punk, Post-Punk, New Wave and Synthpop (46.3% of 3,490 tracks, 1977-84). Overall, 20.8% of all 9,552 tracks are subsumed under this loose family of genres, so that is precisely what should happen.
Moreover, as your eye runs from the upper left to the lower right corner of the chart, you travel through time from Classical through various forms of Blues and Jazz and into the Pop and Rock era, with a special emphasis on Progressive Rock; along the way, Rhythm and Blues, Soul, Funk, Disco and assorted post-Disco forms of Dance emerge. The Punk/New Wave era morphs into Alternative in the second half of the 1980s. Finally, the last 10-15 years are a hodge-podge of musical forms, with the most recent meta-artist of interest being the The Four-Legged Faithful, shown here performing in March 2014 at Toad in Cambridge, MA (I regret not capturing the mandolin-playing talents of Jonathan Kaplan).
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Between 1721 and 1922, excepting eight Scott Joplin tracks between 1901 and 1909 (Dixieland/Early Jazz/Ragtime), Classical is the dominant meta-genre. The severe truncation of those two centuries reflects the relative dearth of tracks (n=110) I own from those years; fully 71.8% were composed by Ludwig von Beethoven, Mussourgsky or Tchaikovsky.
The first recordings by Bessie Smith mark the emergence of Blues/Classic Female Blues in 1923[11]. Over the next 10 years, this meta-genre competes with Dixieland/Early Jazz/Ragtime (Louis Armstrong (+)), Jazz (+) and Progressive Jazz (Ellington (+)) for dominance.
By 1935, however Jazz, writ large, had taken center stage, establishing full dominance through 1960; the genres of Vocal Jazz, Jazz, Swing, Big Band, Early Jazz, Hard Bop, Cool Jazz and Bepop account for 72.1% of tracks. Of the 662 tracks released during these two-and-a-half decades, fully 55.4% were by Billie Holiday (+), Miles Davis, Waller (+), Ellington (+), Parker (+), Miller, Coltrane, Cole (+) and Ella Fitzgerald (+).
This was also the era of Classical artists like Prokofiev (25) and the Comedy/Novelty parodies of Jones (+).
The catch-all meta-genre Music for Film and Stage first appears in 1953, with the Broadway production of Kismet. Other dominant meta-artists in this genre, besides the afore-mentioned Isham, are John Barry (e.g., jazz-inflected soundtracks to Hammett and The Cotton Club), Leslie Bricusse (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) and the composers/performers of Fiddler on the Roof and Jesus Christ Superstar.
Indeed, a favorite self-deprecating observation is that I was raised primarily on a combination of Fiddler and Superstar.
My personal jazz peak is 1959: my favorite album (Davis’ Kind of Blue), containing my favorite track (“Blue In Green”), was released then, as was the Cool Jazz masterpiece Time Out by Dave Brubeck Quartet. Baker (+) also released seven iTunes tracks that year.
However, starting with the Rockabilly “I Walk the Line” by Johnny Cash in 1956 and a handful of Bobby Darin singles two years later[12], a new musical form—Rock and Roll—began to assume dominance.
Led by the emergence of The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Who and The Rolling Stones between 1962 and 1965, Rock (+) (24.0% of 918 tracks, 1962-1970), would dominate the 1960s. Such variations as Folk Rock (e.g. Rubber Soul) and Psychedelic/Acid Rock (Revolver, Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) would emerge in 1965 and 1966-67. Folk Rock would return with a vengeance for me in the 1980s with the ethereal Vega (+) and The Waterboys, whose epic 1988 Fisherman’s Blues is the closest my wife Nell and I have to “our album.”
Other meta-genres were emerging as well. Ray Charles kicked off Rhythm and blues (+) in 1954 with “I Got a Woman.” Sinatra (+) did the same for Pop (+) in 1957 with “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” Instrumental (+) debuted in 1962 with Herb Alpert (+)’s “The Lonely Bull[13]”
In 1963, a young gospel singer from East Orange, NJ named Dionne Warwick launched Soul (+) with “Anyone Who Had a Heart” despite being predominantly Pop (+). The first predominantly Soul (+) artist, another young church-trained singer named Marvin Gaye, would debut in 1964 with “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You).” Two years later, a blind 16-year-old Detroit singer named Stevie Wonder released “Uptight (Everything’s Alright).” For me, the Soul (+) pinnacles of these two extraordinary artists are What’s Going On and Songs In the Key of Life.
In 1967, a meta-artist who had been releasing Rhythm and blues (+) and Soul (+) tracks since 1956 took a radical turn. With “Cold Sweat, Pt. 1” James Brown (+) would become synonymous with Funk (+); the meta-genre would blossom in the early-to-mid 1970s before spinning off a new meta-genre, Disco (+), which would peak between 1976 and 1980 (91.9% of 86 tracks).
In the early 1980s, Funk (+) would dramatically reassert itself in the person of a multi-instrumental musical genius from Minneapolis, MN named Prince (+). His Purple-ness inspired the base color I use for Rhythm and blues, Funk (+) and various Dance-related offshoots; the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince also dabbled in Synthpop and Psychedelic Pop/Neopsychedelia. Rest in peace, Mr. Nelson
Straight-ahead Folk (+) appears in 1965.[14] Two years later, a 33-year-old Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen would release The Songs of Leonard Cohen; five tracks, including the shimmering “Suzanne,” remain Folk (+) classics. Rest in peace, Mr. Cohen.
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Four teenagers from the storied Charterhouse public school in Surrey, UK would play a major role in the development of Progressive Rock, accounting for 653 (6.8%) of the tracks in my iTunes, third behind only New Wave (+)/Darkwave and Rock (+).
Classmates Peter Gabriel and Tony Banks had formed The Garden Wall, while fellow classmates Anthony Phillips and Mike Rutherford had formed Anon. At some point in 1966 or 1967 they combined bands and, employing a series of short-term drummers (until bringing Phil Collins on full-time in 1971; Collins would achieve superstar status in the 1980s as a Pop Rock (+) meta-artist), acquired the name Genesis. In 1967 and 1968, they released 15 demos, and in 1969 they released From Genesis to Revelation, which promptly went nowhere.
First hearing them in 1978, when “Follow You, Follow Me” became their first American Top 40 single (of 17), the track that cemented my enduring love for Genesis was 1980’s “Turn It On Again.” I saw them live for the first time in the summer of 1982 (and thrice more through 1992), at the since-demolished JFK Stadium[15]. They headlined an all-day stadium show that also featured local favorites Robert Hazard and the Heroes, A Flock of Seagulls, Blondie, and Costello (+). That fall, early in my junior year of high school, a senior would introduce me to the live album Seconds Out—a brilliant introduction to Gabriel-era Genesis—cementing them as my “favorite musical artist.”
More than three decades later, that designation still holds; their 288 tracks lead all meta-artists.
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Many Progressive Rock meta-artists quickly followed (all dates are earliest iTunes tracks): King Crimson in 1968, Todd Rundgren (+)/Utopia in 1970, Pink Floyd and Yes in 1971, Renaissance in 1972, The Alan Parsons Project and Gabriel in 1977, and Banks in 1983[16]. The related meta-genre Art Rock emerged with Roxy Music’s third album, to be followed by Kate Bush’s 1978 debut The Kick Inside[17]. Lead singer Bryan Ferry would begin a parallel, predominantly Dream/Sophisti-Pop (see 1987’s Bete Noire, as well as albums by The Dream Academy and Danny Wilson) solo career in 1973.
Rock music was also branching in other directions in the late 1960s. Led Zeppelin’s eponymous 1969 debut signaled the emergence of Hard Rock/Heavy-Alternative Metal. Fusion/Jazz Fusion, first pioneered by Davis in 1967-68 with the Water Babies recordings, would find fuller rock expression from Chicago (+) with 1969’s Chicago Transit Authority and 1970’s Chicago II; two years later, Steely Dan/Donald Fagen would launch Jazz Rock with Can’t Buy a Thrill. Rest in peace, Mr. Becker.
Other Rock (+) meta-artists to emerge between 1969 and 1971 are
- David Bowie, who shifted from Folk Rock to Rock (+) with the groundbreaking The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, before veering into Art Rock and Post-Punk/Revival, then returning to Rock (+) in the early 1980s. Rest in peace, Mr. Bowie.
- Seger (+), who proved he was a master songwriter on albums like this.
- Elton John (+), another brilliant musical chameleon, moving effortlessly from Americana/Roots Rock to Glam Rock to Orchestral/Symphonic and back to Rock (+) again …and that only gets us to the early 1980s. Heck, by 1989 he was Pop (+)!
- Paul McCartney (+)/Wings. The first album I ever bought was Wings Over America sometime in late 1976 or early 1977. I still have it – on vinyl – more than four decades later.
Although they had existed as a Blues Rock band for years, the first Fleetwood Mac in my iTunes is 1973’s Mystery to Me – a long way away from the Experimental Rock of the uneven, but often breathtaking, Tusk.
That same year, a struggling singer-songwriter from South Jersey named Bruce Springsteen (+) released Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., which includes the gorgeous “Spirit in the Night.” Also that year, a singer-songwriter from Long Island named Billy Joel released Piano Man, containing the iconic title track and “Captain Jack;” Joel’s predominant designation is Soft Rock, thanks in large part to his 1977 breakthrough The Stranger.
The consequential year 1973 also marks the debut of the first predominantly Pop Rock (+) (Hall and Oates), and Orchestral/Symphonic meta-artists (Electric Light Orchestra).
Electronic (+) debuted in 1974 with Kraftwerk’s deeply influential Autobahn. Seven years later, predominantly-Electronic (+) Depeche Mode emerged with the infectious Synthpop track “Just Can’t Get Enough.”
In 1974, two of my favorite male meta-artists debuted, predominantly-Rock (+) Palmer (even if some of his best work is New Wave (+)/Darkwave and Dance/Rock (+)) and predominantly-Adult-Contemporary (+) Rupert Holmes, whose 1979 Partners in Crime is a Soft Rock gem: EVERY aspiring singer-songwriter should memorize this album.
Before launching into Punk (+) and its many offshoots, a quick word about Bee Gees and Michael Jackson. Starting as Funk (+) in 1975[18], the former passed through Disco (+) with the still-exceptional Saturday Night Fever soundtrack before landing on Soft Rock with 1979’s Spirits Having Flown. Jackson, meanwhile graduated from the infectious Rhythm and blues (+) of 1979’s Off the Wall to the exemplary Post-Disco of Thriller, the best-selling album of all time.
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Split Enz actually started as an Art Rock band in 1975 with tracks like “Titus” and ”Time For a Change.” By 1980[19], with the phenomenal True Colours, they were firmly New Wave (+)/Darkwave.
In between those years, a series of bands had begun to play at CBGB’s in the Bowery section of Manhattan. These bands, including Ramones[20] and The Patti Smith Group, were soon labeled Punk (+). Most salient between 1976 and 80 (123 of 159 tracks[21]), it saw the rise of such meta-artists as The Pretenders.
Punk (+) quickly spin off other musical meta-genres, most notably Post-Punk/Revival and New Wave (+)/Darkwave.
Another regular early CBGB’s meta-artist, Blondie, launches New Wave (+)/Darkwave in my iTunes with two 1976 tracks,[22] while The Stranglers do the same for Post-Punk/Revival with three 1977 tracks.[23]
Ranked by number of tracks, chart-selected predominantly-New Wave (+)/Darkwave meta-artists are Simple Minds, Berlin, Spandau Ballet, INXS, The Motels, The Stranglers, Costello (+), Dolby, The B-52’s, Numan (+), Oingo Boingo, Split Enz, The Fixx, Icehouse, The Police, The Cars, Joe Jackson and Talking Heads.
And Post-Punk/Revival? Adam Ant (+), Joy Division, U2 and The Clash. And let us not forget the Art Punk of Wire or the Folk Punk of Violent Femmes.
Finally, there are the Synthpop meta-artists: Duran Duran, Blancmange and Yello. In 1989, Blancmange spun off this delirious piece of Avant/Experimental/Leftfield/Post Modern music.
Collectively, these 29 meta-artists combine for 1,137 (11.9%) of my 9,552 iTunes tracks—and that excludes meta-artists like The Cure and Stan Ridgway (+)/Drywall that evolved into Alternative Rock (+), as well as the 1979-82 era Ska/Two Tone, exemplified by English Beat, Madness and Specials/AKA, and Mod Revival (The Jam).
Overall, 3,701 (38.7%) of my iTunes tracks were released in this time frame: between 1976 and 1984.
This truly is MY music.
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In mid-1970s Los Angeles (“L.A.”), Stan Ridgway was running Acme Soundtracks, an Ennio-Morricone-inspired film score company. By 1977, drawn to the burgeoning L.A. Punk (+) scene, he and four other men—Chas Gray, brothers Bruce and Marc Moreland, and Joe Nanini—had formed Wall of Voodoo. Debuting with a stunning 1980 Darkwave cover of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,”[24] their two studio albums, Dark Continent and Call of the West are New Wave (+)/Darkwave masterpieces.
Their formation and rapid dissolution are bitingly chronicled in “Talkin’ Wall of Voodoo Blues, Pt. 1.” In the song, Ridgway gently mocks “the single they still talk about”: “Mexican Radio.”
Ridgway collaborated on two film scores in 1983 and 1984 before releasing his first solo album in 1986—the stunning The Big Heat. Given that Ridgway has been called a “noir balladeer,” he possibly drew inspiration from the 1953 film noir.
In 2002, however, all I knew were the “Ring of Fire” and “Mexican Radio” (and its B-side, “Call of the West”—I have the original single). A coworker who moonlighted as a disc jockey told me about “Drive She Said” from The Big Heat. Curious, I purchased The Best of Stan Ridgway: Songs That Made This Country Great.
I was immediately hooked, especially by this lyric from The Big Heat’s “Walkin’ Home Alone” (boldface added for emphasis):
“The telephone’s dead––I guess they turned it off today
Turn the key on the mailbox slot
Lookin’ for a letter, but bills is all I’ve got
And even the cat she left me with
Is goin’ out with someone else
So put another quarter in the jukebox, Pete
But don’t play that one with the sad trombone
‘Cause tonight, I’ll be walkin’ home alone”
Five years later, I saw Ridgway live for the first time, in Manhattan. Three tours later, in August 2015, someone took this photograph of us at the now-defunct Johnny D’s in Somerville, MA.
Designated Alternative Pop Rock, Stan Ridgway (+)/Drywall is second in tracks (192, not counting 23 Wall of Voodoo tracks and 13 from wife Pietra Wiexstun’s band Hecate’s Angels); he still releases new material.
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The first tracks labeled “Alternative” were released in 1979: two Alternative Rock (+) tracks from The Cure[25] and the indescribably weird (and brilliant) Pere Ubu sophomore effort, the Alternative Dub Housing.
In 1981, an Athens, GA (home of The B-52’s) band called R.E.M. released an Alternative Rock (+) single called “Radio Free Europe.” They and The Smiths helped foment the shift to Alternative Rock (+) in the mid-1980s with albums like 1984’s Reckoning, 1985’s Meat is Murder, and 1986’s The Queen is Dead.
In 1992-94, Tori Amos brought harrowing personal experiences and singer-songwriter chops to Alternative Rock (+) (e.g., “Crucify”), while Geoff Martin (+) brought hard-rock sensibility and social conscience in the first decade of the 2000s, especially on such excellent tracks as “Laura” and the 9/11-inspired “32nd Floor,” both from the band Days Are Golden in 2003[26].
An early spin-off of Alternative Rock (+), Adult Alternative/AA Pop Rock, first appears in 1984, with lush albums by The Blue Nile and Mitchell Froom. Two years later, Crowded House, formed by Split Enz vocalist Neil Finn following the demise of Split Enz, released their eponymous debut album, quickly achieving the American commercial success that had eluded Split Enz.
Alternative Pop Rock peaked for me in 1987 with albums by Cindy Lee Berryhill and Curiosity Killed the Cat.
One quirky, short-lived spinoff of Alternative Rock (+) was Madchester, a 1989-92 “psychedelic revival” that spawned Charlatans UK, The Stone Roses and, especially, Happy Mondays.
The alternative to “Alternative” is apparently “Indie,” as the rise of first Indie Pop (1986-1990: It’s Immaterial, The Ocean Blue, The Sundays) then Indie Rock (1999-2003: Sleater-Kinney, Del Rey) suggest.
Before leaving the 1980s entirely, here are five disparate artists:
- George Winston: This superior pianist, a direct musical descendant of Waller (+) and The Vince Guaraldi Trio, brought New Age to the mainstream with Autumn and December.
- Uncle Bonsai: This Folk (+) trio, two women and a man, emerged in the mid-1980s with ironic, wickedly-funny songs delivered with angelic harmonies. “Silent Night” from 1986’s Boys Want Sex in the Morning may be the most beautiful song I have ever heard.
- The Smithereens, a Rock (+) band who nevertheless dominated alternative rock airwaves in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Their 1988 Green Thoughts is songwriting at its finest. Rest in peace, Mr. DiNizio.
- Madonna, the Dance Pop avatar from Detroit who evolved from girlish pop star to international icon. “Lucky Star” was a track I continually listened for on the radio of my black 1979 Ford Fairmont in the summer of 1984.
- Chris Isaak, who led a Rock & roll revival in the late 1980s and early 1990s with moody, yet catchy albums like Heart Shaped World and San Francisco Days.[27]
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Brian Eno first started making Ambient records in the 1970s, but my best exemplar is Selected Ambient Works, Vol. II by Aphex Twin. I confess to knowing nothing about this 1994 album until I read this terrific book[28].
And, with a nod to the anarchic Comedy/Novelty of Cartoon Planet Band, that brings us to the late 1990s, when I stopped paying close attention to contemporary pop music and began exploring older blues and jazz.
Still, older artists were releasing fascinating music in the first decade of the 2000s, such as ex-Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett. I categorized him as Classical, but he could easily have been Progressive Rock because of his 2003 To Watch the Storms.
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I close by identifying key meta-artists and years associated with remaining meta-genres with at least 10 “Miscellaneous” tracks across any three successive years:
- Country/Country Pop/Alternative Country: Cash, Patsy Cline; 1962-63, 1979-80
- Avant/Experimental/Leftfield/Post Modern: Philip Glass; 1982
- Classic/Traditional Pop: Johnny Mercer; 1974
- Blues Rock: Eric Clapton; 1969-70
- AM/Sunshine Pop: Tom Jones; 1967
- Experimental Rock: The Modern Lovers, Andy Summers and Robert Fripp; 1972-2004
- Album Oriented/Arena Rock: Jefferson Airplane/Starship, Journey; 1975, 1982-83
- Power/Jangle Pop: Gin Blossoms; 1992
- Reggae (+):Marley, Bob/The Wailers, Peter Tosh; 1977-78, 1987
- Art Pop: Brian Eno; 1977
- Gothic Rock: Bauhaus, Gene Loves Jezebel; 1979-87
- Rap/Hip-Hop: Stereo MC’s; 1992
- Alternative Dance/Hip-Hop: Jesus Jones, Luscious Jackson, New Order; 1986-92
- World Music/Worldbeat: Dead Can Dance; 1993
- House/Acid House: Daft Punk; 1997
- Shoegazing: My Bloody Valentine, Lush: 1991-93
- Grunge: Nirvana; 1991
Until next time…please wear a mask as necessary to protect yourself and others – and if you have not already done so, get vaccinated against COVID-19! And if you like what you read on this website, please consider making a donation. Thank you.
[1] More than 20 years later, I circled back to mathematics, earning a Master’s Degree in biostatistics and a PhD in epidemiology.
[2] Tufte, Edward R. 1983. Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, pg. 13.
[3] SPSS Statistics 17.0 for Windows; SPSS Inc. Released 2008. Chicago: SPSS Inc.
[4] I excluded Oscar Peterson (20 tracks, 29 plays) because all but one of his tracks were released in 1995 or 1996, and I excluded Henry Mancini (8,111) and Nelson Riddle (13, 111—all but one track 1966) because they had fewer than 15 tracks.
[5] I excluded Murray Gold, because he only had two tracks (“Doctor Who XI” and “I Am the Doctor”), both released in 2010.
[6] Cell shaded “Aqua, Accent 5, Darker 25%,” text “White, Background 1, Darker 25%”
[7] Remaining tracks: 21.9% Pop Rock (+), 11.8% Rock (+), 5.9% Baroque Pop, 3.1% Art Rock.
[8] Cell shaded “Black, Text 1, Lighter 5%,” text “Yellow”
[9] For a meta-artist, the predominant meta-genre color scheme was used, though sometimes a color scheme would simply be extended to the right from a given cell.
[10] Six meta-genres were entirely subsumed by a single meta-artist: Children’s Music (Stan Ridgway (+)/Drywall), Folk Punk (Violent Femmes), Jazz Rock (Steely Dan), Modal Jazz (Miles Davis), Progressive Jazz (Duke Ellington (+)), Third Stream [Jazz] (Miles Davis),
[11] “Downhearted Blues,” “My Sweetie Went Away (She Didn’t Say Where, When Or Why),” “’Tain’t Nobody’s Bizness If I Do”
[12] “Early in the Morning,” “Queen of the Hop,” “Splish Splash”
[13] Plus three Henry Mancini tracks: “Days of Wine and ‘Roses,” “Hatari,” “Baby Elephant Walk.”
[14] Donovan’s “Colours” and “Catch the Wind”
[15] In July 1985, this was the site of the American portion of Live Aid.
[16] That does not even mention other favorite meta-artists like The Moody Blues and Jethro Tull.
[17] I would be remiss if I did not mention Supertramp and late-1970s Brian Eno.
[18] “Jive Talkin,’” “Nights on Broadway”
[19] Technically, 1979’s “I See Red” is their first New Wave (+)/Darkwave track in my iTunes.
[20] Their eponymous 14-track debut album, clocking in at just 30 minutes, is often considered the start of Punk (+).
[21] Including the 19 tracks on a single Punk (+)-inflected 1999 Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry cover album.
[22] “In the Flesh,” “Rip Her to Shreds”
[23] “No More Heroes,” “Peaches,” “Something Better Change”
[24] Even if Nell disdains the closing distorted electric guitar solo as “screaming cats.”
[25] “10:15 Saturday Night,” “Grinding Halt”
[26] Martin is my first cousin.
[27] I had the pleasure of meeting Isaak, a San Francisco native, at NOIR CITY 12 in 2014. http://www.noircity.com/
[28] Weidenbaum is a college friend.
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11 thoughts on “A Musical Mosaic”