Having spent four essays detailing how difficult it is to rank one’s favorite music with both objectivity and methodological rigor (here, here, here, here), then using one such method to rank my 100 favorite tracks and albums, I conclude this series with an examination of my favorite artists and some final thoughts. As with every … Continue reading Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 7 (My 100 Favorite Artists and Conclusion)
Category: Roxy Music
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 6 (My 100 Favorite Albums)
In five previous essays (here, here, here, here, here), I detail how I used appearances on 434 mixes (August 1981 to November 2023) and total plays to calculate a score for 9,560 tracks. Using these Track Scores (“TS”), I ranked my favorites from a tie for #7,529 (2,032 tracks with one play and no mix … Continue reading Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 6 (My 100 Favorite Albums)
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 5 (My 100 Favorite Tracks)
In the first four essays in this series (here, here, here, here), I detail the evolution of the 434 music “mixes” I have created since August 1981. These mixes migrated from cassette to CD to 150-GB flywheel iPod, with a handful of videocassettes added along the way. As of April 2024, I have put 3,625 … Continue reading Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 5 (My 100 Favorite Tracks)
I Never Wrote the Most Important Story I Ever Wrote, Part 5
Part 1 of this essay may be found here. Part 2 of this essay may be found here. Part 3 of this essay may be found here. Part 4 of this essay may be found here. When I sat down to write this multi-part essay – which has taken on an interrogating memory life of … Continue reading I Never Wrote the Most Important Story I Ever Wrote, Part 5
Crafting the “Soundtrack” to my Interrogating Memory book
In 2005, Rupert Holmes published his second novel, a murder mystery called Swing. Being, well, Rupert Holmes, he also wrote and recorded an accompanying seven-track CD of swing-inflected music; both are well worth finding. The combination, meanwhile, led him to quip, “I’ve been singing songs from my new book.” In the past month, I received … Continue reading Crafting the “Soundtrack” to my Interrogating Memory book
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 2
In late June, I wrote the first in a series of essays outlining the evolution of the methods I use to rank my favorite tracks (a term I prefer to “songs”), beginning with my first-ever mix cassette tape in August 1981. In the interim, however, moving to a new apartment, the ongoing search for a … Continue reading Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 2
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 1
I recently updated a data-based discussion of my cinematic “guilty pleasures,” adding a comparison of “most-acclaimed” and “my favorite” films from a given year or years. In so doing, though, I side-stepped the question of determining with something approaching academic rigor just what my favorite films are, relying solely on my gut to select a … Continue reading Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 1
Organizing by themes V: Popular music
This site benefits/suffers/both from consisting of posts about a wide range of topics, all linked under the amorphous heading "data-driven storytelling." In an attempt to impose some coherent structure, I am organizing related posts both chronologically and thematically. While I have told many stories from my life (and those of my ancestors), I rarely discuss … Continue reading Organizing by themes V: Popular music
Just Bear With Me... 