Week 8 (late!): Music.
This post is being posted in the middle of week nine because of the following excuses that I find valid but you may not:
- Finals
- Six hour drive from MN to IL
- My mom’s wedding (in quarantine)
Accept it or judge me. It’s the internet so I’ve prepared myself for both.
Anyway, this week I analyzed my music habits. I’ve been thinking a lot about music recently because my band, Geyser is finishing up an album. I know – shameless self promotion. I wanted to see if my music habits have changed since starting quarantine. I’ll take you through what I found.
I started off by requesting my music listening data from Apple because they don’t have a nice public API like Spotify does. That took about a week to get and they gave me way more data than I needed, but better too much than too little. My first question was this: How have my top artists changed?
I started off by looking at my all time artists overall (all time being since October, 2015).
I wasn’t really surprised by this. I go through phases where I find an artist I like and listen nonstop. That covers Brandi Carlile, Chris Stapleton, and Jade Bird. Wilco and Gillian Welch are another story. And I wanted to show you that story so check out the next graph.
You can see what I was talking about with the obsessive listening: Each of the three artists I mentioned begins with a steep incline when I start listening to them and then either continues up with each new album they release, or flattens out.
Now let’s talk about Gillian Welch. She’s a long time favorite artist and you see her climbing steadily over time in the graph, but then there’s a sharp uptick in 2020. That’s because I played her version of Radiohead’s Black Star in a concert and I was trying to learn Dave Rawlings’ killer guitar solo note for note.
And finally Wilco. Wilco is the dark blue line. You can see the same pattern that Gillian Welch took where there is a relatively flat but gradual climb and then a quick increase in plays. This one’s slightly embarrassing but what is the internet for if not sharing embarrassing things with the world. I really like Wilco and their music. They were one of my first concerts as a kid. But for the longest time, I felt weird listening to their music because I was friends with the singer’s son and we played music together. But according to this graph, I realized mid-2018 that this was stupid and I listen to their music a lot now because it’s great music and no one cares.
Okay. So I know who my top artists are overall, but who are my top artists in quarantine? Take a look:
Pretty different. Brandi Carlile and Wilco still make the cut, but my most listened to artist since quarantining is Sarah Jarosz. I didn’t expect this, but I have been listening to her music a lot. It’s on the calmer side and the instrumentation is really nice.
Next new addition – John Prine. I was pretty sad to hear that John Prine died from the coronavirus. If you haven’t heard his music, I suggest giving it a listen. He was a hero to songwriters. As I write this, I’m in an apartment across the street from the Old Town School of Folk Music where he used to take music lessons and where I grew up learning music. So, I’ve been listening to a lot of his music because his lyrics are the epitome of good songrwiting and his chords are simple and easy to follow. He once said if you play more than three chords you’re showing off.
Finally The Lone Bellow. I haven’t listened to their music in a long time, but when their new album came out this year, I was reminded of why I used to like them so much. Their three part harmonies and strong voices are soulful and fun to sing along to. I had ticket’s to one of their concerts in April. Hopefully I can see them play the new album in the future.
Okay. Artists are covered. What about genres? The other question I had about my music was how the genres I listened to morphed from before quarantine to now.
I started by looking at seven weeks of music before quarantine, and seven weeks during quarantine so I could compare them responsibly. My music taste has changed some over time so in order to see if there was a shift. Here’s that information:
Not really much of a change here in raw numbers, but where there is a change is proportions. It seems I’m listening to a lot less Alternative music, and I’m listening to a lot more pop, blues, folk-rock, and jazz. To be honest, I’m not quite sure why that is. It’s something to think about.
I thought that perhaps if I looked at genres over time I might gain some new insights:
It appears that my increase in alternative music started this year. I think I can attribute this to listening to reference tracks for Geyser’s new singles/album (another shameless plug) a lot as we finished up mixing. I also see that rock overtook pop. I’m not sure why, but I’m happy about it.
So, I suppose I’ve learned very little from this. You’ve probably learned more than me but little of value unless you’re very curious about my taste in music. If you’ve gleaned anything from this post, I hope it’s that there are a lot of reasons to listen to different artists during this time. While there may not be many new albums coming out, we can find ourselves being drawn to our old favorites for new reasons. That, and maybe you’ve found some new music to listen to right now.
This is the seventh in a series of posts From Quarantine. Most posts from quarantine are prompted by Aisling Quigley’s Data Storytelling class at Macalester College. This is not one of those posts.