Damned Lies
A while back I did a Random Top Ten of my favorite bands/artists. But after finally finishing ranking all the rock and pop music on my iPod, I got to wondering - in terms of percentages, who do I really love? Which of my favorite artists have the highest batting average for me - the most percentage of their songs that I have ranked as a 4-Star or 5-Star song? So, I crunched the numbers, and this is what I came up with. The artist whose songs I ranked the highest proportion of as 4 or 5 star songs was not U2, as I would have guessed/assumed, but Aimee Mann, at 60%, who I only put at #8 on that earlier list. On the other hand, I rated only 6% of Mann's songs at 5-star ratings, which ties for the lowest 5-star share. Clearly, I like most of Mann's songs a lot, but love only a handful.The artist with the highest share of 5-star rated songs was, remarkably enough, Dire Straits. Except that figure is heavily skewed by the fact that I have a Dire Straits best-of, but only two actual albums. So if we discount that, the easy winner is Bob Dylan - I have 234 songs of his songs in my collection, and have rated over one in f as a 5-star song, one of my all-time favorites.
In any case, this is a fun little exercise for the more obsessive-compulsive music fans among us. Give it a try! (You know who you are).
The percentages for all the biggies in my collection:
Aimee Mann
4- and 5-Star - 60%
5-Star - 6%
Bob Dylan
4- and 5-Star - 50%
5-Star - 21%
Dire Straits
4- and 5-Star - 57%
5-Star - 27%
Elvis Costello
4- and 5-Star - 26%
5-Star - 6%
John Mellencamp
4- and 5-Star - 42%
5-Star - 14%
Neil Young
4- and 5-Star - 45%
5-Star - 15%
Radiohead
4- and 5-Star - 57%
5-Star - 18%
Paul Simon (including Simon & Garfunkel)
4- and 5-Star - 45%
5-Star - 18%
Sting
4- and 5-Star - 32%
5-Star - 12%
The Who
4- and 5-Star - 35%
5-Star - 9%
Tracy Chapman
4- and 5-Star - 44%
5-Star - 17%
U2
4- and 5-Star - 49%
5-Star - 16%
Until Whenever
3 comments:
I'm impressed with people who rank their music. I don't understand it, but it still impresses me. I started on this once, then stopped after about 5 songs. Just the idea of carefully considering the difference between a 3 and 4, or wondering if there should be a limit to 5 stars, because if everything is awesome then everything is mediocre, and then thinking of the time and effort for a library of 8,000 songs was too much.
Of course I also rarely mess with genres or playlists, it's just a giant pot of musical stew.
I found that it only worked if I decided upfront not to fret too much about a rating. And, for me, the ratings basically boil down to:
1 Star - Dialogue or somesuch. I think the only actual "song" I've rated 1-Star is a bootlegged copy of Clay Aiken doing Where the Streets Have No Name, which I have for much the same reason I slow down when passing an accident.
2 Star - Short musical interludes that aren't really songs, or songs I actually dislike. Not too many of these either.
3 Star - The bulk of my music. A song I like but don't love.
4 Star - A song I love.
5 Star - A song I adore.
So, sure, the line between a 4 and 5 can be pretty thin, but that's cool. Also, I never would have rated as many songs as I have if you couldn't do it on the iPod itself. I just created playlists of all unranked Rock/Pop, Musical Theater, and Jazz Vocal songs and I rate them as I walk to the PATH.
I'd think the quantity would somehow factor in there. I'd say off the top that, percentagewise, there are more 4s and 5s for some artist I have but one or two albums, esp. a greatest hits, but the Beatles, say, would figure higher with more 3s, but also more 4s and 5s.
But I ain't gonna calculate it, because it'll give me a headache.
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