A Year Of Music (from Last.FM)

On February ninth of last year I signed up for Last.Fm, a music service that tracks what you listen to and then recommends new music based on that data. The Last.Fm scrobbler has recorded nearly every track played in my iTunes for a year(though not on my iPod). 9,749 tracks later, and I have a lot of information that only interests me.

Here, for example, are my top 50 artists of the past year (number of songs played in parenthesis):

1. 1. The Replacements (253)
2. 2. The Wrens (193)
3. 3. Pixies (169)
4. 4. The Beatles (154)
5. 5. Metallica , The White Stripes (153)
6. 6. McLusky (137)
7. 7. Modest Mouse (122)
8. 8. The Flaming Lips , Queen (119)
9. 9. Jimi Hendrix , Drive-By Truckers (116)
10. 10. The Black Keys (104)
11. 11. The Strokes (103)
12. 12. Ryan Adams , The Redwalls (100)
13. 13. Arctic Monkeys (96)
14. 14. Led Zeppelin (90)
15. 15. Eagles of Death Metal , Bob Dylan , Jesse Malin (85)
16. 16. Broken Social Scene (84)
17. 17. Bloc Party (81)
18. 18. The Rakes (79)
19. 19. Nirvana (78)
20. 20. Yeah Yeah Yeahs , Sam Cooke (76)
21. 21. The Coup (74)
22. 22. AC/DC (73)
23. 23. Johnny Cash (72)
24. 24. Creedence Clearwater Revival (71)
25. 25. The Rolling Stones (70)
26. 26. Guns N' Roses (69)
27. 27. Talib Kweli (67)
28. 28. Elvis Presley , Sufjan Stevens , John Legend , Bright Eyes (66)
29. 29. Aerosmith (65)
30. 30. The Shins , Iron & Wine (64)
31. 31. Spoon (62)
32. 32. Pearl Jam (60)
33. 33. Eagles (59)
34. 34. The Spinto Band , The Arcade Fire (57)
35. 35. My Morning Jacket , Stars , The Velvet Underground , The Ramones (56)
36. 36. Sondre Lerche (54)
37. 37. The Raconteurs (53)
38. 38. Jet (52)
39. 39. The Hold Steady , The Streets , Art Brut (51)
40. 40. Wolfmother (50)
41. 41. Coldplay , Iron Maiden (49)
42. 42. Alice in Chains (48)
43. 43. Ray Charles (47)
44. 44. Queens of the Stone Age , The Magic Numbers , The Clash (46)
45. 45. Frank Sinatra , Tool , Lupe Fiasco (43)
46. 46. Q and Not U (42)
47. 47. Ghostface , The Sounds , Destroyer , Cat Power , Kris Kristofferson (39)
48. 48. The Black Crowes , Pink Floyd , Beck, Soundgarden (38)
49. 49. The Killers , Pavement , Dinosaur Jr. , Young Love (37)
50. 50. Wolf Parade , Bettye Lavette , Rhymefest (36)

I grouped tied artists together.

The top 10 isn't surprising; The Replacements and The Wrens are two of my favorite groups. The Replacements are so far ahead because I own more of their work(and they have a larger catalog, pre-dating the Wrens by about ten years) than I do the Wrens, and I play Tim and Let It Be at least once month.

It's good to see that artists from my salad days -- Metallica, Jimi Hendrix, Queen and The Beatles -- still make up a large part of my musical tastes. Outside the top ten, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Nirvana, CCR, The Rolling Stones, Guns N Roses, Elvis, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Eagles, Alice in Chains, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Tool, Pink Floyd, and Soundgarden bring a lot of memories to the Top 50.

Queen, Zeppelin, AC/DC, Floyd and their ilk were part of my typical American white adolescent "classic rock phase". During my junior and senior years of high school I worked a summer job with an older friend(he was in college), and he played nothing but these bands(plus a lot Heart, and for one week we listened to The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy on tape, as read by Douglas Adams; in many ways he was my mentor geek) in his beat up red Le Baron while he drove us to work every morning for two summers. I lived an innocent Happy Days existence to the Dazed And Confused soundtrack.

The Seattle bands felt monumentally important in the early nineties. I was thirteen when Nevermind hit, the perfect age to start buying music that you thought made some sort of statement about yourself and your place in the world. I wasn't sure what Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains records said exactly; in retrospect I think they added a stormier, grayer layer to the old rock 'n roll message that all adults where full of shit. Plus, I really dug the "Black Hole Sun" video.

Guns N Roses doesn't really fit into either of those two categories. You listened to them because they were fucking bad-ass. Up until The Spaghetti Incident, the Guns were the most Rock N' Roll of rock bands. I let a friend buy the aforementioned covers record, the entire idea seemed so fucking weird. We listened to it in his bedroom, and the next day I helped him take down his giant Appetite For Destruction poster and put up a Stone Temple Pilots concert poster and a Cindy Crawford poster in the revered space over his bed's headboard. Young idol-worship led to young disillusionment, and him sleeping with his head by the bedpost.

There are some interesting ties. Coldplay and Iron Maiden(excellent!)? I picture Bruce Dickinson punching Chris Martin in the balls and dropping him with a knee to his shiny dome.

Tool and Frank Sinatra? Sinatra may have been a little guy (5' 7"), but I'll take him against Maynard and the rest of his prog-metal rockers.

It'll be interesting to see how the list changes in the next year or so; who drops out, who moves up. I predict The Killers, Wolf Parade, Q and Not U, and Frank will all drop out for various reasons: slipping interest(The Killers), I only own one album(Sinatra, In The Wee Small Hours and Q and Not U No Kill No Beep Beep), or they just annoy me(Wolf Parade).

Who will move up? I have no idea, but I look forward to another year.