Music! Music! Music!
So…just because I’m the way I am, I kind of accidentally downloaded a new song every day for this month, so I guess that whole thing’s happening again. But let it be! Because the only thing better than having a huge data set? TWO HUGE DATA SETS.
Data make life complete.
Anyway.
It’s graph time.
Genres. Let’s do orange this year.
Mean song length: 3:56
No five-stars this month.
Claudia’s 365 Days of Music – A Review
Are you ready for a long post? ‘CAUSE YOU’RE GONNA GET ONE!
Ahem.
Well here we are, ladies and gents. 365 days later, I now have 365 new songs, one for each day of 2010.
Snazzy? YES I’D CERTAINLY SAY SO.
So this was a super fun New Year’s resolution. If you have the time and money, I highly recommend you try this out. Anyway. Because I’m a stats whore, you know this year has to end with a bunch of analyses. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Total songs: 365 (duh)
Total time: 24 hours, 14 minutes and 48 seconds
Total size: 2.59 GB
Mean song length: 4 minutes (okay, 3 minutes, 59.412 seconds)
First song: United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop) by DJ Earworm
Last song: United State of Pop 2010 (Don’t Stop the Pop) by DJ Earworm
Total number of Sleepyhead remixes/covers: 6 (shut up, that song is like heroin)
Estimated cost: ~$350. The vast majority of songs were either $0.99 or $1.29 (yes, I made it a point to acquire songs legally), but I also use justmusicstore.com for the songs I couldn’t find on iTunes; their songs are $0.15 each.
The bests are as follows. I’m not going to embed the vids because that would make this post even longer, but they’re all linked. Go forth!
Top 10 Favorite Music Videos/Regular Videos Featuring the Artist(s)
Some aren’t official, but they SHOULD be!
1. The Music Scene – Blockhead
2. White Winter Hymnal – Fleet Foxes
3. Happy Up Here – Royksopp
4. Hey There Mr. – Leisure Alaska
5. Bad Romance – Lady Gaga
6. Resistance – Muse
7. This Too Shall Pass – OK Go
8. Viva La Love Story – Jon Schmidt
9. Flightless Bird, American Mouth – Iron & Wine
10. Disorganized Fun – Ronald Jenkees
Top 5 Most Touching Songs
These made me bawl. Very powerful.
1. The Last Day on Earth – Kate Miller-Heidke
2. 10,000 Miles – Mary Chapin Carpenter
3. Eet – Regina Spektor
4. Happy Ending – Mika
5. Flightless Bird, American Mouth – Iron & Wine
The Five Stars
The final list for the year, listed from January to December acquisition
Disorganized Fun – Ronald Jenkees
Bad Romance – Lady Gaga
Happy Up Here – Royksopp
White Winter Hymnal – Fleet Foxes
Blow Up – Gooseflesh
Viva La Love Story – Jon Schmidt
Sleepyhead (Run Toto Run Cover) – Passion Pit
Monster – Lady Gaga
Sleepyhead (Cillo Remix) – Passion Pit
Hey There Mr. – Leisure Alaska
Yours To Keep – Teddybears featuring Paola
Cobrastyle – Robyn
The Music Scene – Blockhead
Alejandro – Lady Gaga
Mediational Field – Susumu Hirasawa
I Want You To Want Me – Cheap Trick
I’m The Man Who Murdered Love – XTC
So what are the best of the best? Like the top 5? Well here they are:
Sleepyhead (Cillo Remix) – Passion Pit
Oh my god. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. This is SUCH a chill remix of the coolest song on the planet. 5 minutes and 16 seconds of “you can’t worry about anything because if you try to break the chill trance of this song, your head will explode.”
Hey There Mr. – Leisure Alaska
There’s just something about this song, man. The singer’s voice is like Chris Martin (Coldplay) mixed with peanut butter—very smooth, very lingering, with an ease of singing that is very apparent in the chorus. Fantastic.
Happy Up Here – Royksopp
The future is here, and it’s got a great beat. This is what electronic music should sound like. Very catchy.
Viva La Love Story – Jon Schmidt
The way this song crescendos to Viva La Vida is AMAZING. A very nice blend of Taylor Swift’s Love Story and Coldplay’s Viva La Vida using a cello and a piano.
I’m The Man Who Murdered Love – XTC
I actually just downloaded this song yesterday, but holy freaking crap it’s like crack. I danced to it on repeat for about an hour this afternoon. The tempo is perfect.
And I just have to give an honorable mention to Dildo by Interactive, solely because of the fact that this song consists of only 4 words—with 95% of the lyrics being “dildo”—and yet is so undeniably catchy that it begs to be played in the car at maximum volume when you’re driving around with your friends.
Now I’m sure you’re all looking for some plots, am I right? Just say yes, it’ll make things go more smoothly.
Here is the year in review: music style. Pie chart has been used due to the fact a bar graph would have sucked owing to the large range. As you can see, I am an electronic whore.
Here’s an aesthetically pleasing donut plot done of the top 4 genres plotted by month. January is the innermost circle, December is the outermost.
Here is a pie chart of the playcounts for the year (clicky for full size). I listened to songs purchased in 2010 a total of 15,045 times. The mean length of song is almost exactly 4:00, so that means I listened to a total of 3,610,800 seconds of music (60,180 minutes, 1,003 hours, or 41 days and 19 hours). Wow. And that’s just the music from this year, that doesn’t even count all the older stuff I listened to.
Oh, and the correlation between number of songs in a genre purchased and the number of plays for a particular genre? .98. For anyone who cares.
I was going to do a bunch of stuff with the genre plots, but they’re a lot messier than I was anticipating and therefore look like crap, so I’ll just leave you with a pdf list of the music I downloaded this year: 2010 Song List
I totally recommend doing this. Totally.
Today’s song: United State of Pop 2010 (Don’t Stop the Pop) by DJ Earworm
December Song Review
Happy birthday, Maggie!
So I know December’s not technically over, but it’s late and I already have tomorrow’s song, so HA.
Graph of genres:
Mean song length: 4:05
The Five Star: The Man Who Murdered Love by XTC
Join me tomorrow for the year in review!
Today’s song: I’m The Man Who Murdered Love by XTC
November Song Review
November’s over and so is NaNoWriMo! But that whole thing will be analyzed tomorrow; right now it’s time for this month’s music review.
Graph of genres:
Mean song length: 4:22
NO five stars this month!
Today’s song: Peanut Butter & Patience by Deru
October Song Review
Happy Halloween, bitches! It’s music review time!
Graph of genres:
Mean song length: 4:01
The five star: Mediational Field by Susumu Hirasawa
Woohoo, two more months!
Today’s song: I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers
September’s Song Review
Today’s the 270th day of the year. It’s also September 30, which means it’s time for another month’s music review!
Graph of genres:
Mean song length: 3:54
The five star: Alejandro by Lady Gaga
Today’s song: Sour Cherry by The Kills
I AM BLOGGER, HEAR ME POST
August’s Music Review
Look, another month gone. Song review time!
Graph of genres:
Mean song length: 4:44
There were NO five-stars this month!
Today’s song: Give Into Me by Takida
Oh holy freaking CRAP
This blog features Justin Bieber. Why? Because as one commenter said, “[I] didn’t know it was possible to make Justin Bieber sound like Sigur Ros.”
This is honestly one of the best ambient Enya-esque songs I’ve ever heard, and the fact that it has been created by super-slowing a teenage pop-star’s voice is pretty damn fantastic. I laughed for like the first five minutes of this, but then I was drawn in.
Just listen to it. Go on, do it. Are you freaking out yet? Is your mind on a LETHARGIC BIEBER DRUG TRIP?!
Me too.
I may have to download this.
Today’s song: Kites by Geographer (another eargasmic song)
July’s Song Review (or whatever I usually title these)
Hell, July’s over. Song time!
Graph of genres:
Mean song length: 3:35
The five star: Cobrastyle by Robyn
Today’s song: Coming Around Again by Simon Webbe
Instant Prozac
This made my night, so I must share it. If this doesn’t make you happy, it probably means you’re dead.
That harp player rules the world.
MIND TRIP
Woah, dude. This is how I see things.
Rock on.
Today’s song: Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer
IT’S A TRAP!
Haha, nothing like fun with friends in the basement. And Obama never texted me back, in case you were wondering.
Oh, and here’s the month’s song review:
Graph of genres
Mean song length: 3:37
The five stars: Take It Home by The White Tie Affair and Hey There Mr. by Leisure Alaska
Yay!
Today’s song: Stamp On The Ground (Radio Edit) by ItaloBrothers
“You’re so blind your hindsight needed Lasik before it was 20/20”
I wish I was as good at screwing with sounds as this guy is:
That is all.
Today’s song: Gardyn by Pogo
May Song Review
Yet another month GONE! And you know what that means (even though I know none of you care)…
Graph of genres
Mean song length: 3:58
The five-star: Sleepyhead (Cillo Remix) by Passion Pit
Yes, I now have the original song plus 3 variations of it with 5 stars. 8% of my “Top Favorites” playlist is Sleepyhead-related.
Awesome.
Today’s song: Viva la Vida (Jul0 Remix) by Coldplay
Canadian radio: it’s not all Barenaked Ladies and The New Pornographers up here
I submit that you haven’t lived until you’ve heard a rap about Quebec.
Or a country jig about New Brunswick.
I’m not even kidding. I think Canada’s tourism department promotes solely through their music industry. I had the radio playing for about five hours this afternoon and I think I head a little ditty about almost every province. It’s funny until you realize it’s like rapping about Idaho or singing a blues song about Florida.
The rest of the songs were just freaking weird. There was this one whose chorus consisted solely of the phrase “watch out for the fuzz” repeated about twenty times (this, interestingly enough, wasn’t a rap but some sort of upbeat folksy tune). I’m not denying that there are some really weird songs from the States, but these are weird in an entirely different way.
And now I can’t stop singing “Noooooova Scotia!” to the Oklahoma! melody. This may need to be a song rewrite in the near future.
ALSO:
I’m not embedding ’cause the screencap will haunt you. This is perhaps one of the creepiest videos involving chocolate bunnies on YouTube. Don’t watch if:
a) you can’t avoid thinking that putting eyes on something automatically makes it a living thing
b) you’ve had a bad experience with an iron/heat lamp/hair dryer
c) there are chocolate bunnies in the room
You’ve been warned.
I fall into category A, which may be why it’s so disturbing to me, but I don’t know. I mean, I know it’s just chocolate, but it’s bunny-shaped and has eyes. Peep death doesn’t bother me, but the fact that the chocolate bunny eyes seem to be staring into my soul is somewhat unsettling. Some of the comment-leavers seem sufficiently freaked out as well.
Haha, I hope you don’t watch it right before going to bed like I did.
Today’s song: Round and Round by Ratt
April Music Review
GUESS WHAT, FOOLS?!
It’s that time of the month (no, not THAT time).
Graph of genres
Mean song length: 4:09
The five-star: Sleepyhead (Run Toto Run Cover) by Passion Pit
TIME FOR MAY!
Today’s song: Monster by Lady Gaga (Matt, thanks for bringing to my attention the fact that I knew this song, but for some reason I didn’t have it yet)
Music to have nightmares by
Well, I’m certainly not sleeping soundly tonight. Audacity has given me the power to freak myself out. How, you ask? Well, as of right now, the two things I never want to hear again are:
1. Battles’ Atlas played in reverse. Scariest freaking thing I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s hard to describe what this sounds like without actually listening to it (NOT RECOMMENDED). It’s like dying pygmies on ecstasy locked in a large, echoing auditorium. There was absolutely nothing enjoyable about it, and now I want to pour concrete into my ears.
2. The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Maps piano cover with singing overlaid, the piano cut into two identical tracks, one dropped about an octave, the other raised as high as it would go in Audacity, and the vocal track copied into two identical tracks and altered the same way. Don’t ask me why I did it, I just did. This was actually slightly enjoyable, just because it sounded like a music box the Devil would have on his nightstand (does the Devil even have a nightstand? What does he keep on it, a Stephen King novel he reads before he goes to sleep? Does it have drawers in which he stores his sexy lingerie?). Seriously. Super low piano and a throaty “MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPS WAIT. THEY DON’T LOVE YOU LIKE I LOVE YOU” combined with almost dog-whistle high blinky-blinky sounds. Creepy.
It’s not all bad, of course. As previously mentioned, Cut Copy’s Lights and Music is pretty great backwards, as are parts of Owl City’s Fireflies and Dan Black’s Symphonies. Maps sped up to about twice the speed (while keeping the pitch the same) is FREAKING HILARIOUS. “Waaait…theydon’tloveyoulikeIloveyou! Waaait…theydon’tloveyoulikeIloveyou!” Putting wahwah on Sleepyhead will make your head explode, though.
My mission now is to see if I can find the creepiest arrangement of the creepiest song in my music library, just to see what it does to me. Yeah, classes and finals are done and I’m back to just avoiding research.
Fun times.
Today’s song: Rain by Rob Scallon
Blog 1,434: yeah, best New Year’s resolution EVER.
This “new song a day” thing is really probably the best resolution I’ve ever made. Why? Because when you actively seek out a new song everyday, you’re bound to stumble across awesome stuff like this:
When they drop into Viva La Vida at 3:44, I think my heart stopped. The subsequent singing didn’t help.
Oh, and here’s something to satisfy everyone’s English geekery:
Yay.
Edit: and you know what song sounds freakishly cool played backwards? Cut Copy’s Lights and Music. Just FYI.
Today’s song: Rain by Mika (yeah, I had to)
The Brave Little Blogger Goes for the 4 Year Mark
Next month at this time, I shall have passed the “I’ve been blogging for four years” mark. A stupid celebration of my lack of a life is being planned.
In other news, four day weekend, bitches! Thank you, Christianity.
ALSO: the very brief conversation with Maggie regarding Mika’s “Rain” music video (congrats, by the way ) got me thinking about the strange/cool/WTF music videos I’ve seen in my quest for a new song every day (and, of course, in years previous). You know this means you have to put up with another list (don’t worry, no repeats of past MVs I’ve posted):
- Sebastien Tellier’s Look: probably the smoothest, most chill music video I’ve seen. Nothing like staring at a lady’s backside for four minutes.
- Air’s Sing Sang Sung: nice flow, plus COLORS!
- Mika’s Relax (Take it Easy): again, COLORS!
- Queen’s Who Wants to Live Forever: because it’s Queen and this song is insanely awesome.
- Gigi D’agostino’s The Riddle: I have no idea if I’ve ever linked to this one before, but it’s cool enough to be a repost if I happened to have done so. Jacob gets like 6 million brownie points for introducing me to this song/video.
- The Rain’s Symmetry: lack of drumsticks and wet Germans. Why? Who the hell knows. Maybe ‘cause they’re The Rain?
Yeah.
Today’s song: Ariel by Dean Friedman
Passions to passions, lust to lust
Dear March: please don’t return again for another 12 months. You suck. Thanks.
Another good thing about the last day of March: MUSIC REVIEW!!! ¼ of the way through the year!
Breakdown of the genres:
Mean song length: 3:42
The five-stars:
That Beep by Architecture in Helsinki
Blow Up by Gooseflesh
Thank god it’s April.
Today’s song: Hant by Slagsmalsklubben (gotta love the Swedes)
Six hours of studying statistics leads to this insanity
HELLO MySpace land! It’s nice to be able to actually publish these things as I write them and not have to save them in Word. Super happy am I.
Anyway.
So I spent all morning/afternoon/early part of evening doing stats-related stuff, so when I came home I decided to do something that was also fun but in a totally different way.
REMIX TIME!!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I actually uploaded something to YouTube. Audacity + Fireflies + love for electronic music = this. As my comments say, sorry if it sucks, but Audacity is in no way Garage Band and I have never remixed anything in my life. So yeah.
Be kind!
Today’s song: Fireflies (My Remix Version Thingy Dunno What to Call it Yet) by Owl City, remixed by me. Mainly because I didn’t have time to go find another song today.
SHAMWOW (no, it’s not another Omegle conversation, don’t worry)
As much as Rube Goldberg tortured me my senior year of high school, this music video is really snazzy. I love all the crashes and bangs throughout, it’s great. So is the song.
Today’s song: This Too Shall Pass by OK Go
Februry Music Review
And now we mark the end of the second month of the year…and with that, time for NEW SONG STATSITICS AWWWWWWW YEAHHHHHHH!
Graph of genres
Mean song length: 3:39
The five-stars:
- Shark in the Water by V.V. Brown
- The Spell by Feed Me
- Puppy Love by Scandy
Onwards to March!
Today’s Song: Private Machine by Thermostatic
January Music Review
Well, it’s January 31st and I have officially reached the end of the first month of 2010 with a new song for each day of the year.
Now it’s time for statistics!!!!
Graph of genres
Mean song length: 4:08
The five-stars: Disorganized Fun by Ronald Jenkees and Happy Up Here by Royksopp
On to February!
Today’s song: Baptized by Fire by Spinnerette
Eigenblogger 