This week’s theme is “1990s hip-hop,” meaning rap albums released in the 1990s. Between our weeks listening to diss albums and rap groups, we’ve actually listened to a good deal of hip-hop this year. That said, this week showed the strongest representation from the genre—MC Hammer aside.

#7 Please Hammer Don’t Hurt 'Em by MC Hammer (1990)

When Ken and I listened to The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five a few weeks ago, we were a bit shocked. For an album by a rap group, there were a surprising number of tracks that did not involve much rapping. I came to learn that early in hip-hop’s history, rapping was seen as a bit of a novelty. Thus, many early albums in the genre contain various R&B and rock songs (e.g., “Takin Care of Business” by Kurtis Blow).

MC Hammer falls firmly within this bygone tradition. Of course, he raps on tracks like “Lets Go Deeper” and “Crime Story,” but the album is littered with covers (e.g., “Have You Seen Her”) and quasi-reimaginations (e.g., “She’s Soft And Wet”). This is not a problem in the abstract. Many albums are littered with covers and quasi-reimaginations. The problem is that MC Hammer’s covers and quasi-reimaginations and horrendous.

Nearly every track on this album is derivative in the worst way possible. “U Can’t Touch This,” the album’s only classic, is a prime example of this. It’s just some lazy rhymes over “Superfreak” by Rick James (e.g., “Fresh new kicks, and pants / You gotta like that, now you know you wanna dance”). Even when Hammer tries to do something original, like on “Black is Black,” he doesn’t have the skills on the microphone to carry the song.

Yet Please Hammer Don’t Hurt 'Em sold ten million copies in less than a year. Ten million copies! Only 53 albums sold that many copies in the era of physical media. Why? How? I actually got the answer when my wife entered the room while I was listening to this travesty. Usually when I am playing music, she enters without a comment. But with Hammer bumping, she danced her way in to the room. Get the ladies dancing, and you’ll sell a lot of records.

#6 The Coming by Busta Rhymes (1996)

As a child of the 2000s, I’d always thought of Busta Rhymes as the mile-a-minute rapper on tracks like “Break Ya Neck.” Busta was not moving with that speed on his debut album, The Coming. His voice was still compelling and playful. On songs like “Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check” you could almost compare him to a circus ringleader.

But since his flow was so much different than my expectations, I ended up not enjoying the record as much as I would have liked. Of course, that’s not really Busta’s fault. But I must speak my truth.

#5 Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... by Raekwon (1995)

I’ve admittedly never get very into Wu-Tang Clan. Frankly, I find some of their work more impenetrable than I should for a popular act. But Wu-Tang is unique: a ten piece hip-hop team where each member somehow remains distinct. Pair that setup with beats equally likely to be sourced from old soul songs and kung fu movies, and you get one of the most unique hip-hop groups in history.

Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... is firmly within the Wu-Tang lineage. Being billed as Raekwon record would be enough to join that blood line, but with RZA producing every track, Ghostface Killah appearing on nearly every track, and the rest of the Staten Island clan popping up throughout the project, it’s a Wu-Tang Clan project in all but name only.

Of course, there are differences. Raekwon leaned heavily into his mafioso personality on this album, popping bottle after bottle of Cristal while—in the words of Jonah Bromwich from Pitchfork—writing “paeans to those hardworking souls ducking RICO charges.” Because of that, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... is equal parts glitz and grit. Just a few bars from “Incarcerated Scarfaces” illustrates this dichotomy:

But all I need is my house, my gat, my Ac'
Bank account fat, it’s going down like that
And pardon the French, but let me speak Italian
Black stallions wildling on Shaolin
That means the island of Staten
And niggas carry gats and mad police from Manhattan

#4 Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik by Outkast (1994)

Though many would make the case that both André 3000 and Big Boi are two of the finest emcees in hip-hop’s history, their respective skills on the microphone are not what keep me coming back to Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik and the rest of their catalog. It’s the musicality.

I will mention something similar when discussing Supa Dupa Fly, but in a genre so heavily built around words, it’s easy to coast by on basic beats. Just set the drum machine to a preset, chop up an old funk song on top, and tell a story. Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik does not rest on that. You’ve got singable choruses on tracks like “Player’s Ball.” You’ve got Eddie-Hazel-esque guitar solos on tracks like “Funky Ride.” And, of course, you’ve got bars on bars on tracks like “Git Up, Git Out.”

Much of this is the work of the production trio Organized Noize. But André 3000 and Big Boi’s contributions should not be discounted, especially when we know where their career was headed.

#3 The Infamous by Mobb Deep (1995)

It would be easy to highlight the thematic similarities between The Infamous and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Both capture grim tales of street life. But, as noted, Raekwon’s characterization is just as much glitz as it is grit. Mobb Deep has no time for glitz.

If Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... and The Infamous were both films rather than albums, the former, while violent, could be some escapist fantasy. The Infamous doesn’t play like that. It’s a documentary narrated by Prodigy and Havoc, the rhymes telling the story but the grim beats setting the stage. I challenge you to listen to tracks like “Survival of the Fittest” and “Shook Ones, Pt. II” and not feel like you’re being followed.

#2 Supa Dupa Fly by Missy Elliot (1997)

Compare the lyrical sample I just shared from Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... to this sample from the title track of Supa Dupa Fly:

I feel the wind
Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten
Begin, I sit on hills like Lauryn
Until the rain starts coming down, pouring

This example is representative of the fact that Missy Elliot is not as skilled a rapper as André 3000 or Raekwon or Prodigy. Her rhymes aren’t as dense. Her wordplay isn’t as deft. But what Missy lacks in technical skill, she more than makes up for in other ways.

Missy Elliot’s bars are filled with swagger. In the male-dominated world of hip-hop in the 1990s, a woman rapping, “I was lookin for affection / So I decided to go, swing that dick in my direction / I’ll be out of control / Let’s take it to perfection / Just you and me” was shocking. Missy Elliot is compelling.

And then there are the beats. Missy paired up with a young, mononymous producer named Timbaland to produce Supa Dupa Fly. Whereas many rappers in this era were sampling well-known hits (e.g., MC Hammer) or creating simple, repetitive loops to pontificate over, Missy and Timbaland were turning, in the words of Entertainment Weekly, “avant-garde sounds into No. 1 hits.”

A track like “Izzy Izzy Ahh” is a great example of this. Missy manages to transform nonsense into frightening boasts (e.g., “Izzy-izzy-ah-zi-zah-zi-zah-zah / Hard bitches be talkin’ like they rah-rah / Blizzy-blizzy-blahzah-blahzah-blahzay / None of y’all fools ain’t got shit on me”) while Timbaland cooks up a sparse, sinewy beat.

#1 Capital Punishment by Big Pun (1998)

Not long after college, I fell in love with The Postal Service’s album Give Up. The collaboration between Ben Gibbard, Jimmy Tamborello, and Jenny Lewis sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before. I was excited to have a new discography to dive into. The excitement didn’t last long. I soon realized that The Postal Service only released a single album. I was upset. Big Pun left me feeling quite the same.

Before clicking play on Capital Punishment, I wasn’t familiar with Big Pun. But moments into the first track, “Beware,” I was enthralled. Seldom have I heard an emcee stack so many rhymes on top of one another. Here’s a few fiery bars from “You’re a Killer” that illustrate this:

Big Pun’s my thug’s name, bustin’ my guns, that’s my love thing
I’ll slit your jug’ vein and snatch your Adam’s Apple
John Madden-tackle your corpse to hoist it on a cross at the tabernacle
That’ll have to hurt, I’ll work your body ‘til it burst

I needed more Big Pun in my life after hearing Capital Punishment. Sadly, there wasn’t that much more to listen to. The Bronx rapper was dead two years after releasing his debut. He’d struggled with his weight for most of his life. When he had a heart attack at 28, he was almost 700 pounds.

I can’t pretend that Capital Punishment has the beats of Supa Dupa Fly. I also can’t pretend that it has the hooks of Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. I’m not sure it even matches the storytelling of The Infamous. But Pun’s dexterity on the microphone will leave you asking “What if?” for years to come.

Shout out to the paid subscribers who allow this newsletter to exist. Along with getting access to our entire archive, subscribers unlock biweekly interviews with people driving the music industry, monthly round-ups of the most important stories in music, and priority when submitting questions for our mailbag. Consider becoming a paid subscriber today!

Subscribe now

Recent Paid Subscriber Interviews: Pitchfork’s Editor-in-Chief • Vinyl Specialist • Spotify’s Former Data Guru • Hall of Fame Songwriter• John Legend Collaborator • Broadway Arranger • Indie Label Founder• Fender Exec

Recent Album a Day Themes: Trading Favorites • Concept Records • Peaked at 200 • Alliterative Artists • Hip-Hop Groups • Supergroups • Punk Ladies • Short and Sweet • Long Closers • This Year • Grammy Losers and Winners • Artists You Hate

Want more from Chris Dalla Riva? Get a copy of his book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves wherever books are sold.

Buy Book

And he did! During May of this year, he kicked off his wild tour. The aforementioned Darius Mullin tagged along for the first three shows in Birmingham, Alabama; Cleveland, Mississippi; and Searcy, Arkansas on May 3. After Nordista Freeze set the record, they caught up again for a conversation. If you enjoy the conversation, check out Mullin’s newsletter and Nordista Freeze’s music.

I’m excited to catch up about how things went, since I only got to be there for the first day. For the sake of the interview, what did you do, and why did you do it?

I successfully toured all 50 states in the fastest possible run, which was 36 days. It was 36 days and now it is 30 days (or technically 29-and-a-half).

I mean, on the one hand, I did it to challenge myself to be a world record holder. But really, for me, it seemed like a cool way [to use] myself as the catalyst to weave together and create a modern network of DIY and independent artists and creatives across the country. And there’s a large swath of the country that I still obviously didn’t hit, but at least being able to touch all 50 states within a month shows some sort of unity that can be found through artistic communities.

In 2026, which is a unique time of isolation and division, it was a nice thing to attempt. And also, it just felt right in my life. I’ve been touring across the country for about a decade, and this seemed like a nice way to kind of cap off or tie together a decade of work that I’ve put into touring and believing in different artistic communities and how they could all work together to support me in my art. But at the same time, I give back to these spaces by creating events that hopefully bring their own communities together.

Sounds like the culmination of what you’ve been doing for the past many years of your career in a lot of ways.

Exactly. That first day that we were together had a magic to it. I felt like those first couple of days were crazy. Of course, after that there were other chapters that were longer and more grueling, but that first day was really fun.

I like the unity message. You were breaking a world record, but it wasn’t just breaking it for the sake of breaking it. Breaking it would be good enough, but there’s more to it for you than that, right?

Right, right, totally. You know, I’d say the anecdote that I genuinely wasn’t expecting [was] when people would come to the shows and they would bring me a gift or something that they’d made.

Sometimes I feel not necessarily a guilt, but almost like—people are so passionate and believing in me and wanting this to succeed. I do feel maybe a bit of imposter syndrome. Because, man, there’s real stuff going on out there! There’s people who need help, and there’s real hardships. And I was beginning to feel a little embarrassed of my mission or what I’m doing.

I had some people give me pretty good advice when I was out there: “You doing this stunt enables other people to do whatever their thing is.” And, if someone bakes you banana bread and they bring it to the show, having a response of, “Oh, I don’t deserve this,” doesn’t really add up. What you should actually look at is this person is doing something that they’re passionate about; they’re doing something they love to do, and they’re showing that with you. So, by me putting on this stunt, other people were able to engage with it in their own ways, which actually is really cool and uplifts more people.

You said that it got really grueling after the first few days. Is that largely because there was just so much driving and you were doing only one show a day? Or because that was part of the country that you hadn’t visited as often?

There was the first two days, and then we did one show a day for a while, all the way to the west coast, and then back to Las Vegas. And then it got to where there’d be one or two shows a day going up the west coast. But then once I hit the Midwest, which I guess technically starts in the Dakotas, I started doing two shows almost every single day. I described that route as “the Midwestern pretzel,” because I was basically zigzagging around. That was the hardest part.

When you start the road trip or the big tour, you’ve got the capacity to do eight-hour drives. Things only started to get hard until we got to the Midwest where the landscapes are not as scenic, it rained a lot, and I was doing two shows a day. There’d be times when you’d wake up at 7 A.M., drive until noon, play, leave at 1 P.M., then drive until like 7pm and play again. And that’s just an exhausting way to spend consecutive days.

I knew by the time we hit the East Coast, we’d have a lot of positive momentum. But that time in the middle, there was so much rain. I think that was probably the lowest point. I knew it was never a question whether I was gonna quit, but I was definitely hitting a darker space in my head than I anticipated.

And driving in the rain is a lot more mentally taxing than driving not in the rain.

It’s one thing to drive for 30 minutes in the rain, but when you’re doing hours and hours of days, it’s very hard. There were probably two days where I legitimately just felt like I wasn’t even enjoying it anymore.

I would guess that the shows themselves were probably the best part of that?

Yeah! One person described it as the mile markers of a marathon and how you have people cheering for you. The shows are the easy part. Some people wrongly assume that the shows would be a difficult part. Ultimately, I think the sleep deprivation and the long drives were the hardest part for me.

Tell me about the people who were along for the drives for you. There was Danny and Zayne at the beginning, and there were some others too, right?

So, Zayne was the only other constant. Zayne’s with me the whole time documenting. And then I had attempted to create what I described as a “baton relay” to keep us going. It didn’t exactly work out.

We had Danny for a while. After Danny, we had two people kind of drop out. So, we were alone for five days. But a bunch of other people joined along the way: Zayne’s boyfriend Trevor, my sister, my tour manager, my bass player, and a few other people. If I didn’t have drivers, I would have been pulling over and pouring ice down my back and slapping my face.

Would you ever do this again?

I don’t know. I’m kind of conflicted. I think I can do it faster, but do I want to? I feel like if someone broke the record then I would go again.

You’ll do it to defend the title?

If I had to defend the title, I will do it. If it’s uncontested, then maybe I’ll consider doing it. But I’ve got routes and I actually think you could do it faster. So, we’ll see what happens.

I watched an interview where you said, “[T]he question isn’t doing it so fast, but doing it so slow.” Did this end up being so intense that that idea didn’t apply?

I think what I was originally referring to was traditional touring. I love touring, but I don’t necessarily find it easy. As I get older, you become a little bit more aware of time and how important it is. When you’re 19 and you miss Father’s Day or someone’s birthday, you just kind of think, “Well, that’s the life I chose.” But then as you get older, you’re like, “Man, some of this stuff is important!”

Even when I first started touring, I wouldn’t do any off days. I would book a three-week tour and there’d just be 21 shows. As I get older, I can kind of understand that if I am near the Grand Canyon, maybe I should go see it or maybe it is good to get dinner with your friends while you’re in Milwaukee.

All that being said, I find touring to be too slow. Not only do you drive all day, but then you get to a venue, you load in at like 5 P.M. Then you soundcheck at 6. Then doors are 7 or 8. Music starts at 9. It’s over by like 11:30. Then you leave at 1 A.M. It’s a lot of waiting around!

I felt like I broke free from a lot of that malaise on this tour. I wasn’t loading in. I wasn’t sound-checking. I could be in and out of a venue in an hour-and-a-half. Because of that, this was my favorite tour I’ve ever done.

Have you done much playing just solo acoustic before? I’ve never seen you play a solo acoustic set.

Not really. I always just kind of felt like people came to see me rock and roll. But during this tour, people were very encouraging of my solo sets. Playing solo allows me to fit into more metaphorical spaces.

I loved hearing lots of your acoustic versions. Some of the songs, like “Dolphin,” you completely reimagined.

Dude, thank you.

You were telling me when we were in Cleveland, Mississippi, that you had never actually played all 50 states before.

That’s right. There were seven that I’d never played before.

Which seven did you hit that you had never hit before? And what was your impression of any of them?

The first one that I hit was Wyoming. I’d been to Wyoming; I’d never played there. We had a great experience. We went on I-90, which basically means I just barely nicked Wyoming at all.

Then I had never played Alaska, which was a three hour stint back and forth. I just dedicated an entire round trip from Seattle, where I just played, went up to Alaska, performed, and came back.

There were two in New England: Rhode Island and Maine, which both went great. And that leaves three. What were they? Delaware is one of them. I never played Delaware, and I think I was in Delaware for less than an hour. We literally showed up, played this coffee shop where nobody cared that we were playing, and then left. It’s such a small state that we were like, wow, I think we literally were here for 54 minutes or something.

Oh, North Dakota! Now, that’s actually an interesting one, because that wound up being one of the highlights of the entire tour. We played Fargo, North Dakota, and there was like 80 kids there out of nowhere. It was a really great show.

And then, of course Hawaii, where I ended things. That was amazing. It was just cool to be there. I played a show to probably about 10 people. It was extremely cool. And then my girlfriend and I just got to hang out for three days and go to the beach. It was awesome.

You said the previous record was like 35 days. Who was the first band to hit all 50 and then how the record has gotten whittled down?

I think they were called The Black Donnellys. They’re an Irish band. They came over here and just crushed it. They did the whole US, and they were doing radio and other things too.

That’s crazy.

I don’t know much about them, but I know there’s a documentary about it. I’d like to watch it.

I’d imagine Ireland is smaller than most US states, so doing all that traveling in that short amount of time would have been, I mean, tough for a European.

I think when I did my UK tour, and I was opening for this guy, Casey Lowery, and I was riding with him, and he kept just being like, “Oh, mate, we got another long drive today!” And I’d be like, “Bro, these drives are like two hours. This is like Nashville to Jackson, Tennessee. It’s a day trip.”

So, tell me some of the stranger or more wholesome or more horrible anecdotes that you would wanna share. I am curious about how you played an extra show at a Steak ‘n Shake.

I did play! I played one song. I guess I didn’t count it as a show in my head, but you could make an argument. The father of Zayne, my friend and videographer, came to our show in Kentucky and was like, “Oh, I wanna buy you guys lunch.” There was a Steak 'n Shake next door, so we went there.

We get over there and right as we’re walking in the door, I see these kind of hipster-looking girls walking into a coffee shop we just played at. I walked over and I’m like, “Are you guys here for a show by chance?” And they were like, “Yeah, we missed it!” And I was like, “I’m free!” I was gonna play outside, but it was so hot so we went into Steak 'n Shake and did a little song.

I also believe you got pulled over a few times.

Danny got a speeding ticket, and I got a speeding ticket. Actually, I’m glad you mentioned that because I need to pay that speeding ticket before it gets elevated.

Did you have any bad experiences?

I think the worst would just be neutral. There’s just a few times when I could tell that maybe the owner of a space I’d been interacting with on Instagram DMs or email maybe hadn’t communicated properly to their staff what was going on.

One last thing: Where can people connect with you? And then what’s up next?

People can find me pretty much anywhere. I’m most active on Instagram. I’m pretty active on TikTok these days, too. Next up, I’m going to apply to be on Survivor.

After that, I’m going to play my 1,000th show. I’ve played 969. The 1000th show is going to be in Nashville somewhere. It’s gonna be an “end-of-an-era” kind of vibe. It’s gonna be really emotional and cool, and gonna have a big band.

Want more from Nordista Freeze? Check out a full set from his world record tour on YouTube.

Want more from Darius Mullin? Check out his newsletter, Midnight Donuts.

Want more from Chris Dalla Riva? Get a copy of his debut book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves.

Buy My Book

The Worst Beatles Song

By Chris Dalla Riva

My colleague—and fellow newsletter writer— likes to rag on me for spending too much time listening to bad music. I swear I’m not a musical masochist. I’m just a curious guy!

While Bruce Springsteen, my favorite artist, was trying to get his career off the ground, he was regularly being outsold by the likes of Captain & Tennille. Yes, I want to hear the great records but understanding that “Muskrat Love” outsold “Born to Run” in the 1970s helps make it clearer what a groundbreaking record the latter was.

That said, I was a bit of a musical masochist this week.

It started with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” After Martha Reeves sung a truly abysmal rendition of the patriotic anthem to kick off the season of the newly established Women’s Pro Baseball League, I decided to go on a hunt for other bad anthems.

But then I felt the need to witness more horrors. I wrote up some code that looked for playlists on Deezer named some variant of “Worst Songs Ever.” I then aggregated the songs across all the playlists to see what your average listener felt the greatest musical travesties were.

I learned a few things from this exercise. First, if you concocted some objective standard for musical badness, I don’t think any of these songs—outside of Rebecca Black’s “Friday” and “It’s Everyday Bro” by Jake Paul—would meet it. Most of these songs are just popular records from the recent past that are at best redundant and at worst annoying. Truly unlistenable music is usually not reaching enough people for listeners to care.

Second, people really hate “Dance Monkey” by Tones and I. Like really hate. I posted about these findings on my TikTok page, and no song inspired more vitriol in the comments than that one.

• “Dance monkey. It makes me physically ill.”

• “Dance monkey has a special place on my hate list”

• “That’s Dance Monkey? I never knew the name of the song, but I can’t stand it. Makes my ears hurt”

• “dance monkey is audible torture”

As I continued to mull over people’s notions of musical badness, my mind went to a very unexpected place: The Beatles. The four-headed musical beast composed of John, Paul, George, and Ringo is widely considered the greatest band in history. How would people’s notions of musical horror intersect with their discography?

“We Were Just a Band …”

When many Beatles’ outtakes were released in the 1990s as part of the Anthology series there was a snippet of dialogue from John Lennon included that I’ve always enjoyed:

We were four guys, that’s it. I met Paul, said, “Do you wanna join me band?”, you know. And then George joined and then Ringo joined. We were just a band who made it very, very big. That’s all.

Of course, this is the understatement of the century. But I think it is also helpful framing when approaching The Beatles’ catalog. They were just “four guys.” Now, those four guys composed some of the greatest songs yet to exist. But because they were four human guys, they were also fallible. In other words, there are bad Beatles songs.

Unlike my exercise with the worst songs generally, there aren’t people who make playlists called “The Worst Beatles Songs.” I had to resort to other means to avoid writing a bland essay where I just rant to you about the Beatles songs that offend my ears.

What’s nice is that because The Beatles are so famous, many people have gone to the pains of ranking every song in their discography. Bill Wyman at Vulture did it. Charles Curtis at USA Today did it. Mark Beaumont at NME has done it. And, of course, scores of random Redditers and bloggers online have done it.

I built a database of every Beatles catalog ranking I could find. I didn’t care if the ranking was done by a seasoned music critic or someone listening to The Fab Four’s oeuvre for the first time. They just had to have ranked every song. I then tossed out all covers, outtakes, and any songs released after they broke up. Then I took the average across all the lists.

So, the worst Beatles song is … “Dig It.” “Dig It”? Yes, “Dig It,” the 50 seconds on Let It Be culled from a longer jam where John Lennon shouts out the FBI and the CIA and the BBC and BB King.

Beyond the fact that I kind of like “Dig It,” I’ve always felt weird including it on lists like these. It resembles an outtake more than an actual song. Similarly, ranking sonic experiments like “Revolution 9” and “Wild Honey Pie” also feels a bit unfair.

They do technically fit my criteria, so I will include them. But, if we ignore those for a second, then we get to what I think is a much better answer to the what-is-the-worst-Beatles-song question: “Little Child.”

Beyond John Lennon honking on the harmonica he was soon to put down for good, “Little Child” is aptly described by Vulture as “Filler from the second album.” It will not offend your ears, but in a catalog of gold, the sub-two minute “by-numbers Merseybeat”—in the words of NME—is a dud.

Outside of their weird sonic experiments, most of the lowest ranked songs are those “by-numbers Merseybeat” cuts that you mostly find on their first few records. The lowest post-Revolver album cuts are sadly two Harrison numbers, “Only a Northern Song” and “For You Blue.” That said, I would listen to all of these songs before willingly turning on “She’s a Woman,” “Yes It Is,” and “I’m Down” again.

They are Pretty Great, Though

We are talking about The Beatles. And they are worth the hype. So, this entire essay shouldn’t be a downer. If we average all song ranks from their studio albums, Revolver just ekes past Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to come out on top.

Despite the fact that our ranking of songs only looked at originals, I decided to include covers in this album ranking, especially since many of the early albums have a good deal of them. Now, let’s just pull out the covers and rank those.

I’m fine with “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” being at the bottom. It might be the worst closer in the rock era, especially since you have to listen to John Lennon’s half-rate Little Richard impression right after the majesty of “Yesterday.” But in my heart, I would move “Mr. Moonlight” to the bottom. It’s a truly drab number with an organ solo that sounds like a stomach on the verge of illness.

When The Beatles got a cover right, it could be transformational, though. I don’t think most people even realize “Twist and Shout” was written by someone else. I’m sure depending on who you talk to, they might think the same for Motown classics “You Really Got a Hold on Me” and “Please Mister Postman.” For my money, their cover of The Music Man’s “Till There Was You” represents their finest adaptation, George Harrison’s solo a text for how to integrate beautiful melody into lead lines.

But let’s not just talk the best covers. The Beatles are much better known for their originals. To close out this piece, let’s use the same methodology we applied to find the worst originals to find the best originals.

It’s nice to see “A Day in the Life” come out on top. Not only would I declare that The Beatles best work if push came to shove, but it’s widely hailed as their magnum opus. It’s always a good check on a statistical methodology, no matter how simple, if your results make some intuitive sense.

Had this been a list based on my personal tastes, I would have ranked “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” “Don’t Let Me Down,” and “For No One” a bit higher. I don’t think those songs are underrated—is it possible for a song by the most famous band to be underrated?—but I do like them quite a bit. After a week of listening to terrible tunes, I think it’s time to spin that trio by the grandest quartet a few times.

A New One
"Betty’s in the Band" by Abigail Rose and Weston Hunter
2026 - Folk

Moments ago, I just mentioned The Beatles folk pastiche “I’ve Just Seen a Face.” When I first heard the Help! album cut, I was infatuated. I must have listened to it on loop for at least two hours. Abigail Rose and Weston Hunter’s new song “Betty’s in the Band” has given me a similar feeling.

Like “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” “Betty’s in the Band” lives in the world of folk music, although at a much slower tempo. But no matter the speed, both of these numbers convey a joy that is infectious. The former’s joy is built on falling in love hard and fast. The latter takes a different path. It captures the euphoria of a drifter on the road making so much music that she’s “got bruises on her legs from the tambourine.”

An Old One
"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" by P.M. Dawn
1993 - Psychedelic Rock

I’ve only recommended a Beatles song once in this newsletter. And even though it was a deeper cut (i.e., “I’m Happy Just to Dance With You”), I still felt silly doing it. Do we really need to spill more words on the most successful band in history given how hard it is for smaller artists to get any press? Probably not. So, no, I won’t be recommending a Beatles recording here. But I will recommend a song by the group: “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” by P.M. Dawn.

I spend a lot of time writing about P.M. Dawn in my book. I think the psychedelic hip-hop group was quietly influential. Their cover of The Beatles Rubber Soul classic is a great example of how inventive they could be while still respecting their source material.

Shout out to the paid subscribers who allow this newsletter to exist. Along with getting access to our entire archive, subscribers unlock biweekly interviews with people driving the music industry, monthly round-ups of the most important stories in music, and priority when submitting questions for our mailbag. Consider becoming a paid subscriber today!

Subscribe now

Recent Paid Subscriber Interviews: Pitchfork’s Editor-in-Chief • Vinyl Specialist • Spotify’s Former Data Guru • Hall of Fame Songwriter• John Legend Collaborator • Broadway Arranger • Indie Label Founder• Fender Exec

Recent Newsletters: Two-Hit Wonders • The Lostwave Story • Forgotten Artists • Album Cover Colors • Bad Ways to Die • A Frank Sinatra Mystery • Slop Problems

Want more from Chris Dalla Riva? Get a copy of his book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves wherever books are sold.

Buy Book

This week’s theme is “trading favorites,” meaning each day I sent one of my favorite albums to Ken that he’d never heard, and he sent one back. Since we both technically listened to a different record each day, we decided to rank them as pairs. My pick is listed first. Ken’s is listed second.

#7 A Night at the Opera by Queen (1975) and The Presidents of the United States by The Presidents of the United States (1995)

When I recommended A Night at the Opera, I had not heard it in years. My memory was that I had been blown away by its inventiveness. You had experimental structure on songs like “Bohemian Rhapsody.” You had guitars masquerading as horns on “Good Company.” You had voices masquerading as horns on “Seaside Rendezvous.” It was inventiveness, along with doses of strong songwriting, that called attention to itself.

The Presidents of the United States is inventive in a much quieter way. These songs, including hits like “Peaches” and “Lump,” feel like standard, riff-driven alternative rock that was pervasive throughout the 1990s. But The Presidents of the United States have an unexpected set-up, the trio composed of drums, three-stringed guitar, and two-stringed bass, the latter two of which are tuned to open C#5.

This forces us to confront an important question: Is inventiveness better when it shouts from the mountaintops or when it hides in the shadows? Maybe the theatrical weirdness of Queen distracts from the fact that some of the ideas are half-baked (e.g., “I’m in Love with My Car”). Maybe the hidden exoticness of The Presidents of the United States prevents us from giving them proper credit.

As I’ve aged, I try not to delve too deeply into these ideas. All that matters is if the songs move you. Beyond the obvious gems (e.g., “Love of My Life,” “You’re My Best Friend”), A Night at the Opera didn’t do much for Ken. He also found it almost preposterous that a group with a singer as good as Freddie Mercury would let anyone else take the microphone (e.g., “'39”). Likewise, The Presidents of the United States left me wanting more. I’d turn a few other places for big 1990s riffs before returning to their alternate tunings.

#6 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan by Bob Dylan (1963) and Caught it from the Rye by Tré Burt (2020)

As a Bob Dylan superfan, I knew I was going to have to pick an album from Hibbing, Minnesota’s favorite son this week. This was a problem for Ken. He’s an avowed Dylan hater. In fact, earlier this year when I made him listen to Dylan’s Infidels, he said the entire album “felt like a prank.” Luckily, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan was less tedious for him.

When I first discovered Bob Dylan in high school, I kept hearing that many found his voice off-putting. I didn’t understand why. Freewheelin', the first album of his that I fell in love with, is packed with endearing vocals (e.g., “Girl from the North Country,” “Corrina, Corrina”). That’s actually why Ken was able to connect with the Nobel Prize winner on this record. “His voice,” Ken told me, “is semi-normal on this one.”

His general distaste for Dylan’s nasally tone left me unsure why he loves Tré Burt’s Caught it from the Rye. Burt, signed to John Prine’s Oh Boy Records, has a voice clearly descended from the “Blowin' in the Wind” singer-songwriter. For me, Burt’s voice and his album were totally fine. Not something I would return to but serviceable.

#5 Melodrama by Lorde (2017) and Bridges Worth Burning by Kind of Like Spitting (2002)

A few days into this week, Ken told me that he was making his selections based on whatever I had chosen. My early Bob Dylan record, for example, was paired with a singer-songwriter that he liked (i.e., Tré Burt). My Queen album was met with an album by a group named for another head of state (i.e., The Presidents of the United States). That said, Ken felt his pairing of Kind of Like Spitting’s Bridges Worth Burning with Lorde’s Melodrama didn’t make much sense.

On the surface, I got why he thought that. What do Lorde’s off-kilter, alt-pop anthems have to do with early-2000s emo cuts? Actually, quite a bit. Lorde’s diaristic lyricism (e.g., “Green Light”) pairs quite well with Ben Barnett’s heart-on-your-sleeve passion (e.g., “Passionate”). Of course, the instrumentation is quite different. You won’t find a trap hat on Bridges Worth Burning. But I think Lorde’s success is a small example of the long shadow that punk and emo have cast on the world of popular music.

#4 Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen (1975) and War Elephant by Deer Tick (2007)

Whether they intended it or not—and they probably did given their recent cover of “Dancing in the Dark”—I can hear the influence of Bruce Springsteen on Deer Tick’s War Elephant. The dark characters of Nebraska lurk in songs like “Standing at the Threshold.” The Americana of Devils and Dust powers “Baltimore Blues No. 1.” The intensity of “Not So Dense” could very well have been ripped from the final third of “Backstreets.”

“Backstreets,” of course, comes from Springsteen’s 1975 breakthrough Born to Run. Born to Run is my favorite album. It’s an album of dreams realized and thwarted, strapping yourself to another person—whether its Terry or Eddie or Mary or Wendy—as you try to change your life. And even if it all goes wrong, maybe you’ll still have one another to weather the storm.

When Bruce Springsteen inducted Roy Orbison into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he noted, “In 1975, when I went into the studio to record, Born To Run, I wanted to make a record with words like Bob Dylan, that sounded like Phil Spector’s productions, but most of all I wanted to sing like Roy Orbison. Now, everybody knows that nobody sings like Roy Orbison.” And, no, he does not sound like Orbison on this record. But no other record has dared to unify the disparate worlds of Dylan, Spector, and Orbison. 50 years later, it remains a miracle, influencing scores of artists, Deer Tick included.

#3 Heard It in a Past Life by Maggie Rogers (2019) and Capacity by Big Thief (2017)

According to Spotify, my most played song of all time is Maggie Rogers’ “On+Off.” When I first found this song, not long after Rogers went viral when Pharrell Williams praised her song “Alaska” during her senior year at NYU, I was borderline obsessed. I think that obsession was driven by how the song combined contemporary production with the ethereal qualities that I love in folk music. The rest of Rogers’ debut album Heard It in a Past Life isn’t all like that. Songs like “Give a Little” are much more indebted to contemporary dance music. But the record is at its best when it combines these two worlds.

The best of Big Thief, a band that I have been meaning to get into for the last few years, kind of gives me a similar feeling to the best of Maggie Rogers. I could very clearly hear Rogers singing something like “Mythological Beauty” or “Shark Smile” even if she chose to dress up the production differently. There is an airy beauty to these albums even when they reach the peak of their intensity.

#2 Let It Be by The Replacements (1984) and Dookie by Green Day (1994)

For me, the trick to great punk music is pairing the silly, childish imagery with the most gut-wrenching melodies you’ll ever hear. It is naming your album Dookie and packing it with songs like “Basket Case” and “When I Come Around.” It is playing a song named “Gary’s Got a Boner” right before the soul-crushing “Sixteen Blue.”

Both Let It Be and Dookie are tremendous albums. In fact, many of the songs are so strong that aspiring hitmakers should put down their Michael Jackson and Madonna records and pick up these. Additionally, the musical performances on these albums are somehow underrated. No, I don’t think The Replacements ever played with as much precision as on something like Green Day’s “Burnout,” but it is a miracle to play with as much looseness as “Favorite Thing” or “Androgynous” and not have the song go completely off the rails.

#1 Running on Empty by Jackson Browne (1977) and Violent Femmes by Violent Femmes (1983)

For each pair of records I’ve written about this week, I’ve been able to find a thread to tie them together. Sometimes it was easy, as with Bob Dylan and Tré Burt. Other times it was more of a stretch, as with Lorde and Kind of Like Spitting. But a thread was nonetheless tied. Beyond the fact that we like this pair best, I’ve got nothing with Running on Empty and Violent Femmes.

Running on Empty is a road album in all senses. Some cuts, like the title track and “The Load Out,” were recorded on stage. Others, like “The Road” and “Nothing But Time,” capture a musician who lives in liminal spaces, whether on the tour bus or standing side-stage. Browne takes you through all the highs and lows of this fast-paced life. You’ve got the women (e.g., “Rosie”). You’ve got the drugs (e.g., “Cocaine”). And you’ve got the party.

Running on Empty closes with a tremendous cover of Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs’ 1960 number one hit “Stay.” It’s the perfect encapsulation of the party you don’t want to end, of the night that has you screaming “Encore!” until the lights come on. The tank always runs out, and we all must go home, but even then, we want to “stay just a little bit longer.”

The Violent Femmes’s self-titled record has nothing to do with any of this. Beyond the fact that it also exists in the broad world of rock music, I can’t really even fathom a comparison. Violent Femmes is a raucous, gnarly album that combines both folk and punk, albeit in a way that Jackson Browne could never attempt. Regardless, the miracle of Violent Femmes is that between the visceral bass lines and disturbing imagery, the music will make you want to shake your rump. Few can combine disgust with sneaky dance rhythms so seamlessly.

Shout out to the paid subscribers who allow this newsletter to exist. Along with getting access to our entire archive, subscribers unlock biweekly interviews with people driving the music industry, monthly round-ups of the most important stories in music, and priority when submitting questions for our mailbag. Consider becoming a paid subscriber today!

Subscribe now

Recent Paid Subscriber Interviews: Pitchfork’s Editor-in-Chief • Vinyl Specialist • Spotify’s Former Data Guru • Hall of Fame Songwriter• John Legend Collaborator • Broadway Arranger • Indie Label Founder• Fender Exec

Recent Album a Day Themes: Concept Records • Peaked at 200 • Alliterative Artists • Hip-Hop Groups • Supergroups • Punk Ladies • Short and Sweet • Long Closers • This Year • Grammy Losers and Winners • Artists You Hate • Girl Groups

Want more from Chris Dalla Riva? Get a copy of his book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves wherever books are sold.

Buy Book

Buy My Book

Copyright Always Wins

My views on copyright often confuse people. First, I think copyright terms should be dramatically shorter. This often makes people think that I’m anti-artist. I’m not. Long copyright terms have led to a variety of downsides and distorted incentives. That said, during the term, I think rights should be defined broadly and strongly. Music firms have been flexing that strength recently, especially in the world of AI.

The world of AI-generated audio is strange. As I detailed just a few days ago, despite intense backlash, artists are using the tools and listeners are sometimes enjoying the results. But it’s also leading to a slew of problems.

Deezer has noted that 50% of daily uploads (~90,000 tracks) are completely AI generated. Spotify has dealt with a similar issue, having to delete 75 million tracks of the same type. At Audiomack, a similar problem emerged last week. We saw a bunch of AI-generated uploads dumped on the platform, followed by a bunch of fake accounts being created to stream those songs.

This is where AI is a problem. From fake music by dead idols to the viral social media posts of nonexistent tours, it is being used to confuse listeners. At the same time, it is also being used to siphon royalties from legitimate artists. Of course, these problems existed prior to the advent of AI, but they are only becoming worse because of the speed and scale at which AI can operate.

But copyright, as I said, always wins. Labels, publishers, and advocacy groups have been fighting back hard against these forces, especially because it is affecting their bottom lines. And, slowly but surely, they are winning.

• A German court recently ruled that Suno, the premiere AI music company, broke copyright rules at scale.

• Anthropic just agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement to authors for infringing on copyright.

• Albeit not related to AI, the major labels are finally taking action against Musi, the “'parasitic service [that] mimics licensed streaming platforms while pulling copyright-protected recordings from other services without permission.”

Should copyright terms be shorter? Absolutely. But I’m glad that those rights remain strong. They’re one of our best tools to fight back against the deluge of slop drowning the web.

What’s Worst Version of the American National Anthem?

Last week, Martha Reeves sang the national anthem at the inaugural game for the new women’s professional baseball league. Martha Reeves is a legend. The Alabama-born and Detroit-raised vocalist sang on many Motown classics, including “Dancing in the Street” and “(Love is Like a) Heatwave.” Sadly, her national anthem did not live up to those standards.

First, I don’t begrudge anyone who can’t pull off “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It’s a hard song to sing. Second, Martha Reeves is 85-years-old. Every vocalist, from Aretha Franklin to Paul McCartney, sees their voice change as they age. So, I want to give Reeves some grace. Even so, this was a horrible rendition of the national anthem.

I don’t really like the America national anthem. In fact, I’ve written about my distaste for “The Star-Spangled Banner” in this newsletter. But I still like to hear it sung well. If you’re going to sing a bad song, give me a Whitney Houston or Marvin Gaye rendition.

Still, I kind of love a bad national anthem. A few years ago, I got stuck in a YouTube rabbit hole of bad anthems. I like to believe that I’ve heard dramatically more “and the rockets’ red glare” than your average person. And I think that Ms. Reeves has been bested (worsted?).

So, who performed the worst version of the American national anthem?

Read more

• “Is Nepotism Real?”

• “When Radio Died”

• “The Intergenerational Duet”

• “Pop Stars are Disappearing”

And if you just can’t get enough of my writing, check out my book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music that I wrote as I spent years listening to every number one hit in history. Now, onto some depressing news.

Buy My Book

People (Sadly) Enjoy AI-Generated Music

By Chris Dalla Riva

While my wife and I were taking a car to the Naples airport a few weeks back, we sat in mostly silence. No, there was nothing ominous about this silence. We were on our honeymoon and had been traveling for a few weeks. It was a silence of tiredness. But like I said, it was not complete silence. It was mostly silence, the air quietly filled with some music from the radio.

This was a longer car ride, so we heard a lot of music from this radio. And I recognized none of it. Which is kind of shocking. If you stick me in a car for at least an hour and turn on a popular radio station, the odds of me recognizing no songs are vanishingly small, especially if they are being sung in English.

And these songs were. Much to my disappointment, we weren’t listening to local music. We were stuck with this anonymous, mostly terrible music sung in English. What was going on? Had the copious amounts of Italian wine erased my decades of pointless pop music knowledge?

When the next song came on—some uninspired neo-soul—I opened the Shazam app. If my ears were failing me, maybe Shazam’s would do better. Nope. Shazam, too, was stumped.

Given that our driver only spoke Italian, I figured I’d peer around his seat to what station he was tuned to. Maybe I could deduce what was playing that way. That’s when I realized that we weren’t listening to the radio. We were listening to a playlist on YouTube, a playlist filled exclusively with AI-generated music.

How did I know this music was AI-generated? Well, all the hallmark tells were there. The vocals had tinny, lifeless quality that remains pervasive in AI-generated audio, and the cover art was cartoonishly tasteless.

I was kind of disgusted. This isn’t a shock if you read the news. AI-generated music has received a tremendous amount of bad press over the last few years.

• Variety: “Jack Antonoff Slams People Who Make AI Music as ‘Godless Whores’: ‘Bad Actors Will Willingly Reveal Themselves Through Slop’”

• CNET: “I Only Listened to AI Music for a Week. It Was Terrible, but Not for the Reason You Think”

• 404Media: “Spotify’s AI Problem Is So Bad Random People Are Stepping In to Track the Slop”

• Hollywood Reporter: “The Music Industry Crosses an AI Tipping Point”

• NPR: “AI music is flooding streaming platforms. But listeners like it less and less”

• Pitchfork: “Bandcamp Announces Ban on AI Music”

But despite the onslaught of bad press, there are growing signs of two things. First, listeners enjoy the stuff. Second, the music industry has no incentive to stop listeners from enjoying it. One recent song can help us understand why.

Read more

This week’s theme is “concept records,” meaning albums where all the tracks cohere around a single story or theme. Concept records are typically associated with the rock era (e.g., Tommy), but the underlying idea goes back decades earlier. Frankly, if you broaden the definition to include song cycles, they possibly go back centuries.

Please note that unlike most other weeks, we are not ranking albums based on how much we enjoyed them. We are ranking them based on how well we think they executed their concept.

#7 Exile in Guyville by Liz Phair (1993)

Before I tell you anything else, I need to say that Exile in Guyville is an incredible album, a visceral take down of decades of chauvinism in the rock world. But, as noted, we are not ranking based on quality. We are ranking based on execution of concept. And Liz Phair’s 18-song magnum opus is billed as a track-by-track response to The Rolling Stone’s 18-song magnum opus Exile on Main Street.

For nearly every other album on this list, you could piece together the concept just by listening. You would never know this was a track-by-track response to another album simply by listening to this record.

#6 Love, Marriage & Divorce by Toni Braxton and Babyface (2014)

Toni Braxton and Babyface’s collaborative concept record is pretty simple on the surface. In fact, its title is also its descriptor: love, marriage, and divorce. This is about a failed relationship culminating in divorce. As you’d expect, Braxton and Babyface tell this story backed with heart-wrenching R&B production.

The vocals on this record are tremendous. On tracks like “Where Did We Go Wrong?” the pain is palpable. But for an album called Love, Marriage & Divorce, not much of the album is focused on love or marriage. From track one, “Roller Coaster,” the relationship is already on the rocks. As Ken noted, the former love is implied from the heightened emotions. Still, I would have liked to feel a bit more of the love and marriage before the divorce.

#5 Tallahassee by The Mountain Goats (2002)

After releasing six albums recorded effectively as a solo artist with minimal technology, John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats decided to get together a full band for his next project, Tallahassee. These songs, which tell the story of a doomed couple drinking themselves to death, are still spare, but they are fleshed out with bits of bass and percussion.

Like Love, Marriage & Divorce, Tallahassee spends most of its time on the depressing end of this couple’s life. We were expecting a bit more happiness before the Leaving Las Vegas-style end of this tale. Had we just been ranking based on quality, the songwriting alone would have put this album near the top of the list.

#4 Good Old Boys by Randy Newman (1974)

Randy Newman opens Good Old Boys with a shocking stanza:

Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show
With some smart-ass New York Jew
And the Jew laughed at Lester Maddox
And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too
Well, he may be a fool but he’s our fool
If they think they’re better than him they’re wrong
So I went to the park and I took some paper along
And that’s where I made this song

If those words don’t shock you enough, Newman than sings the n-word in every chorus of that song, “Rednecks.” What is going on? Why is the guy that scored a slew of family-friendly hits for Pixar singing these words?

The sardonic, ironic, iconoclastic Randy Newman shies away from no topics. On Good Old Boys, he inhabits a variety of flawed southern characters trying to face a world changing faster than they ever will.

Originally, this album was supposed to follow a southern racist named Johnny Cutler. Seeds of that character remain through the first tracks on the album, but Newman expanded the scope to include historical events (e.g., “Louisiana 1927”) and more general themes (e.g., “Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man)”). This album is a masterpiece, but we docked it a few points for abandoning the initial concept. You could have pulled it off, Mr. Newman!

#3 Undun by The Roots (2011)

In general, I am not a lover of concept records. First, they often attempt to turn pop music into some high concept that I don’t think it needs to be. Second, when they do follow a narrative, the narrative usually doesn’t go much further than recounting someone’s life.

Undun technically falls into the simple narrative category. It tracks the tumultuous life of a drug dealer. But The Roots turn this story on its head. They tell it in reverse. Could you tell this story chronologically? Sure. But by flipping it upside down, it turns an overdone format into something novel.

#2 The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society by The Kinks (1968)

Just as their British Invasion compatriots were taking over the US, The Kinks had a problem. Disputes with US musicians’ unions effectively banned them from touring in the country for years. Of course, this affected their ability as a live act. But it also affected their songwriting.

As their fellow Brits expanded their sound to meet the demands of global audiences, the music of the Davies brothers became more provincial. The apotheosis of this provinciality was The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society.

The Village Green Preservation Society is focused on a theme rather than a narrative, The Kinks lamenting an evolving British society. And this album is very British in sound and imagery. But that illustrates its appeal. By focusing on where they were from, The Kinks ended up making an album built around ideas that listeners could identify with everywhere.

Well, not at the time. Marred by a poor roll out and The Beatles and The Rolling Stones releasing records around the same time (i.e., The Beatles, Beggars Banquet), The Village Green Preservation Society failed to chart. Since then, it’s become their best-selling album in the United Kingdom and their best-regarded album everywhere else.

#1 In the Wee Small Hours by Frank Sinatra (1955)

When you read about the history of the concept album, people will sometimes refer to In the Wee Small Hours as the first record of this type. This is not strictly true (see Dust Bowl Ballads). Still, In the Wee Small Hours reshaped how many artists conceived of what an album could be.

There is no narrative running through this record. It is—as it’s album cover suggests—Frank Sinatra at his most melancholy, trying to press on through the darkness of myriad failed relationships. To quote Ken, “Damn! Frank was down bad.”

In the Wee Small Hours succeeds at what it is aiming for. The songwriting is immaculate. The arrangements capture a depressing night roaming the town. And then there’s that voice. I don’t think any vocalist has ever realized the pain of lost love so completely. If the title track doesn’t entrance you, then I guess you are lucky never to have had your heart broken.

Shout out to the paid subscribers who allow this newsletter to exist. Along with getting access to our entire archive, subscribers unlock biweekly interviews with people driving the music industry, monthly round-ups of the most important stories in music, and priority when submitting questions for our mailbag. Consider becoming a paid subscriber today!

Subscribe now

Recent Paid Subscriber Interviews: Pitchfork’s Editor-in-Chief • Vinyl Specialist • Spotify’s Former Data Guru • Hall of Fame Songwriter• John Legend Collaborator • Broadway Arranger • Indie Label Founder• Fender Exec

Recent Album a Day Themes: Peaked at 200 • Alliterative Artists • Hip-Hop Groups • Supergroups • Punk Ladies • Short and Sweet • Long Closers • This Year • Grammy Losers and Winners • Artists You Hate • Girl Groups • Actors Who Play

Want more from Chris Dalla Riva? Get a copy of his book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves wherever books are sold.

Buy Book

A passionate lover of classical music, Levin decided that this trend was worth covering. He recently launched Orchestrology, a newsletter, podcast, and Instagram page dedicated to all things orchestra related, with a special concern for how orchestras are intersecting with the world of popular music. We sat down for a brief chat to discuss why this is happening now and what excites him most about it. Subscribe to his newsletter if you want to learn more.

Subscribe to Orchestrology

I want to start with maybe the broadest question: Why? Why are you covering orchestras now? For most people, they feel like part of the distant past. But you think the orchestra is alive and well.

Honestly, I just noticed things happening in the space. In the podcast I recorded with Derek Hodge, we talked about the surge in orchestral crossovers with popular music. Hodge wrote orchestral arrangements for the 20th anniversary of Nas’s Illmatic that were performed by the National Symphony Orchestra. That was the first time they ever performed hip-hop.

I come from a classical background. Combining that with my experience as a journalist, I just started to notice that Hodge’s work was part of a larger trend. The electronic artist John Summit just did something with an orchestra. Dua Lipa has done some work with an orchestra. It just felt like this was happening enough to dive deeper.

Along with popular artists using orchestras, you also have groups like Kaleidoscope Orchestra who began just doing classical versions of popular songs. They grew enough of an audience to start doing original material too. So, a lot is happening, and I’m here to talk about it.

When you launched this platform, you framed it as part of a larger social trend where people are longing for social connection. What do you mean by that?

Between COVID and digital places replacing physical spaces, I think it’s obvious that people are looking for in person connection. When you can use AI to produce entire songs, I think the re-emergence of the orchestra represents the desire to make music with other people. Obviously, part of this is something that I am hoping is true. But I think there is evidence for it as well.

That point about AI frames some of this as a technological backlash. But I think what is also interesting about this is that some of the interest in orchestral music is enabled by the same technology that pushed it near obsolescence. I had a friend, for example, who would listen to hours of classical music while studying in college. Most of that was accessible to him because it was on YouTube. Do you think technology has also enabled this resurgance?

Absolutely. As I was preparing for the launch of Orchestrology, I realized that it doesn’t have to be either-or. You can still utilize analog instruments while making music on your computer. You can pick up a trumpet and a laptop. Technology is still vital for this trend to proliferate.

Back in the day, many people discovered The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. Now, those discoveries happen on Spotify. You can discover a pop star singing with an orchestra on a streaming service. That’s fine. There’s no gatekeeping with music anymore. I want technology to make this resurgence even stronger. I want it to inspire people to go out to concerts.

Relatedly, there seems to be more money in live music than ever before. It feels like pop stars are using orchestral arrangements as an additional selling point for their expensive concerts. Do you think that’s also part of this resurgence?

Totally. If you’ve watched Dua Lipa’s concert with an orchestra, you can see how it not only sounds good but is exciting to watch. It makes a concert much more dynamic than one singer roaming around stage performing over a backing track.

Read more

Buy My Book

Is Nepotism Real?

By Chris Dalla Riva

In 2009, while journalist Ian Betteridge was lambasting TechCrunch for an irresponsible headline (i.e., “Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data To the RIAA?”), he made an observation that I think about often:

One thing though: This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word “no”. The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it.

Though this maxim predates Betteridge, it has come to bear his name: Betteridge’s Law of Headlines. And I’m often thinking about Betteridge and his law because this newsletter regularly uses questions in its titles (e.g., “Is the Album Dead?”). I like to think that I write with enough nuance that Betteridge would give me a pass, but I can’t be certain. Social media’s twisted incentives make us do many things we might not otherwise.

That said, I am certain that today’s inquiring headline does break his law. Nepotism—or in the words of Merriam-Webster, “favoritism … based on kinship”—is undoubtedly real. From that dolt in your high school class taking over his father’s successful plumbing company to The Los Angeles Lakers drafting the under-qualified son of LeBron James, examples of nepotism in every area of the world are easy to come by.

Something strange is going on with nepotism, though. And it doesn’t have to do with actual acts of nepotism. It’s with how we apply the word, especially in the world of music. Stella Lefty proves a good example of this.

Stella Lefty is a singer-songwriter whose rise over the last year has been nothing short of meteoric. In fact, she recently scored her first top 10 hit: “Boston,” a twangy song about falling in love hard and fast that interpolates the chorus of Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season.”

The success of “Boston” doesn’t require a ton of explanation. First, it’s got a catchy chorus. Second, it arrived at just the right time. Country music has resurged over the last five years. As I write, the genre commands half of Billboard’s top 10.

Stella Lefty has a problem, though. If you scroll through the top comments on any of her recent videos, one thing comes up again and again: nepotism. Stella Lefty—born Stella Lefkofsky—is the daughter of Eric Lefkofsky, the billionaire founder of Groupon. People are very angry about this. Her recent popularity, they claim, is just driven by the fact that she was born into a wealthy family.

This doesn’t make much sense. First, is this really nepotism? I know this might seem pedantic, but it’s not like her father is the CEO of Atlantic Records. He made his money in e-commerce. Wealth comes with incredible resources and benefits. If Stella Lefty’s music career failed, she’d be just alright. That wouldn’t necessarily be the case had her origins been more humble. But I don’t think “nepotism” really captures her career trajectory.

Second, that career trajectory is so much more mundane than any of these comments assume. If you dig through her TikTok, you will see that she posted for years getting almost no views. Occasionally, she’d find small virality by singing a snippet of a popular song.

@stellaleftymusic @stellaleftymusic ♬ original sound - Stella Lefty

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

Over time, people started responding positively to her voice. Then the same happened for her originals. Hundreds of views became thousands. Thousands became millions. Somewhere along the line, she picked up management and had a popular producer named J Kash reach out to her. But that’s not enough to have a career. She kept posting and eventually “Boston” went mega viral.

I would bet serious money that neither her management company nor J Kash knew who her father was when they reached out. They just saw a girl with a pretty voice building an online audience. Countless artists get record deals that way. (Albeit not related to original songs, I’ve built a large following on TikTok talking about music—no billionaires required.)

To be clear, I don’t even think “Boston” is a very good song. It’s a few lackluster verses slapped around a catchy but derivative chorus. Still, I think people significantly underrate how hard it is to score a top 10 hit. I’m not saying that wealth doesn’t confer advantages, but I suspect true nepotism is much less common in the world of popular music than people think. But to be sure, I decided to look.

The Myth of the Musical Nepo Baby

A few years ago, I wrote a piece for Business Insider that was a bit different than my normal fare: “The rise of political nepo babies.” To summarize, we looked at what percentage of each Congressional class had parents who were also in Congress. For most of the 20th century, that rate sat at or below 2.0%. By 2010, it had risen to 4.6%.

Then we took things a step further. Rather than just measuring if a member of Congress had a parent who was also in Congress, we looked for every member whose parent had a Wikipedia—excluding members whose parents only had pages because their children were famous (e.g., Bill Clinton’s mother and father). Though not strictly a measure of nepotism, we figured “if at least one of your parents was notable enough to have Wikipedia page, you likely had some advantages in your political career.”

I decided to apply the same methodology to the world of music. Even though I just argued that we are misusing the term “nepotism,” I figured we wanted to be as generous as possible with our definition. Of note, this methodology would count Stella Lefty as the beneficiary of nepotism because her father has a Wikipedia page.

To track this over time, I grabbed Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 between 1960 and 2025. For each artist who performed a song, I went to their Wikipedia and noted if their parents had a Wikipedia page of their own. For bands, I used their frontman as proxy. Finally, as with politicians, I removed parents who only had a Wikipedia page because they created someone famous (e.g., John Lennon’s mother and father).

We can glean two things from our graph. First, the large majority of hits in any decade are not by artists benefiting from nepotism. In fact, the highest the nepotism rate gets is 7.2% in the 1990s because of the likes of Wilson Phillips, Bonnie Raitt, Lenny Kravitz, Tim McGraw, and Jewel.

Second, the nepotism rate is decreasing. Thus far in the 2020s, only 2.6% of hits have been by artists who benefited from nepotism, down almost five percentage points from the peak during the last decade of the 20th century. This illustrates one of the promises of the internet: democratization.

Back in the day, it was probably a lot easier for John Sebastian to get his group The Lovin’ Spoonful off the ground because his father was a notable musician and his mother was good friends with actress Vivian Vance. It’s hard to navigate the world of entertainment when information is hard to come by.

Now, connections remain vital, but information is more plentiful. Furthermore, social media and music streaming have made it easier than ever for artists of all social strata to get their music out there. (Relatedly, see the fact that you are reading a newsletter with thousands of subscribers by a guy with no connections in journalism.)

Do We Really Care about Nepotism?

At the beginning of this piece, I noted, “From that dolt in your high school class taking over his father’s successful plumbing company to The Los Angeles Lakers drafting the under-qualified son of LeBron James, examples of nepotism in every area of the world are easy to come by.” I believe the plumber-LeBron dichotomy illustrates how most humans feel about nepotism.

You likely don’t care if that guy you used to hang out with takes over his father’s plumbing business even if he didn’t inherit his father’s skills with rushing water. On the other hand, you might care that LeBron James’s son got drafted into the NBA without having the typical stat line required.

The difference is twofold. First, being a plumber doesn’t automatically lead to riches the same way being in the NBA does. Second, the world needs a lot more plumbers than NBA players. If you’d always dreamt of working with toilets and sinks, your friend’s career likely has no effect on your success or failure. Bronny James, on the other hand, likely took a spot away from someone much more qualified.

So, I get why people are mad at Stella Lefty. Being a famous musician is much closer to being an NBA player than a plumber. But at the same time, people who benefit from nepotism can still make good music. I have yet to hear someone complain that Carly Simon is the daughter of Richard L. Simon, the cofounder of Simon & Schuster. Likewise, nobody gives the spirit of David Crosby grief for being the son of an Academy Award-winning cinematographer.

I, too, would like to live in a more equitable world, the most talented rising to the top. But your efforts would probably be better spent fighting for progressive tax reform than yelling at singer-songwriters on the internet for the parents they had no choice in being born to. Plus, if those singer-songwriters end up writing better songs, you probably won’t care anymore anyway.

This week’s theme is “peaked at 200,” meaning albums whose highest performing position on Billboard’s album chart was dead last. According to Luminate, the company behind the Billboard charts, you only need to sell around 6,000 to 8,000 copies in a week to reach number 200. Back in the past, it likely required more sales, but it was still a low enough bar that obscure releases could find their way onto the chart.

#7 K by Kula Shaker (1996)

As I’ve noted in the past, despite their being tremendous overlap in listening habits between Americans and Brits, there are also clear differences. Kula Shaker is one of those differences. Along with doing well across continental Europe, the group’s debut album K topped the charts in their home country. In America, it barely made the charts.

In one sense, K fits directly in the Britpop universe that defined the United Kingdom in the 1990s. Though it encompasses a large variety of styles, one unifying element was how groups drew heavily on music from the 1960s. Whereas some groups leant on the melodicism of The Beatles, others turned to the riffs of The Kinks. Kula Shaker was more drawn to the psychedelia of the 1960s, though.

Songs, like “Sleeping Jiva,” are solo instrumentals on the sarod, a popular Indian instrument. Others, like “Temple of Everlasting Light,” build much percussion around the tabla. Still, other songs, like “Godvinda,” are sung entirely in Sanskrit.

These sounds don’t dominate every moment of the album. You get very standard 1990s British rock fare on songs like “Knight on the Town.” But the Eastern influence is what stands out most across this record. While it works at times, sometimes it comes across as cartoonish and even fetishistic.

#6 No Sign of Weakness by Burna Boy (2025)

Just as Latin music found a larger audience in the US during the 2010s, African music has begun to find chart success in the US more recently. Burna Boy might illustrate the pinnacle of that success. The Nigerian singer-songwriter has charted two albums in the top 40, with 2022’s Love; Damini making it all the way to number 14. His latest album, No Sign of Weakness, did not perform as well.

No Sign of Weakness is an easy album to listen to. The beats go down smooth. The vocals are digestible. But the album struggles because of collaborations that seem forced, the strangest of which is a duet with Mick Jagger.

I know you’re not going to turn The Rolling Stones legend down if he wants to be on your album, but you’d hope he’d at least disappear into Burna Boy’s style a bit more. Much of the track is backed by the West African rhythms that power most of the album, but then Mick Jagger’s hook is sung over a more standard rock beat. The whole thing is very confused.

#5 The Boy Named If by Elvis Costello and the Imposters (2022)

Coming a week after listening to Shel Silverstein’s similarly named Boy Named Sue and Other Country Songs, this Elvis Costello effort felt fitting for our chart-bottoming theme. The Boy Named If is Costello at his most rocking, The Imposters cooking through old-time rock and roll beats (e.g., “The Death of Magic Thinking”) and punkier fare (e.g., “Farewell, OK”). The record only seems to fall flat when the Englishman is trying to be a bit too clever with his lyrics.

#4 Waterloo to Anywhere by Dirty Pretty Things (2006)

Before we talk about Dirty Pretty Things, we have to talk about The Libertines. Like Kula Shaker, The Libertines were a British rock band that emerged in the 1990s whose influences mostly lay in the distant past. Unlike Kula Shaker’s obsession with psychedelia, The Libertines took cues from the garage rock movement. When they broke up in 2004, guitarist Carl Barât put together a new group: Dirty Pretty Things.

Dirty Pretty Things—like Kula Shaker and The Libertines—are another example of a group that was much more popular in the UK than the US. But their lack of success in the US didn’t mean that the style of music they were making wasn’t popular in the US. It was. And it was being made to great effect by The Strokes. So, if you like the rough-and-tumble rock and rock and roll of The Strokes, then you will probably enjoy Dirty Pretty Things debut, Waterloo to Anywhere.

#3 A Possible Projection of the Future / Childhood’s End by Al Kooper (1972)

The title and release date of this record make it feel like you are about to listen to some prog-based, Genesis-adjacent concept record. As someone who doesn’t like prog-based, Genesis-adjacent concept records, I’m happy to report that that wasn’t the case.

Al Kooper originally conceived A Possible Projection of the Future / Childhood’s End as a concept-like record with a storyline. So, my gut reaction to the title was on point. But he abandoned that and largely crafted a soulful album with covers scattered throughout (e.g., “The Man in Me,” “The Monkey Time,” “Swept for You Baby”).

I loved this record. I loved every inch of it. From the decrepit album cover to the playful blues of “Let Your Love Shine” and the jaunty intensity of “Love Trap,” this was my favorite album of the week. So, why is it ranked at number three? Ken hated it! He said Mr. Kooper was lucky his album made it to number 200.

#2 Roger Miller 1970 by Roger Miller (1970)

If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you’ll know that in each Thursday edition, I recommend a new song and an old song. In the first edition in October 2022, the new song I recommended was “Moss” by LKFFCT. The old song was “Engine Engine #9” by Roger Miller.

I’m glad that I kicked off this newsletter of with a Roger Miller recommendation. I love Roger Miller. He’s the rare artist whose voice could capture the simplicity of a nursery rhyme (e.g., “Chug-a-Lug”) or the heart-aching rhythms of the modern world (e.g., “Where Have All the Average People Gone”). After listening to his 1970 release, I love him all the same.

Roger Miller 1970 is a hodgepodge of covers, many of which were written by Dennis Linde. And you get the same balance of playfulness (e.g., “The Tom Green County Fair”) and depth (e.g., “Jody and the Kid”) that makes the best Roger Miller songs so memorable.

#1 Tell the Truth by Otis Redding (1970)

When I was growing up, the one artist gone too soon that I wished I could bring back was Jimi Hendrix. I would have loved to see what the guitar god could have done with drum machines and synthesizers and hip-hop beats. But in my age, I think I’d bring back someone different: Otis Redding.

Otis Redding died tragically in a plane crash at 26-years-old. His sole chart-topper, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” didn’t get to number one until after his death. Other posthumous releases have trickled out since then. Tell the Truth is one of those releases.

Largely culled from sessions in 1967, Tell the Truth captures Redding was at the top of his powers. What’s most astounding about this record is not just how good it sounds, but how in control Redding is.

It’s hard to overstate how much energy pours out of Otis Redding’s voice. For your average singer, that energy would quickly devolve into chaos. But Otis Redding is a military general, his band falling in line behind his commanding presence.

Buy My Book

When Radio Died

By Chris Dalla Riva

When I tell people that Sheriff’s “When I’m With You” is the strangest song to ever top the Billboard Hot 100, I’m often met with a confused look. Released in early 1983, “When I’m With You” sounds like a quintessential power ballad of the 1980s. It’s got the quiet keyboard intro, the slow building melody, the soaring chorus vocal, the gear shift key change, etc. It doesn’t seem like there’s much strange about “When I’m With You.”

Musically, there isn’t. It does indeed have the sound of a quintessential 1980s power ballad. But what it lacks in musical strangeness, it makes up for in the strange route it took to the top of the charts.

As noted, “When I’m With You” was released in early 1983. Later that year, it peaked at number 61 on the Billboard Hot 100. Sheriff didn’t last much longer than their small hit. They broke up in 1985 with some members continuing on as a duo called Frozen Ghost. Sheriff and “When I’m With You” were destined for musical obscurity.

Then something unexpected happened. In the fall of 1988, a DJ in Phoenix started spinning the five-year-old song as if it were new. Listeners liked it. Other DJs soon followed suit. By February, a song that had neither a group to promote it on the road nor a music video to do so on MTV was at number one—a near impossibility in the 1980s.

Of course, while the specific details of Sheriff’s journey to the top of the charts are unique, the general contours are not. For decades, radio would break hits. A station would start playing a local band. Listeners would call in to request to hear it again. Those requests would spread to other stations. Those additional radio spins would lead to sales. And, voilà, you were famous.

But this hit song trajectory seems to be from the distant past. I can name tons of songs from the last decade that first broke on TikTok. I can’t name one that did so on radio. Maybe Marconi’s miraculous invention is dead.

Can the Radio Still Make a Hit?

My main data source in this newsletter—and my first book, for that matter—is the Billboard Hot 100. The Hot 100’s goal is to aggregate every possible listening source in order to figure out what the true most popular song in America is. Back in the 1950s, that involved looking at physical sales, jukebox plays, and radio spins. These days, sales and radio still play a role, but streaming is also in the mix.

Along with this all-encompassing chart, Billboard also publishes component charts. For example, since the 1980s, they’ve had a Radio Songs chart, which ranks the songs getting played most on radio. Since the 2000s, they’ve had a digital downloads chart, which ranks the songs selling the most copies on internet music stores. And, of course, since the 2010s, they’ve had a streaming chart, which ranks the songs being played the most on Spotify, Apple Music, and the like. We can use these charts to understand where a hit first gains traction.

Let’s use “Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down as an example. The song was originally released as a demo to the group’s local Mississippi radio station in late 1999. By May 2000, it had cracked into the top 50 of Billboard’s radio chart. There wasn’t enough sales interest to make it into the top half of the Hot 100 for another 7 weeks. In short, radio helped break “Kryptonite.”

By looking at how often a song is on Billboard’s radio chart before the Hot 100, we can gauge how often the airwaves are instrumental in making a song a hit. In the 1990s, 48.9% of songs made the radio chart at least a week before the Hot 100. Over the last three decades, that rate has fallen to 26.2%. In other words, radio is no longer setting trends. It is following them.

This is only part of the story, though. That last graph is looking at songs that charted on both the radio chart and the Hot 100. It’s possible to chart on one and not the other. For example, Madison Beer’s “Make You Mine” got to number 37 on the radio chart without ever cracking the Hot 100. Relatedly, Kanye West’s “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” got to number 41 on the Hot 100 without ever cracking the radio chart.

We are now seeing songs climb into the top half of the Hot 100 without even making the radio chart more frequently than ever before. In the 1990s, 32% of songs made the Hot 100 without charting on radio. In the 2020s, 64% of songs did.

Is Streaming Just the Radio?

If radio is a follower rather than a leader, then what really drives something up the charts? Is there a different early indicator? In one sense, it is streaming. During the 2020s, only 9% of songs have made the top half of the Hot 100 without charting on streaming.

But streaming isn’t an indicator in the same way that radio was. Streaming is all consuming. When something moves on streaming, it usually moves on the Hot 100. Streaming is just such a large component of that chart. In fact, so far this decade, 88.2% of songs that chart on streaming are on that Hot 100 in the same week.

If you want to find hits early, you’ve got to turn to social media. Billboard has tried this a few different times. In the 2010s, they tracked songs trending on Twitter. In the 2020s, they did the same for TikTok. These charts are usually short-lived, though. You’ve sadly got to have your nose in social apps rather than your ear to the radio if you want to find the next big thing.

Is TikTok Just the Radio?

It would be remiss not to mention that the reason that some songs charted on radio before the Hot 100 back in the day was because sometimes songs would be released only to radio first. The thinking was twofold. First, if a song got a good reception on radio, then it was worth a wide release, a much riskier proposition in the age of physical media. Second, if a song was already climbing the radio charts, then when the physical release came out, the pent up demand would push the song very high up the Hot 100 in its debut week.

This strategy doesn’t exist anymore. Now, Beyoncé—or your favorite pop star— pushes their music out everywhere at once. Radio stations, digital stores, and streaming services all have access together. The old world is dead.

@switchedonpop@sombr talks about how he usually doesn't have the song finished when he flashes it on TikTok, and uses it as a way to test audience feedback. Full interview on YT/Spotify/Apple.

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

Kind of. Last year, sombr told the folks at Switched on Pop that he often doesn’t finish songs. He starts posting his ideas to TikTok and then chases whatever people respond to. If fans are begging for the full song, then it also bodes well for the song’s first-week chart performance.

In short, though we live in a very different world, the incentives remain the same. This makes it such that new tools are used in a similar way to how they were used decades ago. But it’s important to remember that all of this is secondary. You may get people to care about a song that isn’t good for a short time, but if you want to stick around, good music and lyrics are still the best way to go.

This week’s theme is “alliterative artists,” meaning albums by artists with a repeating consonant sounds at the beginning of at least two words in their name. If that description is confusing, let me give you a classic alliterative sentence: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” If that still don’t get it, just enjoy the music.

#7 Tomb of the Mutilated by Cannibal Corpse (1992)

Unless you are a metalhead, the only reason you likely have ever heard of Cannibal Corpse is because of Jim Carey. The comedian featured the group in his 1994 box office smash Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

The clip from Ace Venture is actually representative of the group’s sound. In fact, they are performing “Hammer Smashed Face,” probably the closest a death metal band has come to having a hit. Their music is brutal and ugly, gnarly riffs grinding away over endless double bass and blast beats.

I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like Tomb of the Mutilated. I’m just not that into anything much heavier than, say, Megadeth. Cannibal Corpse is a lot heavier than Megadeth. Their squealed, snorted, and screamed vocals are about as far outside my taste profile as you can get.

Despite my hate, I’m happy the vocals were like that. Cannibal Corpse lyrics are reprehensible. Even their song titles will make your most libertine friend grimace. The inability to understand what they were saying made the album slightly more listenable for me.

#6 Psychology by Pigeons Playing Ping Pong (2014)

I can imagine loving Psychology by Pigeons Playing Ping Pong in one of three situations:

1. Laying the grass very far away from the stage at a music festival

2. At your friend’s house, after smoking copious amounts of marijuana, and your friend’s older brother is controlling the stereo

3. In the audience at a college battle of the bands

I did not listen to this album in any of those situations. I listened while driving to the dentist for my biannual cleaning. (If you were curious, I had no cavities.)

To be clear, I did not hate this album. Psychology is a jam funk record with hints of reggae. Everyone in this alliterative band can play the hell out of their instruments and some of the songs are quite catchy (e.g., “Julia”).

Some jams going far too long aside, this album’s biggest problem is that the vocals are incredibly plain. It’s like everyone was so focused on perfecting their instrumental skills that they forgot they needed a singer with at least some personality.

#5 Totally Krossed Out by Kriss Kross (1992)

Kriss Kross—a rap duo composed of Chris “Mac Daddy” Kelly and Chris “Daddy Mac” Smith—first found success at 13-years-old with their Jermaine-Dupri-produced “Jump.” “Jump” is representative of the rest of their debut, Totally Krossed Out. It’s fun, light-hearted hip-hop made for children (e.g., “I Missed the Bus”) with more wiggity-wiggity-wiggity-whacks that you could possible imagine across 40 minutes.

#4 Christopher Cross by Christopher Cross (1979)

In 1970, Deep Purple was touring in the US when guitarist Ritchie Blackmore got sick before a gig in Texas. They decided to tap a local shredder to fill in: Christopher Cross.

If you’re familiar with the very, very soft music and crystalline vocal tone that made Christopher Cross famous on his self-titled debut, you’ll find this story hard to believe. The guy that wrote a radio friendly ballad about sailing can shred? Yes. Yes, he can.

Christopher Cross’s debut album is not where you should turn if you were looking for Eddie Van Halen-style guitar histrionics. But the album does have lots of tasteful lead guitar work from both Mr. Cross (e.g., “Ride Like the Wind”) and his friends, like Larry Carlton (e.g., “Say You’ll Be Mine”) and Eric Johnson (e.g., “Minstrel Gigolo”).

I do wish, as my friend Ken put it, that this album wasn’t very “one note.” Sonically, many of the songs blend together. And Cross’s vocals can get a bit a boring because there is little edge to his voice.

#3 It’s My Life by Talk Talk (1984)

Ken describes himself as “certified mid-1980s hater,” so it’s a miracle that he liked It’s My Life as much as he did. It’s easy to understand why he liked it, though. It’s My Life is a very melodic record. That doesn’t sound like much of a description. Nearly all popular music is melodic in some sense. And many songs on this album, like the title track, have memorable melodies.

But as you dig into the arrangements of many other tracks, like “Dum Dum Girl,” you will find great melodies lurking everywhere. Bass lines and synth progressions are as singable as the vocals. It’s in that melodicism that It’s My Life shines above many other similar albums from the 1980s.

#2 The Silver Tongued Devil and I by Kris Kristofferson (1971)

In Martin Scorsese’s classic Taxi Driver, antihero Travis Bickle is compared to a character from Kris Kristofferson’s “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33.” The fact that this happens provides a good way to understand Kristofferson’s sophomore album The Silver Tongued Devil and I. The characters Krisofferson can conjure and the stories he can tell are about as vivid as you will find in any song.

In terms of arrangements, most of this album employs simple country production with some horns and strings occasionally used to add color. But that simple production is vital to allow Kristofferson’s lyrics to transport you to another world.

#1 Boy Named Sue and Other Country Songs by Shel Silverstein (1969)

Though he is best known as a children’s author—writing such classics as The Giving Tree, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and A Light in the Attic—Shel Silverstein was actually a prolific songwriter. Like his books, his songs were unique—humorous and idiosyncratic but oddly heartfelt.

His “Boy Named Sue” is the perfect illustration of this style. A man splits on his family not long after fathering a baby boy that he chooses to name Sue. All grown up, Sue runs into that “dirty, mangy dog that’s named [him] Sue” (i.e., his long-lost father) and gives him his comeuppance before the two make up.

Strange stories like these are all over Silverstein’s Boy Named Sue and Other Country Songs. But even stranger is the poet’s vocal delivery. Silverstein, in his odd rasp, is nearly yelling through many of these songs. Yet that delivery proves quite effective for these tongue-twisting tales.

Maybe even more effective is the deft, twangy production heard throughout this record. That was handled by Nashville legend and guitar god Chet Atkins. That production combined with clever songwriting and bizarre vocals makes for an album that is truly one of one.

Buy My Book

The Intergenerational Duet

By Chris Dalla Riva

Last month, Olivia Rodrigo released her latest record, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. While the album topped charts around the globe—the third time the young artist has done such—I think it was notable for a something unrelated to sales and critical accolades: “what’s wrong with me,” the tenth track on the album, featured Robert Smith, the frontman of The Cure.

Robert Smith isn’t foreign to collaboration. In 2003, for example, he sang on blink-182’s “All of This.” But he’s also not hopping on anybody’s song. It’s a special occasion to get Robert Smith in the studio. And that’s usually the case with most musical legends. You can’t just call Taylor Swift up and get her on your track because you have a good idea.

Or maybe you can. Over the last few years, it feels like more artists are collaborating across generations.

• Right around the same time that Olivia Rodrigo released her collaboration with Robert Smith, Sabrina Carpenter was on a song with Madonna

• Bruce Springsteen, not known for duets, has collaborated with Zach Bryan, Bleachers, The Killers, and The Gaslight Anthem over the last few years

• Elton John has been just as eager to join up with Britney Spears, Dua Lipa, and Ed Sheeran on a string of hits

These are all examples of what I have termed the “intergenerational duet,” a phenomenon that feels like it is becoming more prevalent by the day. I wanted to investigate (a) if this really is the case and (b) if so, where it came from.

Are the Young and the Old Singing Together More Often?

Let’s start by taking this somewhat fuzzy “intergenerational duet” concept and defining it specifically. To qualify, a song must be credited to two artists at least 15 years apart in age who don’t regularly perform together.

For example, in 1980 Olivia Newton-John and Andy Gibb had a hit with “I Can’t Help It.” While those two did not perform together regularly, this would not count as an intergenerational duet because Newton-John and Gibb were only born ten years apart. By contrast, Luther Vandross and Mariah Carey’s “Endless Love” would count because the two solo stars were born in 1951 and 1969, respectively. That’s an 18-year age gap.

When we plot intergenerational duets as a percentage of total hits, we notice a few things. First, the intergenerational duet has never been that popular. At its peak during the 2010s, 2.2% of top 40 hits and 3.1% of top 10 hits were intergenerational duets. In other words, it’s not like every other hit song was Gen Z singing with a Baby Boomer.

But at the same time, that’s not nothing. 2.2% of top 40 hits qualifying as intergenerational duets in the 2010s is still 36 hit songs. And some of those hits were huge, like “Baby” by Justin Bieber and Ludacris (17-year age gap), “Magic” by B.o.B. and Rivers Cuomo (18-year age gap), and “I Love It” by Lil Pump and Kanye West (23-year age gap).

It’s also worth noting that the intergenerational duet really takes shape in the 1980s. Yes, there were some earlier examples, like “Somethin' Stupid” by Nancy Sinatra and Frank Sinatra (25-year age gap) and “Too Much, Too Little, Too Late” by Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams (16-year age gap), but those are curiosities. A clear trend emerges during the Reagan years.

• Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson (16-year age gap)

• Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton (21-year age gap)

• Bryan Adams and Tina Turner (20-year age gap)

• Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin (21-year age gap)

• Aretha Franklin and George Michael (21-year age gap)

• George Michael and Elton John (16-year age gap)

It felt like the young and the old were getting together for a song every couple of weeks between 1980 and 1989. But why?

Understanding the Intergenerational Duet

This should go without saying, but musical duets were not new to the 1980s. They probably go back as far as music itself. But the 1980s saw stars from different eras recording hits more regularly than ever before. I think we need to point to a few things in order to understand this trend.

Increasing Life Expectancy

It’s harder to collaborate with your heroes if none of them are alive. Growing life expectancy thus makes the intergenerational duet viable. According to the Social Security Administration, US life expectancy was 66 and 73 for men and women respectively in 1930. By 1980, it had increased to 78 and 82.

While many of those gains were driven by decreases in infant mortality, older cohorts also felt the effects of antibiotics, vaccinations, and general improvements to public health. An incidental effect of this trend was more years to make music.

Musical Availability & Fidelity

While I was trying to debunk claims of musical stagnation last year, I used three songs to make my point: “June in January” by Bing Crosby, “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac, and “Mood” by 24kGoldn and iann dior. “June in January” was the biggest hit of 1934. “Dreams” topped the charts in 1977 and then resurged in 2020 based on a TikTok trend. “Mood” was at number one during the “Dreams” resurgence.

I picked these songs to create a vivid historical comparison. “Dreams” finding new listeners when “Mood” was topping the charts in 2020 would be like “June in January” doing the same when “Dreams” was out in 1977. Of course, this did not happen. Despite how I’ve noted that nostalgia is not new, kids weren’t re-discovering Bing Crosby just before he died in the late 1970s.

Part of the reason for this is that the music of the 1930s was stylistically different from music of the 1970s. But an even bigger part is audio fidelity. As I argue in my previous piece:

Between 1934 and 1977, there were huge improvements in the fidelity of recorded music. The slight hiss in the background of “June in January” suggests that it might as well have been recorded in a different century when compared to the pristine sound of “Dreams.” That’s not to say that “June in January” is bad. But there is a notable difference in the quality of the recording.

Compare “Dreams” to “Mood,” the song that was at number one when “Dreams” resurged in 2020. While the song “Mood” is as different from “Dreams” as “Dreams” is from “June in January,” the actually fidelity of the audio hasn’t changed that much. Most hits since the expansion of multitrack recording are going to sound pretty pristine.

Because of this, the music from the stars of yesteryear—like the stars themselves—has a better chance to live on. The ability to live on is also enhanced by availability. Of course, in the streaming age you can get your hands on almost anything. But by the 1980s, older music was also more accessible and playable to a younger generation.

This might not have been case earlier. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, there were constant format changes that rendered some older recordings obsolete. It wasn’t until Columbia invented the LP in 1948 that consensus began to emerge.

Formats did continue to evolve with the advent of cassettes and CDs. But the LP was the bedrock of the industry for long enough that older music was much more available to younger generations.

A More Professionalized Music Industry

Finally, it is worth noting that between the 1950s and 1980s, the music industry not only became more corporatized, financialized, and professionalized but got much better at making, breaking, and managing stars. The intergenerational duet thus became a tool to introduce older stars, like Aretha Franklin, to a new generation of fans.

All of these factors have persisted into the 21st century. And the rise of hip-hop and streaming has only made the intergenerational duet more viable. Hip-hop has always been a collaborative genre, rappers regularly featuring on one another’s songs. As the genre has dominated the charts over the last 30 years, duets—and intergenerational duets—have grown more common.

Streaming, as I’ve noted previously, has also created tremendous upside for duets: “You want some more streams with minimal effort? Just mute your vocal in the second verse of a song you’ve already released. Email that version to a potential collaborator. Have them re-sing the verse. Put it out. You’ve got a ‘new’ song without even having to leave your couch.”

Not only does this require little effort, but it’s beneficial to all participants. Streaming services link to all artists involved in a duet. Post Malone dueting with Dolly Parton is likely beneficial for both parties. Fans of the former will be exposed to the latter and can easily go listen to more of her music. The same holds for fans of the latter.

None of these incentives and structures are likely changing in the short term. So, if you’ve been waiting for Drake to collaborate with Willie Nelson, the chances have never been higher.

This week’s theme is “hip-hop groups,” meaning albums by hip-hop acts with at least three members. Though hip-hop has been dominated by solo stars over the last two decades, it was largely shaped by duos and groups during the 20th century. We wanted to dive into some of those groups to better understand the genre’s foundations.

#7 We Can’t Be Stopped by Geto Boys (1991 - Willie D, Scarface, Bushwick Bill, Prince Johnny C, DJ Ready Red)

I became interested in Geto Boys after hearing their laid back “Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta” in the 1999 comedic masterpiece Office Space. When this theme arose, I thought it was the perfect time check out some more music from the Houston hip-hop outfit.

There were moments that I enjoyed on this record. “Mind Playing Tricks On Me,” the surprise hit from We Can’t Be Stopped, has the same relaxed groove that drew me to “Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta.” But those moments were overwhelmed by what I thought was largely redundant lyricism and forgettable beats.

#6 The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (1982 - Grandmaster Flash, Kidd Creole, Keef Cowboy, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Scorpio, Raheim)

In one sense, The Message is the blueprint. Its combination of socially conscious rhymes (i.e., “The Message”) with braggadocios party music (i.e., “It’s Nasty”) maps out two core themes that rappers would use for decades to come.

But The Message is also a relic. First, the group’s namesake is Grandmaster Flash, a DJ. At the dawn of hip-hop, DJs—like Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, and Kool Herc—were the stars. Rappers played a vital but more ancillary role. This would change throughout the 1980s, emcees taking centerstage.

Additionally, some of this album is very clearly not hip-hop. “Dreamin',” for example, is an R&B ode to Stevie Wonder. “Scorpio” is a electro composition that foreshadows Daft Punk over a decade before the French duo ever made a beat. These things combine to make The Message a strange record, vital to any hip-hop head for its influence but also slight for its forays into unrelated genres.

#5 Most Known Unknown by Three 6 Mafia (2005 - Juicy J, DJ Paul, Crunchy Black)

A few months ago when discussing Ja Rule’s Blood in My Eye, I argued that the rapper “has one of the most compelling voices in the history of hip-hop.” I would make a similar claim regarding the emcees in Three 6 Mafia. These are gruff voices hypnotizing you over grim, Southern beats. I’d go so far as to claim that a grunt from Juicy J is more entertaining than a multi-syllabic bar from his contemporaries.

Nevertheless, Most Known Unknown lost me because of its length. The hour-and-fifteen minute run-time felt excessive, especially when the trio retreads much of the same ground musically and lyrically. Lop off 20 minutes from this thing, and I would probably have ranked it higher.

#4 Criminal Minded by Boogie Down Productions (1987 - Scott La Rock, KRS-One, Ced-Gee)

In some ways, Criminal Minded picks up where “The Message” left off, KRS-One painting vivid imagery of a rough-and-tumble life in the South Bronx. But Criminal Minded stands apart for two reasons.

First, rather than just describing the violence of the streets, Criminal Minded participates in it. Tracks like “9mm Goes Bang” and “The Bridge is Over” are invitations to attack. In fact, much of this record narrates an early beef between Bronx and Queens natives about where hip-hop was birthed. Boogie Down Productions (rightfully) places the origin in their home borough, the Bronx. In fact, “South Bronx,” Criminal Minded’s second track, is a history lesson of sorts.

Second, the production on Criminal Minded is sparser than anything the Furious Five created. A track like “Elementary,” for example, isn’t much more than a simple, programmed beat. But when you have an emcee as compelling as KRS-One, that’s all you need. Beats and rhymes. Everything else is just details.

#3 SATURATION III by BROCKHAMPTON (2017 - Kevin Abstract, Matt Champion, Joba, Ameer Vann, Dom McLennon, Merlyn Wood, Bearface, Romil Hemnani, Jabari Manwa, Kiko Merley, Henock “HK” Sileshi, Ashlan Grey, Robert Ontenient)

To describe BROCKHAMPTON as a “hip-hop group” is a bit deceptive. Yes, they are composed of rappers and producers. But they also list web designers and app developers as members. Because of that, I think “collective” more accurately captures what they do. It’s in this less structured type of organization that they stand apart.

On SATURATION III, you find off-the-wall, party beats (e.g., “BOOGIE). You find jazzy, lackadaisical flows (e.g., “LIQUID”). You also find incisive, self-reflective rhymes (e.g., “JOHNNY”). With so many members and so many styles, you’d expect this record to feel like a mess. But it doesn’t. There is enough musical and lyrical cohesion to maintain the collective’s center of gravity.

#2 Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde by The Pharcyde (1992 - Imani, Slimkid3, FatLip, Bootie Brown, J-Swift)

Where much hip-hop of the 1990s was dominated by the imagery of the streets, The Pharcyde—a group hailing from South Central Los Angeles—chose a different path. Their beats were jazzy (e.g., “Otha Fish”). Their rhymes were off-kilter and humorous (e.g., “Oh Shit”).

This style, exemplified by their debut album, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, came to be known as “alternative hip-hop.” While I like many of the gangsta rap albums that dominated the last decade of the 20th century, I am admittedly more drawn to this alternative, spacey strain of the genre.

#1 Money, Power & Respect by The LOX (1998 - Jadakiss, Styles P, Sheek Louch)

This week we got to listen so many different styles of hip-hop (e.g., Southern, gangsta, alternative). But the most interesting part of our listening was how we got to track the evolution of New York hip-hop during the 20th century.

We heard the inventive samples of Grandmaster Flash that defined the 1970s. We heard the city’s sparse, punchy beats programmed a decade later by the likes of Boogie Down Productions. And then we got to Money, Power & Respect by The LOX, one of the finest examples of the Bad Boy style that captured the five boroughs during the 1990s.

Some records we heard this week felt one dimensional, the same ideas being repackaged for an hour (e.g., We Can’t Be Stopped by Geto Boys). But Money, Power & Respect gives you everything and more.

You’ve got silly, party music, like “If You Think I’m Jiggy.” You’ve got the in-your-face, boastful title track brought to life with the help of DMX and Lil' Kim. You’ve got some of the richest storytelling you’ll ever hear on a rap song, like “Bitches of Eastwick.” You’ve also got diverse, inventive beats (e.g., “Get This $,” “Goin’ Be Some Sh*t”). This is hip-hop at its finest, birthed boasting in the streets with beats that punch you in the face and leave you lightheaded.

Shout out to the paid subscribers who allow this newsletter to exist. Along with getting access to our entire archive, subscribers unlock biweekly interviews with people driving the music industry, monthly round-ups of the most important stories in music, and priority when submitting questions for our mailbag. Consider becoming a paid subscriber today!

Subscribe now

Recent Paid Subscriber Interviews: Pitchfork’s Editor-in-Chief • Vinyl Specialist • Spotify’s Former Data Guru • Hall of Fame Songwriter• John Legend Collaborator • Broadway Arranger • Indie Label Founder• Fender Exec

Recent Album a Day Themes: Supergroups • Punk Ladies • Short and Sweet • Long Closers • This Year • Grammy Losers and Winners • Artists You Hate • Girl Groups • Actors Who Play • Ones You Missed • Switch-Ups • Comebacks

Want more from Chris Dalla Riva? Get a copy of his book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves wherever books are sold.

Buy Book

If you enjoy this newsletter, check out my book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music that I wrote as I spent years listening to every number one hit in history.

Buy My Book

Pop Stars are Disappearing

By Chris Dalla Riva

Earlier this year, my sister put on some music when we were hanging out. I was really vibing with one of the songs, so I asked her who the artist was. “I,” she paused, “I don’t know.” I don’t expect my sister to have encyclopedic knowledge, but this was a song she specifically saved on Apple Music. “What do you mean you don’t know?” I asked. “You’re the one that put it on.”

She quickly explained. She heard the song in the background of a TikTok. She clicked the song, and then pressed the button within the app to save the song on Apple Music. From that point forward, she only heard it when she was shuffling her saved songs. In other words, she wasn’t lying. She both enjoyed the song and had no idea who performed it.

Though this situation struck me as strange, I came to realize that my sister wasn’t really at fault. Many people engage with music like this. Anonymous pop stars are lurking among us.

Read more

This week’s theme is “supergroups,” meaning albums by groups where at least 50% of the members were already well known for either a previous group or solo career. The term is largely associated with rock music—the Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce outfit Cream often denoted as the first group of this ilk—so we largely stuck with that genre. Let us know your favorites.

#7 The Firm by The Firm (1985 - Paul Rodgers, Jimmy Page, Chris Slade, and Tony Franklin)

When I selected this album, Ken had no idea who was in The Firm. And he didn’t look it up until after he finished listening. “I can’t get past that being Jimmy Page on guitar,” he texted me after doing some research. “You start a band. You get Jimmy Page. Then he gives you that. It must have been a let down.”

He’s not being dramatic. This album is not good. Like many stars of the 1970s, Jimmy Page sounds lost amid the 1980s production. The only highlight is one moment on “Radioactive,” the album’s lead single. Just after the chorus, Page arpeggiates a run of diminished chords that remind you how inventive he can be.

#6 The Three Tenors in Concert, 1994 by The Three Tenors (1994 - José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti)

In celebration of the 1990 World Cup final, three of the world’s best regarded opera singers performed an internationally televised concert to over 800 million viewers. A recording of the concert quickly became the best-selling classical album of all time. As a result, those singers—José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti—decided to continue performing together. Their 1994 live album, also recorded on the eve of a World Cup finale, sold just as well as their debut.

Looking back, this whole situation seems almost fantastical. I can’t imagine a situation in 2026 where classical music, especially opera, would crossover into the mainstream. But before the internet fragmented media, it was much easier for something like this to happen. Put something a bit outside the pop culture sphere in front of hundreds of millions of people, and it’s possible the audience would connect.

At the same, it’s not that hard to understand why people enjoyed this. First, The Three Tenors are incredible singers. It doesn’t require much of an explanation to connect with Pavarotti singing “Nessun dorma” from Puccini’s Turandot. Second, these three classical music giants were also singing well known compositions. Breakfast at Tiffany’s “Moon River.” The Phantom of the Opera’s “All I Ask of You.” West Side Story’s “America.” And the audience loves it. When the group breaks into “Singin' in the Rain,” you can actually hear the audience laugh with surprise and giddiness.

To be clear, I don’t think many of these operatic versions of popular songs work very well. That’s why this album isn’t ranked higher. But they are fun. The one outlier is the trio’s rendition of “My Way.” Their version almost makes you not want to listen to the Frank Sinatra version ever again.

#5 Audioslave by Audioslave (2002 - Chris Cornell and Rage Against the Machine w/o Zack de la Rocha)

After Zack de la Rocha split from Rage Against the Machine in 2000, the three remaining members of the group went on the hunt for a new vocalist. At the suggestion of Rick Rubin, they tapped Chris Cornell, the former frontman of Soundgarden, and got to work.

Critics were not pleased. Pitchfork described the group’s self-titled debut as “the worst kind of studio rock album.” AllMusic’s noted that “many of the songs sound like they’re just on the verge of achieving liftoff, never quite reaching their potential.”

I understand some of this perspective. But I think most people’s view of Audioslave is influenced by their view of the earlier groups it evolved from. I don’t know much about Rage Against the Machine or Soundgarden beyond their hits. To my fresh ears, this was a worthwhile record. In fact, I might prefer Chris Cornell’s voice over Tom Morello’s riffs more than Zack de la Rocha.

#4 Them Crooked Vultures by Them Crooked Vultures (2009 - Josh Homme, John Paul Jones, and Dave Grohl)

Across his long life, John Paul Jones has only released original music with two groups: Led Zeppelin and Them Crooked Vultures. The former needs no introduction. The latter is a bit more obscure.

As early as 2005, Dave Grohl was hinting at recording with Josh Homme and John Paul Jones. But the group wouldn’t take the stage for another four years. When they did, they played almost 90 minutes of original music. That was a bold decision. Even if they had written some new songs, they could have peppered the set with songs by Foo Fighters and Led Zeppelin and Queens of the Stone Age and nobody would have complained. In fact, it probably would have led to lots of ticket sales. Their commitment to fully original music was worth it, though.

I’m not going to claim that the trio’s studio collaboration equals the efforts of any of their earlier groups. But it is a ton of fun. The riffs run for days, and John Paul Jones’ multi-instrument mastery brings great texture to the record. If they ever decided to get together again, I’d certainly listen.

#3 Highwayman by The Highwaymen (1985 - Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson)

There’s one perspective that this record is slight, four legendary country outlaws leaning toward then contemporary production to cash in on a handful of covers (e.g., “Against the Wind”). But that undersells what is going on here.

First, it’s a miracle that this album works at all. As Willie Nelson noted in his 2015 autobiography, “You wouldn’t think our four uneven voices would blend. But they did. They fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.”

This “jigsaw puzzle” is best illustrated by the title track, “Highwayman.” Originally written and recorded by Jimmy Webb, “Highwayman” tells the story of a soul reincarnated four times. Its first life is as a highwayman. Then it returns as a sailor, a a dam-builder, and starship captain in a faraway future. One member of the quartet vividly embodies each of these incarnations: Nelson the highwayman, Kristofferson the sailor, Jennings the dam-builder, and Cash the starship captain. Johnny Cash’s vocal here is particularly miraculous, a man whose voice sounds like it was pulled from the earth convincingly telling you how he’s flying a spaceship.

“Highwayman” is not only illustrative of how these distinctive voices work together, but it is also the best track on this record. And while none of the other songs manage to equal its magic, ever other track is such a joy because it’s clear that these men are having a good time. They’re singing lost verses on songs they’ve cut before (e.g., “Big River”). They’re breathing life into compositions by their heroes (e.g., “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)”). They’re also shining a light on the music of their friends (e.g., “The Twentieth Century Is Almost Over”).

#2 The Record by boygenius (2023 - Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus)

A few years before boygenius released their debut album, Phoebe Bridgers got in a fight on Twitter with another supergroup aficionado, David Crosby. Crosby’s problem was Bridgers recent performance on Saturday Night Live where the singer-songwriter smashed her guitar. “[I]t’s what you do when you can’t write,” the former Byrd opined about Bridgers’ antics. At the time, Bridgers was already respected as a songwriter, but if there were any remaining doubts, The Record put those to bed.

Of course, The Record is not only by Phoebe Bridgers. She’s paired up with fellow singer-songwriters Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus. And the trio prove that their vocal harmony and songwriting skills are on par with any other group, including many of David Crosby’s groups from the 1960s and 1970s. If “Emily I’m Sorry” is not considered grade-A songwriting, then I don’t know what is.

#1 The Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 3 by Traveling Wilburys (1990 - Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynn, and George Harrison)

I thought somebody was pulling a fast one on me when I first found out The Traveling Wilburys existed. My favorite singer (i.e., Roy Orbison) was in a band with my favorite songwriter (i.e., Bob Dylan), a Beatle (i.e., George Harrison), and one of the most inventive producers of the 1970s (i.e., Jeff Lynn). Oh, yeah, Tom Petty is there too. This can’t be real.

After realizing that it was real, my next thought was that there is no way it could work. No band needs five frontmen who play the guitar. The best I assumed this could go was like one of those disastrous Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concerts where they have 15 guys playing guitar and 8 playing drums. The Traveling Wilburys proved me wrong, though. They are real, and they are glorious.

Confusingly, The Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 3 is the transatlantic group’s second record. Their first, backed by singles like “Handle With Care” and “End of the Line,” was more successful than the second. But despite the tragic death of Roy Orbison, the second is just as much fun.

Every supergroup has a choice. They can either lean into contemporary production to try to make something with mass appeal or just do whatever they like because they’ve already found success. The Firm illustrates the perils of the former. The Traveling Wilburys—making a humorous, light-hearted record steeped in the rock tradition of the 1950s and 1960s—illustrate the joys of the latter.

Both “Cool Dry Place” and “Wilbury Twist” are exemplars of this joy. The former is three-minute meditation on how to properly store tons of musical gear, including “organs and trombones.” The latter is a group theme song of sorts that plays on the scores of twists that have been released. Their twist involves putting your hand on your head, foot in the air, and hopping around in your underwear.

If you are famous musician reading this and thinking about forming a supergroup, please put your ego aside and just have a good time. If Bob Dylan and George Harrison can do it, so can you.

Shout out to the paid subscribers who allow this newsletter to exist. Along with getting access to our entire archive, subscribers unlock biweekly interviews with people driving the music industry, monthly round-ups of the most important stories in music, and priority when submitting questions for our mailbag. Consider becoming a paid subscriber today!

Subscribe now

Recent Paid Subscriber Interviews: Pitchfork’s Editor-in-Chief • Vinyl Specialist • Spotify’s Former Data Guru • Hall of Fame Songwriter• John Legend Collaborator • Broadway Arranger • Indie Label Founder• Fender Exec

Recent Album a Day Themes: Punk Ladies • Short and Sweet • Long Closers • This Year • Grammy Losers and Winners • Artists You Hate • Girl Groups • Actors Who Play • Ones You Missed • Switch-Ups • Comebacks • Swan Songs

Want more from Chris Dalla Riva? Get a copy of his book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves wherever books are sold.

Buy Book

Olney gave me the choice to share a few of his upcoming newsletters. I decided to go with the edition chronicling “Rocky Raccoon,” one of my least favorite songs by the Fab Four. Why would I choose the discussion of a song I dislike? Because the best best music writers can transform your view of something you didn’t think was worth your time.

Subscribe to Oh That Magic Feeling

Every Beatles Song: “Rocky Raccoon”

By Charles Olney

Is Paul McCartney cool?

At one time this would have seemed like a ridiculous question. In the winter of 1966, Paul McCartney was probably one of the five or ten coolest people on earth.

• He was the guy who wrote “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Yesterday” and “Eleanor Rigby.”

• The guy who could sing like Little Richard, croon like Bing Crosby, and scream like Roger Daltry.

• He was a pioneer in electronic music, contributing the tape loops to the otherwordly “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

• He attended happenings, listened to John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, made experimental films, and basically ran an “eighteenth-century European salon” from his apartment.

• He was dating a beautiful actress.

• And to top it off, he was funny, charming, and devilishly good-looking.

But by the summer of 1968, you could start to ask some reasonable questions. Everyone had some good fun with his schmaltzy “When I’m Sixty-Four” on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but he wasn’t going to start doing “granny music” full-time. Was he? And it was pretty wild when he described Apple Corps as “a beautiful place where you can buy beautiful things … a controlled weirdness … a kind of Western communism.”

But for all the lofty ideals, it seemed liked Paul was actually more interested in the logistics and finances than in the lark. Was he secretly just a suit? There was the Magical Mystery Tour film, which was not just the Beatles first real critical flop, it was also clearly Paul’s personal baby. He went on the David Frost show after it aired, and seemed rather hurt that people were so dismissive. Not very cool behavior.

Then came The Beatles (aka The White Album), a far-reaching excursion through musical styles, some of which were about as far away from cool as you could imagine. Most notably, songs like “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da” and “Honey Pie,” which are both classic examples of Paul’s tendency to dabble in genre pastiche—something that would become more and more of a punchline over the following decades. Now, I happen to like both those songs pretty well myself, but I’m not going to pretend they’re “cool.”

I will, however, make the argument for some of the other pastiche songs on the album. Specifically, “Rocky Raccoon.” Which is every bit as cool a song as it is strange.

The McCartney Pastiche

The White Album represents a moment when The Beatles were bursting at the seams with creativity and felt free to populate the record with all sorts of experiments. But while there’s a tendency to think about this experimentation as something undertaken by “The Beatles,” it was actually almost entirely a Paul McCartney phenomenon.

Sure, the most famous (and weirdest) track on the record was a John and Yoko led production (i.e., “Revolution 9”), but almost all the other genre-busting songs were Paul’s. In addition to schmaltzy reggae (i.e., “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da”) and music hall (i.e., “Honey Pie”), he also riffed on Chuck Berry and the Beach Boys (i.e., “Back in the USSR”), tape loops (i.e., “Wild Honey Pie”), proto-metal (i.e., “Helter Skelter”), piano-based chamber music (i.e., “Martha My Dear”), acoustic folk (i.e., “Blackbird” and “Mother Nature’s Son”), grimy R&B (i.e., “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road”), and even a bit of straightforward, riff-heavy rock and roll (i.e., “Birthday”). And, of course, a country-folk ballad about love and revenge: “Rocky Raccoon.”

It says something important about Paul that he was able to invest—genuinely and seriously—in making art across all of these different styles. Not by sending them up, but by actually trying to make something reasonably authentic. Like the kid who needs to take apart a toy so that she can learn to rebuild it, he is always looking to get inside what makes these genres work. And then reconstructing them from the ground up to make them his own. Because he’s not simply a collector or imitator; the end goal is always still to write a song that will sound totally and distinctly like the product of Paul McCartney.

Generations of beard-stroking rock critics have mocked Paul for his interest in such corny genres. But while there’s undoubtedly a superficial sort of “cool” that comes from ironic detachment or mockery, it’s far cooler to actually care about things enough to create something interesting out of them.

And “Rocky Raccoon” is a perfect example.

Rocky Raccoon: A Hero in Our Time

It starts with a “talking blues” introduction (“Now somewhere in the black mining hills of Dakota, there lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon”) that primes the listener to expect something old-fashioned. As he winds his way through the setup, we’re provided with the inciting incident (“his woman ran off with another guy”) and Rocky’s search for justice. A light harmonica hit from John ushers in the main section of the song, and Paul shifts from speak-singing to a more traditional, lilting singalong style.

As we enter the main verse, Paul supplies us with some classic McCartney lyrical meanderings—words that don’t necessarily mean anything exactly, but which convey a peculiar otherworldliness. You get the sense that many of these were placeholder lyrics that were initially used to work out the song’s rhythm, but which he never actually changed, because it turns out that they actually enhance the song’s off-kilter vibe. There’s the appearance of Gideon’s Bible in Rocky’s room, the confusing account of his lost paramour (“Her name was Magill, and she called herself Lil, but everyone knew her as Nancy”), and Rocky’s somewhat misguided plan to “shoot off the legs of his rival.”

This slow reveal of the ascending action is built upon a circular chord progression that could in theory allow the song to extend out infinitely into the distance. Which is another perfect execution of pastiche—the song which is designed to give the storyteller the room to say all that needs to be said. In this respect, “Rocky Raccoon” is clearly inspired by Dylan and his own inspiration in those sort of folk traditions.

Then, as the action rises in the next verse, the harmonica takes on a more prominent role, pulling us toward the inevitable confrontation. The rhythm track, which started out quite sparse, and has been building slowly over the opening two minutes, finally reaches the tipping point. Rocky is shot, and the song enters its own hoedown break, accentuated by a great bit of honky-tonk piano from George Martin.

As the verse returns, Rocky is looked after by the drunken doctor, stumbles back to his room, and rediscovers Gideon’s Bible. And we are treated to one final rousing hoedown, before the fadeout into “Don’t Pass Me By.”

Earnestness and The Illusion of Cool

It’s a very silly song, and more than a bit shaggy. But it’s also utterly charming. And it’s quite an impressive achievement to produce something in a style so alien to the Beatles sound, and to have it come out so well.

Not only does it sound like a very effective bit of folk-country pastiche, the story itself has the delightful ring of loving parody: A small morality play about lost love, retribution, humiliation, and a tiny hint of redemption. Rocky is defeated, stitched back together by the doctor, and returns to his room. Where there’s perhaps some small chance he might also be stitched back together spiritually. So yes, it’s a fundamentally rather goofy song. But I think—like all the best McCartney pastiches—it has a real heart.

And that’s the whole thing with Paul. The indelible earnestness to his affect is a constant anchor to his cool quotient. But that earnestness is also a big part of what makes him so cool. Especially in the present era of the hard-working superstar (e.g., Taylor Swifts, Beyoncé), where Paul’s tryhardism plays a bit cooler than it might have in the 1980s or 1990s.

It’s also a surprisingly catchy song. That may not be clear the first time you listen, and I can understand the folks who might call it filler. But the more time I spend with it, the deeper it lodges itself. Of all the great songs in the history of music, there’s a tiny fraction that live regularly in my head. The songs that I find myself humming as I do laundry or wash dishes. The songs that I sing to my kids while we’re out for a walk. “Rocky Raccoon” is one of them.

I always felt a bit self-conscious about that. In my mind, it was correctly understood as a marginal Beatles track. A bit of fun, perhaps, but not something you could appreciate in a serious way. Fortunately, as the years passed and I grew a bit more comfortable in my own taste, I settled into an unabashed appreciation.

That has also been bolstered thanks to some covers and alternate versions, each of which provide a bit more insight into the construction and beauty of the song. The version from Anthology 3, for example, demonstrates a bit more dynamic range. That’s especially true in the back half of the track, largely thanks to Paul’s vocal flub (“sminking of gin”) which ruins the take and leaves him free to play around a bit.

You can also really grasp the song in a new way through the Richie Havens cover, which actually was a minor hit in 1969.

It’s so good! And really makes the line about Rocky’s revival hit a bit harder. This performance is a bit of musical revival.

There’s also a lovely Phoebe Bridgers cover, which feels like a lost alt-folk classic that highlights how beautiful the chord progression actually is.

One final bit of fun is that Andy Partridge of XTC was called “Rocky” when he was a kid because he always carried a guitar around but the only song he could play was “Rocky Raccoon.” And, as quite a few folks have noted over the years, “Dear God” (maybe my favorite XTC song) sounds quite a bit like Rocky Raccoon.

Want more deep analysis of Beatles songs? Subscribe to ’s Oh That Magic Feeling to follow along on his Beatles journey.

Want more from Chris Dalla Riva? Get a copy of his debut book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves.

This week’s theme is “punk ladies,” meaning punk albums released by bands where at least 50% of the members are women. This theme was inspired by , whose work over the years has made me realize that my knowledge of women in punk is severely lacking. Please note that we are defining “punk” very broadly here. We didn’t want to get in any arguments about categorization and semantics.

#7 Yo Fui Una Adolescente Terrosatánica by Ultrasonicas (1999)

Punk is known for its D.I.Y. aesthetics, cutting recordings with nothing more than a half-functioning tape machine and the right attitude. The Ultrasonicas, one of the most prominent Mexican punk bands, fit in that aesthetic lineage. But their attitude and their songs cannot compensate for the fact that these recordings do not sound good.

“Fuck the Mall” is probably the worst sounding recording we’ve heard this year, the drums reminiscent of someone trying to clap underwater and the guitars so squashed that you might think they were recorded by mistake.

Still, there are some decent moments on this album. The group’s Spanish language covers of Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf” (“Dulce Hoja”) and The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (“Quiero Ser Tu Perra”) are enjoyable. But much of the rest feels redundant, surf riffs recycled a few too many times.

#6 The Raincoats by The Raincoats (1979)

When Rough Trade reissued The Raincoats first three records in 1992, Kurt Cobain wrote some liner notes:

I don’t really know anything about the Raincoats except that they recorded some music that has affected me so much that, whenever I hear it I’m reminded of a particular time in my life when I was (shall we say) extremely unhappy, lonely, and bored. If it weren’t for the luxury of putting that scratchy copy of the Raincoats’ first record, I would have had very few moments of peace. I suppose I could have researched a bit of history about the band but I feel it’s more important to delineate the way I feel and how they sound. When I listen to the Raincoats I feel as if I’m a stowaway in an attic, violating and in the dark. Rather than listening to them I feel like I’m listening in on them. We’re together in the same old house and I have to be completely still or they will hear me spying from above and, if I get caught—everything will be ruined because it’s their thing.

I can’t imagine writing a nicer thing about a band: Their music touches you so deeply that they neither require nor warrant any explanation. On the B-side of this record, I could see what Cobain was getting at. Songs like “The Void” and “You’re a Million” are trance-inducing, especially with their inventive use of violin, a punk rarity.

The A-side did less for me, though. I was surprised by this given that it contains the group’s three most streamed songs: “Fairytale in the Supermarket,” “No Side to Fall In,” and a cover of The Kinks’ “Lola.” While many records this week push your standard conception of pitch, rhythm, and tuning to their limits, some of these songs went a bit too far for my taste.

#5 Growing Up by The Linda Lindas (2022)

The Linda Lindas, a group of teen and pre-teen women Los Angelenos, splashed on the scene when a video of them performing their song “Racist, Sexist Boy” at their local library went viral in 2021. The virality is easy to understand. “Racist, Sexist Boy” is punk at its most visceral, stripped to its bare bones, its message encoded in the crunchy guitar tone and stomping rhythms as much as it is in the lyrics.

Though the rest of the group’s debut album, Growing Up, lacks the power of “Racist, Sexist Boy”—in fact, I think you’d best describe the collection as a “pop punk”—there are some skillful, catchy tunes. The descending riff on “Nino,” an ode to a “savage cat,” has great energy. The title track has a chorus that will bounce around in your head for days. “Oh!” might even give Paramore a run for their money.

#4 The 5.6.7.8’s by The 5.6.7.8’s (1994)

Is “Surfin' Bird” by The Trashmen a punk record? I know I said that “We didn’t want to get in any arguments about categorization and semantics,” but bear with me for a second.

“Surfin' Bird” was recorded in 1963 and is effectively an off-the-wall mash-up of two songs by the doo-wop group The Rivingtons: “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow” and “The Bird’s the Word.” Given its name and release date, you’d probably assume that “Surfin' Bird” is a surf rock record. And it probably is. But given that it’s been covered by loads of punk bands, including the Ramones and The Cramps, you could at least call it “proto-punk” without anyone getting mad.

The reason I bring this up is because The 5.6.7.8’s self-titled record is very rocking and surfing. With song names like “Arkansas Twist,” “Rockin' Rochester,” and “Oriental Rock,” you might assume that this album came out in 1962. It did not it. It came out of Japan in 1994 and made its way to the West when Quentin Tarantino featured the group performing this album’s “I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield” in Kill Bill: Volume 1.

So, is it punk? A fuzzed-out cover of Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” suggests that it might be. But that’s still a cover of a rock and roll song from 1956. So, maybe not. But just like “Surfin' Bird,” The 5.6.7.8’s is worth the price of admission no matter what you call it.

This piece tells the oft-misreported tale of the development of the concept album, or an album focused around a particular story or theme. Given that at the end of this piece, Deiboldt asks for people to submit their favorite concept records, I’ll submit an obscure one originally recommended to me by : Manhattan Transfer by Gordon Jenkins. That goes back to 1946, further in the past than you probably thought the concept album went. But I’ll let AJ Deiboldt tell you the full story.

Subscribe to The High Times

Who Really Invented The Concept Album?

By AJ Deiboldt

When The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on May 26, 1967, it was almost immediately hailed as an artistic watermark for popular culture. Seen as a soundtrack to the hippie movement, it was an advocation of psychedelia and the culture surrounding it. It was also a means to bridge older fans and new as well as the first shot in rock music being taken seriously as an art form. It was the first album to have printed lyrics, and its cover photo was innovative in many ways.

But the other thing Sgt. Pepper’s gets credit for is for allegedly being the first “concept album.” For those uninitiated, a concept album is a record where all the songs tell an overarching story or consciously relate to a particular theme. When rock critics, fans, and scholars talk about concept albums, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is often one of the first albums mentioned. But what’s interesting about this is that while The Beatles had talked about the possibility of it being a concept album, depending on who you ask, it either is or it isn’t. According to producer George Martin:

“Sergeant Pepper” itself didn’t appear until halfway through making the album. It was Paul’s song, just an ordinary rock number ... but when we had finished it, Paul said, “Why don’t we make the album as though the Pepper band really existed, as though Sergeant Pepper was making the record? We’ll dub in effects and things.” I loved the idea, and from that moment on it was as though Pepper had a life of its own.”

John Lennon however had a different take:

Sgt. Pepper is called the first concept album, but it doesn’t go anywhere. All my contributions to the album have nothing to do with this idea of Sgt. Pepper and his band; but it works cause we said it worked … But it was not as put together as it sounds, except for "Sgt. Pepper introducing Billy Shears and the so-called reprise. Every other song could have been on any other album.

Regardless of whether Sgt. Pepper is a concept album or not, it couldn’t have been the first because there were previously released concept albums that McCartney used as inspiration when he first conceived of the idea of a fictional band playing a show. Among them were Frank Zappa’s Freak Out! (1966) and Frank Sinatra’s Songs For Swinging Lovers! (1956.)

Ol’ Blue Eyes & His Concept Albums

When I started this piece, I’d intended to show that while the Beatles are the ones who get credited with inventing the concept album, the actual inventor was an unlikely one: Frank Sinatra. His excellent concept record In The Wee Small Hours from 1955 is the lovelorn flip side to his previous Songs For Swinging Lovers! with a moody cover painting to match.

Sinatra had a knack for creating thematic moods with his song choices and vocal performances, ones that often reflected the circumstances of his life, and these would be only two of several concept records Sinatra would release throughout his life.

But as much as I love the idea of something that helped shape rock n roll into a serious art form being invented by an artist that rock helped push to the cultural margins, in this case, even Sinatra himself was beaten to the punch by another contender in 1940.

Woody Guthrie and the Dust Bowl

Enter the OG working class hero Woody Guthrie. Influenced by things he’d seen growing up in Oklahoma, as well as John Steinbeck’s seminal The Grapes Of Wrath, Dust Bowl Ballads remains Guthrie’s most popular record. On it, Guthrie alternates between delivering almost news report style accounts of the events of the Great Depression-era conditions in the American Midwest and telling tales from the perspectives of the people who were victims of the Dust Bowl heading West for a better life.

What many of the characters on the album find, much like their real life counterparts, is that even after a hellish journey from the Dust Bowl back east, money, cultural differences, and health issues would still make their lives difficult even in the “promised land” that was California. It’s a heart wrenching listen from beginning to end, in part because Guthrie isn’t making it up. Even the somewhat comedic moments like “Talkin’ Dust Bowl Blues” and “Dust Pneumonia Blues” still have a dark undercurrent to them.

Originally released on RCA Victor Records in July of 1940, Dust Bowl Ballads was issued as two three-record sets of 78 rpm discs that contained a single song on each side. The exception to this was “Tom Joad,” which was too long to fit on a single side in its entirety and as such was broken up into two separate parts. As you can see from the picture above, this type of package is where the term “album” comes from.

Eventually it went out of print leaving Guthrie to unsuccessfully petition the label to reissue it as an LP. Upon their refusal, Guthrie permitted Folkways Records to reissue it as an 8 song LP with an altered track listing that was split into two parts, furthering the concept of the record: “Dust Bowl Ballads” and “Migrant Worker’s Songs.” Folkways decided to reissue the album again in 1964, a move which evoked a protest from the record’s original label, RCA Victor. The label eventually backed off after Guthrie gave Folkways his blessing to do the reissue.

Different from their previous offering, this reissue would recreate the original track sequence while combining “Tom Joad” into a single number. A final reissue in 2000 from Buddha Records would reshuffle the track sequence again and add a previously unissued take of “Talking Dust Bowl Blues.” I created a playlist that recreates the original track sequence from the RCA and 1964 Folkways releases while adding in songs that weren’t included on the original.

Non-Concept Record Concept Music

Even though Woody Guthrie made the first ever concept album, there were musicians thinking along those lines before him. The only problem was that technology wasn’t advanced enough in their time to be able to make albums out of their works. One of my personal favorites is Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, which follows a lovesick young man’s dream-become-a-nightmare following a non-fatal opium overdose.

After attempting unsuccessfully to poison himself due his feelings of love being unrequited, he dreams of meeting his love interest at a ball, jealously murdering her, being executed for his crime, and subsequently being condemned to Hell. It’s an example of what’s called “programmatic music,” or music that tells a story.

There’s also Richard Wagner’s The Ring Of Niebelung, which sees Wagner’s epic tale unfolding over the course of four separate operas that ideally would be performed over the course of multiple days. The entirety of this epic work took Wagner 26 years to write.

Lighter but no less compelling examples of concept music include Prokofiev’s Peter & The Wolf, Richard Strauss’ Don Quixote, and Gustav Holst’s ‘The Planets.’

Epilogue

So there you have it! I was always curious about where the concept album came from, who originated it, and when, so if you’ve gotten this far, thanks for taking this epic journey with me. But do me a favor and let me know what your favorite concept albums!

Want more stories like this? Subscribe to The High Times, the wonderful newsletter from musician and writer .

Want more from Chris Dalla Riva? Get a copy of his debut book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves.

A self-described pop obsessive, Eric publishes a weekly column tracking what’s trending on the charts and why, as well as longer essays analyzing key moments from pop’s past and present, whether that’s Mariah Carey’s dominance of the 90’s or Chappell Roan’s unconventional release strategy. He recently wrapped up publishing a collection of guest essays called Resurrection which traces some of the biggest comeback moments in pop history and why they matter.

Subscribe to Track Ten

Adapt or Die: How Country Took Rap’s Place Atop The Charts

By Eric of Track Ten

At first glance, Beyoncé and Post Malone may not seem to have much in common beyond their unexpected collaboration “LEVII’S JEANS.” Both artists, though, have the distinction of hitting number one on both Billboard’s Hot Rap Songs and its Hot Country Songs charts in the past decade.

Post Malone first topped the Rap chart with “Rockstar” featuring 21 Savage for 15 weeks in 2017, and Beyoncé spent three weeks at #1 in 2020 as the guest on Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage.” Jump forward to 2024, and both earned the top slot on the Country chart, Beyoncé with “Texas Hold ‘Em” for 10 weeks and Post Malone with “I Had Some Help” featuring Morgan Wallen for seven.

Why were artists who had success with rap suddenly pivoting to country? Well, all four of these songs also hit #1 on the all-genre Hot 100. What Bey and Posty seemed to realize was that the tide was turning in pop music, and rather than fight the current, they decided to swim with it. This wasn’t the only sign showing me that rap was no longer at the top of its game and that country was the genre usurping it. But two artists aren’t enough to prove a trend, so I set out to see if the data backs it up.

Billboard’s charts, including the all-genre Hot 100, Hot Country Songs, and Hot Rap Songs, all use a formula which incorporates streaming, radio, and sales to count down the most popular songs in America. I didn’t want to arbitrarily label songs on the Hot 100 as country or rap, but instead to see which hits among country and rap listeners were crossing over to the mainstream.

To do this, I catalogued all songs that went #1 on the Hot Country and Hot Rap Songs charts from 2010 through 2025. Then, I assessed their peak on the Hot 100 in the year they hit #1. Of these songs, I analyzed the data to see the percentage that hit the Hot 100’s top ten, top five, or #1 slot.

Is Rap Really Past Its Peak?

From 2010 to 2020, 86 songs went #1 on the Hot Rap songs chart and 79% of those songs became a Hot 100 top ten hit. These hits aren’t evenly distributed. The story of Rap #1s during the 2010s goes from underdog, to contender, to absolute domination. To illustrate this, let’s look at the most dominant rapper of this period, Drake.

In 2012, Drake’s “The Motto” managed to spend 14 weeks at #1 on Hot Rap songs without cracking the top ten of the Hot 100. By 2015, a song like “Hotline Bling”—tied for second most weeks at #1 on the Rap chart that decade with 18—was reaching a very comfortable top five peak of #2 on the Hot 100. From 2017-2020, though? Drake had four #1 hits on Hot Rap Songs, each hitting #1 on the Hot 100 for 30 total weeks.

Beyond Drake, across Rap #1s from 2017 to 2020, every one hit the Hot 100 top five, but that golden era wasn’t made to last forever. Since then, rap took a dip that it has never fully recovered from. Again, Drake proves illustrative, with his takeover of pop music beginning to wane in 2020 to 2022. His four Rap #1s of this period each hit #1 on the Hot 100, but for only one week, compared to the eight-plus weeks for earlier hits.

Then in 2022, the unthinkable happened: Drake’s “Rich Flex” with 21 Savage missed #1, peaking at #2 on the Hot 100. Beyond rap’s top performer, 2021 saw a massive drop in rap top fives from 100% down to 64%. Despite some uptick in between, 2025 left rap even worse off, with only 60% of #1s making the top five. This was matched in top tens, the lowest percentage to reach the tier since 2012.

Part of rap’s decline can be attributed to the timeless story of a sound or style becoming so dominant that it’s no longer cool. As Daniel Parris writes, one hypothesis for rap ceding the top spot is that like rock before it, rap became so commercially saturated that it lost its affiliation as the music of youth culture. But where Parris sees rap’s failure to keep innovating, I see rap failing to adapt to the sonic landscape of the 2020s in a way that goes beyond just cultural momentum.

Country’s Rise Is Part of a Sonic Shift in Pop

From 2010 to 2020, 79% of rap #1s went top ten while only 6% country #1s did the same. In the 2020s, though, trends began to change and country saw an uptick in popularity. There was only one country star who dominated the transitional moment the way Drake did in the late 2010s: Morgan Wallen.

In 2019, his first Country #1, “Whiskey Glasses,” only peaked at #17, but his next five #1s all went top ten on the Hot 100 from 2020 to 2022. The takeoff really accelerated in 2023, though, when “Last Night” hit #1 on the Hot 100, going on to spend a massive 16 weeks at #1.

With Wallen leading the charge, 2023 became the first year where every country #1 also hit the top ten on the Hot 100. Since then, he has topped the Hot 100 three more times, including six weeks alongside Post Malone on “I Had Some Help” for a total of 24 weeks at #1.

Beyond Wallen, every country #1 over the last three years has gone top ten on the Hot 100, showing just how strongly the genre is resonating with mainstream audiences. While artists like Beyoncé and Post Malone are following suit explicitly, it’s not as though every #1 on the Hot 100 is a country song. What we do see, though, is that on average, #1s sound a lot different than they did in the 2010s, and the trends line up well with country’s traditional sound.

In the late 2010s, the sonic elements that made rap songs of the era popular—like strong basslines, synth production, and danceability—were present across pop. Taylor Swift was topping the charts in 2015 with bombastic, bass-y pop songs like “Bad Blood,” which included a rap verse from Kendrick Lamar. Meanwhile in 2025, Swift’s #1-charting “The Fate of Ophelia” uses piano, hand claps, and live instrumentation.

The actual sound of popular music in 2025 is significantly different from that of the 2010s, and we can measure this using Spotify metadata. The streamer assigns scores out of 100 to every song in categories, like “acousticness” and “danceability,” that allow us to numerically track what sounds are trending. Weighted for total weeks spent at #1, the chart below shows danceability on the y-axis and acousticness on the x-axis for all the #1 hits of 2015 and 2025.

From 2015 to 2025, the average song dropped 10 points in danceability while becoming 15 points more acoustic. This means an outlier for 2015 like “Hello” by Adele (58 danceability, 33 acousticness), would be pretty close to the norm in 2025 (63 average danceability, 33 average acousticness). This includes tracks across genres, like “Ordinary” by Alex Warren and “Manchild” by Sabrina Carpenter, but has provided an opportunity for country music in particular to take over the charts because its sound is aligned with the broader trends.

Country’s traditional sound, leaning on acoustic-sounding live instruments and without the sort of percussion and bass styles that make a song “danceable,” is particularly well-suited to the sonic moment. But that doesn’t explain why rap as a genre isn’t adapting to the moment.

Is It Too Late For Rap to Stage a Comeback?

Rap of the 2010s relied on rhythmic basslines and synthesizers (or samples) rather than live instrumentation, sounds that are no longer topping the Hot 100. But rap originated as “rhythm and poetry,” in reality a style of vocal delivery more than a specific production sound. There’s no reason that rappers couldn’t adapt to the rising acousticness while retaining the core identity of Rap.

In fact, Kendrick Lamar provides us with a great example of what happens when rappers do adapt. He had two shorter-running Hot 100 #1s in 2024 with “Squabble Up” (1 week) and “Not Like Us” (3 weeks) built around more typical 2010s Rap sounds: synths, 808s, and drum programming. However, follow-up single “Luther” featuring SZA opens with guitars and is built around a serene Luther Vandross sample and orchestral elements. “Luther” went on to spend 13 weeks at #1, more than three times the total of the previous two singles combined.

In general, though, rappers are not taking this route and are seeing fewer rap hits on the Hot 100 as a result. Compare “Luther” to fellow 2024 Rap #1 “Sticky” by Tyler, the Creator. While the latter always hits hard on my gym playlist, the production just isn’t suited to the sounds of the moment. Where Kendrick hit #1, Tyler only reached #10.

Rap is coming out of a period where the songs that were most popular among rap fans were also the most popular songs in America. While that’s not the case today, music fans love a comeback (in fact, I’ve published a whole series about “resurrection” in pop music). Rap’s late 2010s streak was actually a comeback: in 2003, five Rap #1s went #1 on the Hot 100, then in 2012 not a single one did, before Drake eventually led a rebound for the genre. Country has gone through ebbs and flows of popularity, too, as Chris has previously written about.

Rappers will need to decide whether they want to lean into what’s popular, or double down on making the sort of songs that were hits in the late 2010s. Kendrick shows us that rap can still hit #1, but leaning into the mellower sound of the moment makes it more likely to connect with wider audiences.

In 2026, Country has ascended to the top and Rap is just doing its best to stay afloat on the charts. The thing about pop music, though, is that as soon as we adapt to the new normal, you can be sure another trend is coming to take its place. By 2030, if not sooner, you can expect the takes on the death of country music to start piling up. Maybe then I’ll be writing a follow up on the emerging dominance of polka.

Want more stories like this? Subscribe to Track Ten, a data-driven newsletter from a pop music obsessive.

Want more from Chris Dalla Riva? Get a copy of his debut book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves.