GraphJam Side A · Music & pop culture in charts
The Plate Archive56 charts

Bands, Fans and Genres: Music Charts From the Archive

Charts about the people who make the music, and the people who argue about it.

This collection is about performers, audiences and the arguments between them. Fifty-six charts, from March 2008 to September 2010, and the thing they share is that none of them needs you to know a specific lyric — only a reputation.

That makes them a different kind of document from the song charts. A chart of a lyric is a transformation. A chart of a reputation is an opinion drawn with a straight edge, and opinions from 2008 about who was overrated have aged in a way that lyrics have not.

The Rick Astley year

Two charts here plot the same man, five months apart, and together they date the collection more precisely than any timestamp. Frequency of Rick Astley’s Planned Activities enumerates the promises in a chorus as a bar chart of intentions. Chances of Rick Astley… plots the probability of encountering him at all, which in 2008 was the joke everyone was making and nobody needed explained.

Neither chart is about music. Both are about a link you did not want to click, and they belong to the collection because the subject is a performer who had been converted into a mechanism.

Genre as a predictor

The best-constructed charts here take the form of a scatter or a correlation and plot something everybody believes and nobody has measured. Length Of Hair Of Male Singer vs. music genre is a two-axis claim about causation with no data behind it and a very high recognition rate. Hip-Hop — Popularity Among 16 Year Olds v Quality draws two lines and dares you to argue with the crossing point. Music Styles By Genre sorts styles into genres in a way that is either tautological or damning depending on how closely you read it.

Christian Music and My Knowledge of Opera work the same seam from opposite ends, one plots a category the reader has an opinion about, the other plots the reader’s ignorance of a category. Both are charts about the listener.

The fandom charts

Fans, How Annoying Are They? is the collection’s most honest chart, because it turns the measurement round. So does Likability of Song versus How Many Time You Hear It On the Radio, which plots the decay curve every listener knows and no station programmes around. Number of Nickelback Shows I Plan to Attend in 2010 answers with a single value, and is linked from three sites — doing so.

There is a small cluster about the economics of all this. What you can do with a music degree and Popularity of Music are jokes about supply. Reasons I don’t feel bad for downloading music illegally, published as its own plate, is a chart about a 2009 argument that was still live and unsettled when it was drawn.

Lady Gaga, and the end of the archive

The last artist to appear repeatedly is Lady Gaga, in Lady Gaga Formula and How does Lady Gaga like her steak?, both from 2010. They mark the point where the site’s subject shifted from music to celebrity: the first reduces a career to a recipe, the second is a pun that requires only the name.

The collection ends with Life Is A Journey in September 2010, a month before the archive stops entirely. It is a karaoke joke, drawn about a band whose one enormous song had become a fixed cultural object, and there is something fitting about a chart archive that began by measuring lyrics ending by measuring the places lyrics get sung badly.

Charts here
56
Images recovered
31
Published as plates
5
Referring domains
81
First posted
Mar 2008
Last posted
Sep 2010

The charts

In publication order. Sides run in tens, the way a record does. A chart marked as a plate has its own page and its own retrospective; the rest are published here, at the addresses they held when they were posted.

  1. A1

    Suggested Process of Interacting with Ms. Spears

    · 3 domains still link here · published as a plate

  2. A2

    The Current Location of “it”

    · image not recovered

  3. A3

    Things to fuck with, Wu-Tang Clan

  4. A4

    Things Sir Mix-A-Lot Likes

    · 2 domains still link here

  5. A5

    Billie Jean is

  6. A6

    Rehab?

    · image not recovered

  7. A7

    Numerical progression in popular music

    · image not recovered

  8. A8

    Frequency of Rick Astley’s Planned Activities

  9. A9

    Items in which blame should be placed according to Milli Vanilli

    · image not recovered

  10. A10

    Oh Mickey

    · image not recovered

  11. Side B
  12. B1

    Because Nerds Love Weezer almost as much as Rush…

    · image not recovered

  13. B2

    What Shakira’s Hips do

  14. B3

    The Adventures of Stealer’s Wheel

    · image not recovered

  15. B4

    What You Can Do To Elvis

    · 3 domains still link here · published as a plate

  16. B5

    Places Johnny Cash Has Been

    · Drawn by drmalama · image not recovered

  17. B6

    Things Whitney Wants To Do

    · Drawn by Emily Anne Gatto · 2 domains still link here

  18. B7

    Things Bono Has Found

    · Drawn by Doug L · 2 domains still link here

  19. B8

    Music Styles By Genre

    · Drawn by Sara D

  20. B9

    MTV Through The Years

    · Drawn by beatlejessie · 3 domains still link here · published as a plate

  21. B10

    What We Rock

    · Drawn by Sarah Prophet · image not recovered

  22. Side C
  23. C1

    DAFT PUNK 0.9 beta (kernel)

    · Drawn by Thief · 2 domains still link here

  24. C2

    Beck’s possessions (circa 1995)

    · Drawn by Karver

  25. C3

    Benefits of Being a Rock Star

    · Drawn by Josh S · 2 domains still link here

  26. C4

    Favorite Jams

    · Drawn by Captain Canuck · image not recovered

  27. C5

    Breakdown of Lyrics to “Hey Jude”

    · Drawn by Alexandra Taylor

  28. C6

    Chances of Rick Astley…

    · Drawn by Michael S · 2 domains still link here

  29. C7

    Content of Bob Dylan’s Lyrics

    · Drawn by Steve B · 2 domains still link here

  30. C8

    Important Factors Contributing to the Success of the Jonas Brothers

    · Drawn by beckibee · image not recovered

  31. C9

    Composers Who Have Rocked Me

    · Drawn by Corley · image not recovered

  32. C10

    Where Marvin Gaye gets his gossip

    · Drawn by Liz Wyman · image not recovered

  33. Side D
  34. D1

    Likability of Song versus How Many Time You Hear It On the Radio

    · Drawn by Clarence · image not recovered

  35. D2

    Popularity of New Kids on the Block

    · Drawn by AJ · image not recovered

  36. D3

    Contents of a Teenage Girl’s iPod

    · 4 domains still link here · published as a plate

  37. D4

    Usability by Operating System

    · Drawn by chucknaked · 2 domains still link here

  38. D5

    What you need according to the Beatles

    · Drawn by cattieloves · 2 domains still link here

  39. D6

    States the Red Hot Chili Peppers write songs about

    · Drawn by elraulix · image not recovered

  40. D7

    My Knowledge of Opera

    · Drawn by pnm

  41. D8

    Reasons that Nine Inch Nails are touring with Jane’s Addiction this summer

    · Drawn by Down_Goes_Brown

  42. D9

    Length Of Hair Of Male Singer vs. music genre

    · Drawn by mah_spamz · image not recovered

  43. D10

    Hip-Hop - Popularity Among 16 Year Olds v Quality

    · Drawn by Boosra

  44. Side E
  45. E1

    Things that Rock

    · Drawn by TheCapm · image not recovered

  46. E2

    What you can do with a music degree

    · Drawn by uberspec711 · 2 domains still link here · image not recovered

  47. E3

    Popularity of Music

    · Drawn by adferrendelli

  48. E4

    Music Popularity in school

    · Drawn by Eric999999999 · image not recovered

  49. E5

    Fans, How Annoying Are They?

    · Drawn by HalloweenDog · 2 domains still link here

  50. E6

    Christian Music

    · Drawn by jbmorgan86

  51. E7

    Time spent playing Rock Band with my Sister

    · image not recovered

  52. E8

    Lady Gaga Formula

    · Drawn by JerkyChid

  53. E9

    Reasons I don’t feel bad for downloading music illegally

    · Drawn by bacrist07 · 4 domains still link here · published as a plate

  54. E10

    Number of Nickelback Shows I Plan to Attend in 2010

    · 3 domains still link here · image not recovered

  55. Side F
  56. F1

    Graph Jam, Ooh La La

    · Drawn by Revolutions

  57. F2

    How does Lady Gaga like her steak?

    · Drawn by bonertime98

  58. F3

    Popularity of Disney Stars

    · image not recovered

  59. F4

    Beatles Flowchart WIN!

    · image not recovered

  60. F5

    Rappers gonna rap

    · image not recovered

  61. F6

    Life Is A Journey

Queries answered

How is this collection different from Songs as Data?

That collection holds charts whose dataset is a specific lyric. This one holds charts whose subject is a performer, a genre or a fandom, the catalogue rather than the song, the audience rather than the words.

Which artist appears most often?

Rick Astley, for reasons specific to 2008: the collection includes both a chart of his planned activities and a chart of the chances of encountering him, drawn at the height of the linking prank that made him unavoidable.

Are the genre charts serious?

No, and the good ones are precise about not being serious. Music Styles By Genre and Length Of Hair Of Male Singer vs. music genre both plot correlations that every listener recognises and no survey has ever measured.

Does anything here defend the artists it plots?

Rarely. The dominant mode is affectionate contempt, aimed at the fandom as often as at the performer — Fans, How Annoying Are They? turns the instrument on the audience, and it is one of the more cited charts in the collection.

Why are some entries listed without an image?

Every original chart image was hosted on a service that no longer serves them, so a surviving copy had to be found for each one. Where none survived, the entry keeps its title, date and address rather than a substitute image.