Christmas 2013 - plenty of music geekiness coming up

Holidays are when I get to kick back from analysing businesses - and spend a few hours analysing music. I've found a few new sources of music data, so over the festive season I aim to write two series of posts.

The first is the highly contentious Best Albums of All Time. This will be a three way analysis comparing the 100 best selling albums of all time with the top 100s as voted by fans and critics.

The other series will be be a similar analysis just for the year 2013.

Best albums of the 2000s - Rolling Stone vs The People 5: Best of the Best

Wouldn't it be great if somehow we could combine the Rolling Stone and People's lists into one uber-list?

Loose no more sleep pining! With the magic of Excel I have done just that.

I gave each album on each list a score out of 100. This was just 101 minus the rank - so the top album has a score of 100 while the lowest album has a score of 1. Then I added the scores on the two lists together. So if an album appeared on both lists its total score was the sum of the separate scores. For albums appearing on only one list, the total score was just the score from that list. Then I ranked the albums by total score and took the top 100.

Here is the resulting top 100.

Best albums of the 2000s - Rolling Stone and People (RYM) combined

1	.	Radiohead	Kid A
2	.	Arcade Fire	Funeral
3	.	Wilco	Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
4	.	The Strokes	Is This It
5	.	Radiohead	Amnesiac
5	.	Radiohead	In Rainbows
7	.	The Flaming Lips	Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
8	.	Jay-Z	The Blueprint
9	.	Interpol	Turn On The Bright Lights
9	.	The White Stripes	Elephant
11	.	Kanye West	The College Dropout
12	.	Daft Punk	Discovery
13	.	Sigur Rós	()
13	.	Sufjan Stevens	Illinoise
15	.	Björk	Vespertine
16	.	LCD Soundsystem	Sound Of Silver
17	.	Godspeed You Black Emperor!	Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven!
17	.	PJ Harvey	Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
19	.	Opeth	Blackwater Park
20	.	Madvillain	Madvillainy
21	.	Eminem	The Marshall Mathers LP
22	.	Bob Dylan	Modern Times
22	.	Tool	Lateralus
24	.	M.I.A.	Kala
25	.	Bob Dylan	Love And Theft
26	.	Modest Mouse	The Moon & Antarctica
26	.	U2	All That You Can’t Leave Behind
28	.	Arcade Fire	Neon Bible
28	.	J Dilla	Donuts
28	.	Jay-Z	The Black Album
31	.	Bruce Springsteen	The Rising
31	.	Queens of the Stone Age	Songs for the Deaf
31	.	Radiohead	Hail To The Thief
34	.	At the Drive-In	Relationship of Command
34	.	OutKast	Stankonia
36	.	Beck	Sea Change
37	.	MGMT	Oracular Spectacular
37	.	Portishead	Third
39	.	Amy Winehouse	Back To Black
39	.	The National	Boxer
41	.	Isis	Panopticon
41	.	The White Stripes	White Blood Cells
43	.	Agalloch	The Mantle
43	.	Coldplay	A Rush Of Blood To The Head
45	.	Green Day	American Idiot
46	.	Agalloch	Ashes Against the Grain
46	.	D’Angelo	Voodoo
48	.	Bruce Springsteen	Magic
48	.	Electric Wizard	Dopethrone
50	.	Tom Waits	Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
51	.	Cat Power	The Greatest
51	.	Joanna Newsom	Ys
53	.	Johnny Cash	American III: Solitary Man
53	.	Porcupine Tree	In Absentia
53	.	Yeah Yeah Yeahs	Fever To Tell
56	.	Sigur Rós	Ágætis Byrjun
56	.	The Mars Volta	De-Loused in the Comatorium
58	.	Converge	Jane Doe
59	.	Boards of Canada	Geogaddi
59	.	My Morning Jacket	Z
61	.	Lil Wayne	Tha Carter III
62	.	The Microphones	The Glow Pt. 2
63	.	OutKast	Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
63	.	Unwound	Leaves Turn Inside You
65	.	Clint Mansell	The Fountain
66	.	Broken Social Scene	You Forgot It in People
66	.	Fleet Foxes	Fleet Foxes
66	.	U2	No Line On The Horizon
69	.	50 Cent	Get Rich Or Die Tryin’
69	.	The National	Alligator
71	.	Opeth	Ghost Reveries
71	.	Ryan Adams	Heartbreaker
73	.	Kings Of Leon	Aha Shake Heartbreak
73	.	Yann Tiersen	Amélie
75	.	Kanye West	Late Registration
76	.	Arctic Monkeys	Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
76	.	Sigur Ros	Takk
78	.	Elliott Smith	Figure 8
78	.	Immolation	Close to a World Below
80	.	The Avalanches	Since I Left You
80	.	The Killers	Hot Fuss
82	.	Opeth	Damnation
82	.	System Of A Down	Toxicity
84	.	Kanye West	Graduation
84	.	Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds	No More Shall We Part
86	.	Deltron 3030	Deltron 3030
86	.	Justin Timberlake	FutureSex/LoveSounds
88	.	Johnny Cash	American IV: The Man Comes Around
89	.	Panda Bear	Person Pitch
89	.	TV On The Radio	Dear Science
91	.	Fiona Apple	Extraordinary Machine
91	.	山岡晃 [Akira Yamaoka]	Silent Hill 2: Original Soundtrack
93	.	Bright Eyes	I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning
94	.	Mastodon	Leviathan
94	.	Spoon	Kill The Moonlight
96	.	Coil	The Ape of Naples
96	.	M.I.A.	Arular
98	.	Fugazi	The Argument
98	.	Kings Of Leon	Only By The Night
100	.	Animal Collective	Merriweather Post Pavilion
100	.	Norah Jones	Come Away With Me

Now that's a list!

Best albums of the 2000s - Rolling Stone vs The People 4: Differences

In this post I look at albums that appeared on one list but not on the other.

Albums on the Rolling Stone list but not the RYM list

50 Cent	Get Rich Or Die Tryin’
Alicia Keys	Songs In A Minor
Amadou & Miriam	Dimanche A Bamako
Amy Winehouse	Back To Black
Antony & The Johnsons	I Am A Bird Now
Arctic Monkeys	Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
Beck	Sea Change
Bob Dylan	Love And Theft
Bob Dylan	Modern Times
Brian Wilson	Smile
Bright Eyes	I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning
Bright Eyes	Lifted Of The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground
Bruce Springsteen	Magic
Bruce Springsteen	The Rising
Cat Power	The Greatest
Coldplay	A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Coldplay	Parachutes
Coldplay	Viva La Vida
D’Angelo	Voodoo
Danger Mouse	The Grey Album
Death Cab For Cutie	Transatlanticism
Elliott Smith	Figure 8
Eminem	The Eminem Show
Eminem	The Marshall Mathers LP
Fiona Apple	Extraordinary Machine
Franz Ferdinand	Franz Ferdinand
Gillian Welch	Time The Revelator
Gnarls Barkley	St. Elsewhere
Green Day	American Idiot
Jay-Z	The Black Album
Jay-Z	The Blueprint
Johnny Cash	Unearthed
Justin Timberlake	FutureSex/LoveSounds
Kanye West	808s And Heartbreak
Kanye West	Graduation
Kanye West	Late Registration
Kings Of Leon	Aha Shake Heartbreak
Kings Of Leon	Youth And Young Manhood
Leonard Cohen	10 New Songs
Lil Wayne	Tha Carter III
M.I.A.	Arular
M.I.A.	Kala
Manu Chao	Próxima Estación Esperanza
MGMT	Oracular Spectacular
Missy Elliott	Under Construction
My Morning Jacket	Z
Norah Jones	Come Away With Me
OutKast	Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
OutKast	Stankonia
Phoenix	Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Red Hot Chili Peppers	Stadium Arcadium
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss	Raising Sand
Ryan Adams	Gold
Ryan Adams	Heartbreaker
Sigur Rós	Ágætis Byrjun
Sleater-Kinney	The Woods
Spoon	Kill The Moonlight
System Of A Down	Toxicity
The Black Keys	Attack & Release
The Hives	Veni Vidi Vicious
The Hold Steady	Almost Killed Me
The Killers	Hot Fuss
The Libertines	Up The Brackett
The New Pornographers	Electric Version
The Postal Service	Give Up
The Shins	Oh, Inverted World
The Streets	Original Pirate Material
The White Stripes	White Blood Cells
TV On The Radio	Dear Science
TV On The Radio	Return To Cookie Mountain
U2	All That You Can’t Leave Behind
U2	How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
U2	No Line On The Horizon
Vampire Weekend	Vampire Weekend
Wilco	Sky Blue Sky
Yeah Yeah Yeahs	Fever To Tell

3 each by Coldplay, Kanye and U2. 2 each by Dylan, Bright Eyes, Springstein, Eminem, Jay-Z, Kings of Leon, OutKast, Ryan Adams, TV on the Radio. There's a lot of big names here.

Albums on the RYM list but not the Rolling Stone list

Agalloch	Ashes Against the Grain
Agalloch	The Mantle
Animal Collective	Merriweather Post Pavilion
Animal Collective	Strawberry Jam
Arcturus	The Sham Mirrors
At the Drive-In	Relationship of Command
Boards of Canada	Geogaddi
Bob Dylan	The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs - Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006
Boris	Boris at Last -Feedbacker-
Brand New	The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me
Broken Social Scene	You Forgot It in People
Burial	Untrue
Cannibal Ox	The Cold Vein
Clint Mansell	The Fountain
Coil	The Ape of Naples
Converge	Jane Doe
CunninLynguists	A Piece of Strange
Deftones	White Pony
Deltron 3030	Deltron 3030
Devin Townsend	Terria
Electric Wizard	Dopethrone
Explosions in the Sky	The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place
Fugazi	The Argument
Ghostface Killah	Supreme Clientele
Godspeed You! Black Emperor	Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven!
Godspeed You! Black Emperor	Yanqui U.X.O.
Howard Shore	The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Immolation	Close to a World Below
Isis	Panopticon
Isis	Oceanic
J Dilla	Donuts
Jay-Z	The Blueprint
Joanna Newsom	Ys
Johnny Cash	American IV: The Man Comes Around
Madvillain	Madvillainy
Mastodon	Crack the Skye
Mastodon	Leviathan
Mitch Hedberg	Mitch All Together
Modest Mouse	The Moon & Antarctica
Moonsorrow	Kivenkantaja
Moonsorrow	Verisäkeet
Morton Feldman	String Quartet No. 2
Neurosis	A Sun That Never Sets
Neurosis	The Eye of Every Storm
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds	No More Shall We Part
Opeth	Blackwater Park
Opeth	Damnation
Opeth	Ghost Reveries
Pain of Salvation	Remedy Lane
Pain of Salvation	The Perfect Element I
Panda Bear	Person Pitch
Porcupine Tree	Deadwing
Porcupine Tree	In Absentia
Porcupine Tree	Lightbulb Sun
Portishead	Third
Primordial	To the Nameless Dead
Queens of the Stone Age	Songs for the Deaf
Sigur Ros	Takk
Stars of the Lid	The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid
Sun Kil Moon	Ghosts of the Great Highway
The Avalanches	Since I Left You
The Mars Volta	De-Loused in the Comatorium
The Microphones	The Glow Pt. 2
The National	Alligator
The National	Boxer
The Roots	Game Theory
Tim Hecker	Harmony in Ultraviolet
Tom Waits	Alice
Tom Waits	Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
Tool	Lateralus
Ulver	Perdition City
Unwound	Leaves Turn Inside You
Vektor	Black Future
Venetian Snares	Rossz csillag alatt született
Yann Tiersen	Amélie
山岡晃 [Akira Yamaoka]	Silent Hill 2: Original Soundtrack

Opeth and Porcupine Tree each appear 3 times. Aggaloch, Animal Collective, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Isis, Mastodon, Moonsorrow, Neurosis, Pain of Salvation, The National and Tom Waits each appear twice. So this is a heavier, more progressive, less mainstream list.

Best albums of the 2000s - Rolling Stone vs The People 3: Similarities

In this post I look at albums that appeared on both lists. There were 24 of them.

Albums appearing on both Rolling Stone and RYM lists

Arcade Fire	Funeral
Arcade Fire	Neon Bible
Björk	Vespertine
Bon Iver	For Emma, Forever Ago
Daft Punk	Discovery
Fleet Foxes	Fleet Foxes
Interpol	Turn On The Bright Lights
Johnny Cash	American III: Solitary May
Kanye West	The College Dropout
Kings Of Leon	Only By The Night
LCD Soundsystem	Sound Of Silver
PJ Harvey	Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
Queens Of The Stone Age	Rated R
Radiohead	Amnesiac
Radiohead	Hail To The Thief
Radiohead	In Rainbows
Radiohead	Kid A
Sigur Rós	()
Sufjan Stevens	Illinoise
The Flaming Lips	Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
The Strokes	Is This It
The White Stripes	Elephant
Wilco	Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Yo La Tengo	And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out

Radiohead rule. Arcade Fire is the only other artists to get more than one album on both lists. Its a pretty good collection of albums. But very white and not very dancy or heavy.

Best albums of the 2000s - Rolling Stone vs The People 2: Top Albums

Last post I looked at the artists with the most entries in the top 100. This time I'll look at the top 10 albums, starting with Rolling Stone.

Rolling Stone - Top 10 Albums of the 2000s

1	. Radiohead	Kid A
2.	The Strokes	Is This It
3.	Wilco	Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
4.	Jay-Z	The Blueprint
5.	The White Stripes	Elephant
6.	Arcade Fire	Funeral
7.	Eminem	The Marshall Mathers LP
8.	Bob Dylan	Modern Times
9.	M.I.A.	Kala
10.	Kanye West	The College Dropout

Not a bad list - a little bit of something for most people - except metal of any type. The Strokes don't really float my boat - but that must be just me because Is This It got rave reviews. There is not much that's actually objectionable here - but the best 10 albums of the decade? Let's see if the people capture the zeitgeist any better.

RYM - Top 10 Albums of the 2000s

1	.	Radiohead	Kid A
2	.	Arcade Fire	Funeral
3	.	Godspeed You Black Emperor!	Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven!
4	.	Radiohead	In Rainbows
5	.	Opeth	Blackwater Park
6	.	Madvillain	Madvillainy
7	.	Wilco	Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
8	.	Tool	Lateralus
9	.	Radiohead	Amnesiac
10	.	Sufjan Stevens	Illinois

The people really love Radiohead! I don't have a problem with that - give genius its due, I say. GYBE, Opeth, Tool, Sufjan Stevens are all strong claims - IMHO more so than the albums included in the Rolling Stone list. I confess to not being across Madvillainy. I love it when this kind of analysis throws up things I've previously missed.

Overall, leaving Radiohead aside, the Rolling Stone list seems far more mainstream. The RYM list far edgier and with Opeth and Tool much heavier. If I had to choose one for a sojourn on a desert island I'd take the RYM list.

Best albums of the 2000s - Rolling Stone vs The People 1: Favourite Artists

Here we look at all the artists that had more than 1 entry on either chart. I have perhaps been sloppy in conflating number of entries with popularity. Theoretically an artist could have had a single mega album that was more popular than all the others.

Here are the most popular Rolling Stone artists. The number of entries on the chart is shown in parentheses:

1. = Kanye West (4)
1. = Radiohead (4)
3. = Coldplay (3)
3. = Kings of Leon (3)
3. = U2 (3)
6. = Arcade Fire (2)

6. = Bob Dylan (2)

6. = Bright Eyes (2)

6. = Bruce Springsteen (2)

6. = Eminem (2)

6. = Jay-Z (2)

6. = Johnny Cash (2)

6. = M.I.A. (2)

6. = OutKast (2)

6. = Ryan Adams (2)

6. = Sigur Rós (2)

6. = The White Stripes (2)

6. = TV On The Radio (2)

6. = Wilco (2)

Radiohead, Coldplay and U2 come as no surprise at the top of the list. But Kanye and Kings of Leon were a bit surprising. Otherwise this is a very white and very rock oriented list.

Here is the RYM list:

1. Radiohead (4)

2. = Opeth (3)

2. = Porcupine Tree (3)

4. = Agalloch (2)

4. = Animal Collective (2)

4. = Arcade Fire (2)

4. = Johnny Cash (2)

4. = Mastodon (2)

4. = Moonsorrow (2)

4. = Neurosis (2)

4. = Pain of Salvation (2)

4. = Queens of the Stone Age (2)

4. = The National  (2)

4. = Tom Waits  (2)

Whoa! What happened? Even whiter, rockier and heavier. Radiohead still rules, but Kanye, Coldplay, Kings of Leon and U2 are out. Kanye does score 1 entry in the RYM 100 - but Coldplay, U2 and Kings of Leon don't chart at all. Its tempting to say RYM is a much younger demographic - but then Johnny Cash and Tom Waits represent the old hands. Rolling Stone is certainly much more mainstream.

Interestingly, when I looked at the 500 best albums of all time - the RYM chart was blacker and jazzier. 

Best albums of the 2000s - Rolling Stone vs The People redux

In July 2012 I started publishing a series of stories comparing Rolling Stone magazine's list of the best 500 albums of all time with the top 500 albums on Rate Your Music (RYM). RYM is my favourite music discovery tool. It is a dedicated, crows sourced rating site.

I just discovered Rolling Stone's list of the best albums of the 2000s. I thought it would be interesting to repeat the analysis for this recent decade.

You can find the Rolling Stone list here. I generated the RYM list on 6 July 2014. For the record, here it is:

1	.	Radiohead	Kid A
2	.	Arcade Fire	Funeral
3	.	Godspeed You Black Emperor!	Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven!
4	.	Radiohead	In Rainbows
5	.	Opeth	Blackwater Park
6	.	Madvillain	Madvillainy
7	.	Wilco	Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
8	.	Tool	Lateralus
9	.	Radiohead	Amnesiac
10	.	Sufjan Stevens	Illinois
11	.	Interpol	Turn On the Bright Lights
12	.	Sigur Rós	()
13	.	Modest Mouse	The Moon & Antarctica
14	.	J Dilla	Donuts
15	.	Queens of the Stone Age	Songs for the Deaf
16	.	At the Drive-In	Relationship of Command
17	.	The Flaming Lips	Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
18	.	Portishead	Third
19	.	The National	Boxer
20	.	Isis	Panopticon
21	.	Agalloch	The Mantle
22	.	The Strokes	Is This It
23	.	Agalloch	Ashes Against the Grain
24	.	Electric Wizard	Dopethrone
25	.	Tom Waits	Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
26	.	Joanna Newsom	Ys
27	.	Radiohead	Hail to the Thief
28	.	Porcupine Tree	In Absentia
29	.	The Mars Volta	De-Loused in the Comatorium
30	.	Converge	Jane Doe
31	.	Boards of Canada	Geogaddi
32	.	Björk	Vespertine
33	.	The Microphones	The Glow Pt. 2
34	.	Unwound	Leaves Turn Inside You
35	.	Clint Mansell	The Fountain
36	.	Broken Social Scene	You Forgot It in People
37	.	The National	Alligator
38	.	Opeth	Ghost Reveries
39	.	Yann Tiersen	Amélie
40	.	Arcade Fire	Neon Bible
41	.	Sigur Ros	Takk
42	.	Immolation	Close to a World Below
43	.	The Avalanches	Since I Left You
44	.	Opeth	Damnation
45	.	Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds	No More Shall We Part
46	.	Deltron 3030	Deltron 3030
47	.	Johnny Cash	American IV: The Man Comes Around
48	.	Panda Bear	Person Pitch
49	.	山岡晃 [Akira Yamaoka]	Silent Hill 2: Original Soundtrack
50	.	Daft Punk	Discovery
51	.	Mastodon	Leviathan
52	.	Coil	The Ape of Naples
53	.	Fugazi	The Argument
54	.	Animal Collective	Merriweather Post Pavilion
55	.	Boris	Boris at Last -Feedbacker-
56	.	Mastodon	Crack the Skye
57	.	Ulver	Perdition City
58	.	Burial	Untrue
59	.	Venetian Snares	Rossz csillag alatt született
60	.	Jay-Z	The Blueprint
61	.	Isis	Oceanic
62	.	Neurosis	A Sun That Never Sets
63	.	Mitch Hedberg	Mitch All Together
64	.	Cannibal Ox	The Cold Vein
65	.	The White Stripes	Elephant
66	.	Bob Dylan	The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs - Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006
67	.	Johnny Cash	American III: Solitary Man
68	.	Porcupine Tree	Lightbulb Sun
69	.	PJ Harvey	Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea
70	.	Porcupine Tree	Deadwing
71	.	Primordial	To the Nameless Dead
72	.	Kanye West	The College Dropout
73	.	Bon Iver	For Emma, Forever Ago
74	.	Godspeed You! Black Emperor	Yanqui U.X.O.
75	.	Howard Shore	The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
76	.	Stars of the Lid	The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid
77	.	Queens of the Stone Age	Rated R
78	.	Moonsorrow	Verisäkeet
79	.	Explosions in the Sky	The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place
80	.	Tim Hecker	Harmony in Ultraviolet
81	.	Morton Feldman	String Quartet No. 2
82	.	Sun Kil Moon	Ghosts of the Great Highway
83	.	Deftones	White Pony
84	.	Ghostface Killah	Supreme Clientele
85	.	CunninLynguists	A Piece of Strange
86	.	The Roots	Game Theory
87	.	Animal Collective	Strawberry Jam
88	.	Neurosis	The Eye of Every Storm
89	.	LCD Soundsystem	Sound of Silver
90	.	Fleet Foxes	Fleet Foxes
91	.	Moonsorrow	Kivenkantaja
92	.	Yo La Tengo	And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
93	.	Negură Bunget	OM
94	.	Tom Waits	Alice
95	.	Devin Townsend	Terria
96	.	Arcturus	The Sham Mirrors
97	.	Pain of Salvation	Remedy Lane
98	.	Pain of Salvation	The Perfect Element I
99	.	Vektor	Black Future
100	.	Brand New	The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me