My Favorite Bands (A Scientific Approach)
Discussion of favorites are very often dominated by fickle emotions and very little hard data. Well, earlier today, I decided I would figure out which bands were my favorite by a more scientific means. I took my carefully crafted “Favorites” playlist from foobar2000, my computer music player. Then I sorted based on the number of songs by each artist. Here are the results (top 15 only):
- Linkin Park – 61 songs
- Evanescence – 22 songs
- U2 – 15 songs
- Nirvana – 13 songs
- Pearl Jam – 12 Songs
- Smashing Pumpkins – 12 songs
- Silverchair – 11 songs
- Metallica
- Stone Temple Pilots – 9 songs
- Screaming Trees – 8 songs
- Alice In Chains
- Collective Soul
- Santana
- Bush
- Alanis Morissette – 7 songs
- Eve 6
I was actually somewhat surprised U2 did so well. But they do have a lot of good older material, so that made sense in retrospect. I was also surprised that Collective Soul did so poorly – but really they only had one brilliant album – their breakout 1995 self-titled release. Nevertheless, I am confident that this will cause me to reevaluate some of their music, and perhaps add it to my list.
This post also premieres a new category – “Music.” YaY!
April 12th, 2005 at 07:00:36 am
If I recall, it was our similar taste in music that originally brought me to your site. Good to see you’ve added a music category, too.
April 12th, 2005 at 03:18:13 pm
I recently saw Collective Soul live. It was pretty cool.
I’d have to say that the method is flawed if I tried it myself, because I tend to listen to whole albums rather than songs individually, and obviously artists that have been around longer and that I have more albums for will do better.
You’ve got some good picks, though I’m confused as to why Linkin Park and Evanescence rank so highly, while Soundgarden and Rage Against The Machine aren’t even present. For shame! :P And where’s the Zep (Led Zeppelin)?
Still, lots of good picks. It’s always hard to choose, isn’t it?