(Roughly) Daily

From the ever-illuminating Overthinking It and contributor Mark Lee:

The Hubbert Peak Theory of Rock, or, Why We’re All Out of Good Songs

Many rock purists and music snobs (myself included) often lament the quality of most modern pop/rock music.  “Music these days is so trite and derivative,” they say.  “It’s just been downhill since the 60’s and 70’s.  Those were the days.”

A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine added fuel to the music snobbery fire with its “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list.  Anyone casually paging through the list would notice that the bulk of the list was comprised of songs from the 60’s and 70’s, just like the music snobs always say.

I, however, wasn’t content with the casual analysis.  So I punched the list into Excel, crunched some numbers, and found an interesting parallel between the decline of rock music quality and, of all things, the decline in US oil discovery and production:

Read the analysis here.

As we oil up our turntables and dust off the vinyls, we might smile a silent smile in honor of that most marvelous of the Marx Brothers, Harpo:  Adolph (later known as Arthur, then as Harpo) Marx was born on this date in 1888 in New York City.

Harpo