(Roughly) Daily

From Glenn Macdonald (in his capacity as Spotify’s genre taxonomist– or as he put’s it “mechanic of the spiritual compases of erratic discovery robots that run on love”)

This is a mapping of genres to words, and words to genres, using words that are used distinctively in the titles of songs. A genre’s words are ranked by how disproportionately they appear in that genre’s songs’ titles compared to all songs. A word’s genres are ranked by the position of that word in each genre’s word list. 1525 genres and 4712 words qualify.

Visit “Genres in Their Own Words”  And while you’re there, explore the genre map and the other nifty resources at Glenn’s site, Every Noise At Once.

* Bob Dylan

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As we slip on the headphones, we might spare a thought for Sir George Henry Martin; he died on this date in 2016.  A record producer, arranger, composer, conductor, audio engineer, and musician, Martin began his career as a producer of comedy and novelty records in the early 1950s, working with Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, and Bernard Cribbins, among others.  In 1962, while working at EMI/Parlophone, Martin was so impressed by Brian Epstein’s enthusiasm, that he agreed to record the Beatles before seeing or hearing them (and despite the fact that they’d been turned down by Decca).

Martin went on to produce 23 number ones on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, 19 of which were by The Beatles.  Indeed, Paul McCartney referred to Martin as “the fifth Beatle.”  He also produced chart topping hits for McCartney (“Say Say Say” with Michael Jackson and “Ebony and Ivory” with Stevie Wonder), Elton John (“Candle in the Wind”) and America (“Sister Golden Hair”).

George Harrison, Paul McCartney, George Martin, and John Lennon in the studio in 1966