December 8, 2025 • 35 mins
Welcome to a special edition of Takin’ A Walk with Buzz Knight! This episode kicks off Buzz’s Book Club week, where Buzz shares his top recommendations for new books about music that every music lover needs to read.
In this fascinating conversation on the music history podcast Buzz Knight music sits down with author Chris Dalla Riva to explore his groundbreaking book “Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us About the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves.” Chris takes listeners on a data-driven journey through decades of chart-topping music, revealing surprising patterns and insights about what makes hit songs resonate with audiences across generations. Normally Takin A Walk finds the inside music stories but this episode takes us into a whole different analysis of american music.
From analyzing the musical DNA of Billboard chart toppers to uncovering hidden trends in hit songs spanning from the 1960s to today, Chris Dalla Riva brings a fresh, analytical perspective to understanding popular music. His chart topping research challenges conventional wisdom about songwriting, production, and what truly makes a song connect with millions of listeners.
Whether you’re a musician, music industry professional, or simply a fan who wants to understand why certain hit songs become cultural phenomena, this episode offers eye-opening revelations backed by hard data. Chris discusses everything from tempo and key signatures to lyrical themes and how the streaming era has transformed what we consider a “hit.”
Tune in as Buzz and Chris dive deep into the science and art behind the music we love, making this essential listening for anyone curious about the mechanics of musical success.
If this episode of Takin’ a Walk – Music History on Foot struck a chord with you, we invite you to keep the journey going by exploring the many other stories, conversations, and musical pathways waiting in our episode library. Every installment of the podcast opens a new door into the world of music—whether it’s a deep dive into a legendary artist’s creative process, a walk through the overlooked corners of music history, or a compelling conversation with the people who shape the soundtrack of our lives. There’s an entire universe of rhythm, narrative, nostalgia, discovery, and behind-the-scenes insight spread across our past episodes, each one crafted to make your next walk, drive, workout, or moment of downtime more meaningful, more memorable, and more connected to the music you love. So don’t stop here, take a few extra steps and check out the rest of the Takin’ a Walk – Music History on Foot catalog. The stories waiting for you are as timeless, surprising, and inspiring as the songs that have carried you through your life. Keep listening and discover your next favorite episode
Support the show: https://takinawalk.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Taking a Walk.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Well, I'm Buzz Night, the host of the Taking a
Walk podcast, and welcome. We have a special episode here
with Chris della Riva. He's the author of a book
called Uncharted Territory, What Numbers tell Us about the biggest
hit songs and ourselves. And Chris, I'm so excited to
talk to you about this book. I'm kind of a
(00:23):
numbers geek in my own way, so I'm fascinated by
the storyline. You got a few things we're going to
tantalize people about, aren't we. I hope so, Like, for example,
hit songs in the nineteen fifties, they were regularly about
gruesome deaths.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Not the topic you would think for a pop song,
but yes, pretty common.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, you know what, podcasts can kind of uncover this,
so don't worry about it. We're going to get to
the bottom of it, Chris. So let's pay some bills
and come right back with Chris Della Riva Taking a Walk. Well,
thanks for being on Chris on the Take on a
Walk podcast. It's nice to be with you in person
(01:08):
here at the iHeart Studios in Midtown Manhattan, So thanks
for coming on by.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah, I was really happy we could get together in person.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
So before I embark on talking about your book, Uncharted Territory,
what numbers tell us about the biggest hit songs and ourselves?
I do have to subject you to our opening taking
a walk question. Since we call this taking a walk, Chris,
if you could take a walk with someone living or dead,
and I'm gonna really ask you to make it someone
(01:41):
around music, who would that person be and where would
you take that walk with him?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I knew this one was coming, obviously, but I still
a tough question. I feel like, in terms of musicians,
if there's anyone I could take a walk with, my
musical hero has been and remains Bruce Springsteen as a
good Jersey boy. So I feel like a walk with
Bruce Springsteen would be great also because not only do
I like his music, but anytime I listen to him
(02:08):
talk about music, it's very clear that the man is
a student of the game, and his knowledge about music
history and how the music industry works is obviously so
deep if you've ever get a chance. In twenty twelve,
he gave a great keynote address at south By Southwest,
and he sort of covers his career but he's really
talking about the rise and I guess fall sort of
(02:30):
fall of rock music over the decades. And he's just
very astute and very eloquent on the topic. So the
man can not only write music, but he seems like
he'd be a good conversational partner too.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Any particular place in New Jersey, I assume Chris that
you would go with him to take a walk.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I mean you'd have to go to one of the
classic Springsteen spots that he sings about, probably somewhere at
the Jersey Shore, probably in Asbury Park, which is where
the Stone Pony is, which is a club that he
came up at. I actually saw him play at See
Here Now, which is a festival they do in Asbury
Park on the Shore every year for the last couple
of years now, and he headlined it last year and
(03:10):
it was sort of a cool homecoming show. I feel
like it would be fun to go relive a lot
of those spots down where he made his name initially.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Oh and I love that area for sure. The company
I used to work for own some of those radio
stations down there, particularly the Rat Oh yeah, right, And
so we visited The Stone Pony one year at one
of the trips, and I have to prove it that
I made that trip. I've got a T shirt at
(03:40):
Pony T Shirt and a little secret I'll let you
and the audience in on. My wife has essentially banned
me from wearing this T shirt anymore in the future.
She said it needs to be relegated to the T
Shirt Hall of Fame Museum, which I didn't even know
existed in my own house. The reason being there's too
(04:02):
many holes underneath. That's just it's been really worn. It's
one of my favorite shirts, so I'm not getting rid
of it, but it is going to stay for sure
in the closet.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I think I've had a few T shirts inducted into
the Hall of Fame over the years.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
You can't help that. You got to keep them.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Yeah, they also band and music T shirts are classics
in the Hall of Fame because you'll wear them until
they're literally falling apart.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
It's a badge of honor.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So tell me about the first moment that you became
connected with music, because it's obvious you are fascinated by
data analytics. You work for a music streaming service called
audio Mac. But when in your life was the first
person that you first point that you knew you were,
(04:51):
you know, connected and loved music.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
So my current shtick is, and with the book, is
again connecting music with data. How can we quantify certain
things about MU to investigate things we hear in history
see if they're actually hold ups to a scrutiny. But
my initial love for music is that I loved listening
to music. I love playing music. I don't come from
a musical family in the sense that my parents weren't
(05:15):
singing or playing the piano around the house. My parents
love music. It was always in and around the house,
you know. I was always digging through my dad's CD
and cassette collections to find stuff. And probably when I
was in fifth or sixth grade, I started playing taking
guitar lessons, and I was immediately enamored with trying to
write my own song, start bands. And anytime there would be,
(05:36):
you know, a battle of the bands or some event
at the high school or in and around town, I
was sure to rope a bunch of people, whether I
was good friends with them or not, into playing a
set with me. And that's still I think the motivating
factor for me is I still love to sit down,
write music and play music, and later when I got
interested or learned about data analytics, it just became a
(06:00):
natural pairing for me, which I think for a lot
of people's odd I feel like, growing up, you're often
told you like English and history, or you like math
and science. But to me, they've always lived together in
some sort of harmony. So I like to bring these
things together, you know, to illuminate ideas that might otherwise
escape us.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
So were you one of these folks who you know,
knew the A side and the B side of A
forty five when it was released? And who the you
know publishers were or whatever? I mean? Did you were you?
Were you someone who knew that degree of detail besides
the analytics or is that a little different?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
No, I think I think it's all related. If once
you start collecting information about songs, you know who produced
the song and who wrote the song, which label put
it out is just as interesting as what instruments were
played on the track. That certainly came a little bit
later for me, of course, you know the I think
that would be a weird angle to first come to
(07:03):
music for as like who produced this track? I think
Initially it's just like I love this song. I love
it so much. I love these artists that I want
to know more about it. And then you start flipping
over to the B side. Then you start looking, Oh,
this same producer produced all these songs I love. Who
is this guy or gal? So I am into that stuff.
(07:23):
But to me, it was always secondary, so just a
love of music.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Do you ever see the movie Diner? No?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I haven't.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Oh, you got to see it. It's a one of
the classic I would call it. Really, it was a
kind of a cult movie that became a classic movie.
And it's basically, you know, all the guys that grew
up together in the Baltimore area who are all intertwined,
and they go to the Diner after they you know,
(07:54):
have been out hanging out till all hours and just
you know, shoot the breeze. You got to see it.
There's a particular piece of Diner where Daniel Stern, the
character he plays, and he's married in the movie to
Ellen Barkin, and in that particular scene, he explains to
(08:15):
her how important it is for his record collection to
be filed perfectly, and he's actually pretty mean to her
over it, really, and she just says, I just want
to listen to the music, but see the movie. The
scenes remarkable. But it speaks to my question in terms
(08:38):
of the degree of detail. Because Daniel's character knew the
A side, the B side, he knew what it meant
to him the first time he heard it, the first
time he heard a particular song when he met her,
you know, all the things that are emotionally attached to it.
So definitely recommend. So what was the ultimate motivation for
(09:04):
you to write Uncharted Territory?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
It was something I feel like I accidentally fell into
right when I graduated college. I was working in the
exciting world of economic consulting and I was still playing
in bands. But I needed like an outlet from this job.
It was just very long hours. I didn't particularly like it.
I mean, it was a good job out of college.
(09:28):
So I came up with this quest. I was like,
I'm going to listen to every number one hit on
the Billboard Hot one hundred in history. The Hot one
hundred started in August nineteen fifty eight. It has changed
over the years, but it still exists in name till today.
So I would listen to one song per day. I'd
usually play along on my guitar. I track some information
about the songs, and it was just a nice I
(09:51):
don't know reprieve from my job at the end of
the day. Slowly again, but I worked with data in
this job, so I gain and I had a spreadsheet
I would try. I would like rate the songs, and
I would do it with a friend. But slowly I
started adding other things to the spreadsheet, to the things
you're talking about. What label put out the song, who
wrote it? How long is the song? Doesn't have an introduction?
(10:12):
I don't know, is there a saxophone on the song?
You name it? It's probably in this giant spreadsheet, which
I've since put online for anyone to take a look at.
But I got about fifty songs in it felt like
I noticed some trends. I was like, maybe I'll write
something up about this. I sent it off to a
professor I had in college and he was like, yeah,
this is pretty good. You should keep at it. So
at the time I never published, I'd never published anything,
(10:35):
but just over years and years, I would listen to
the number one hits I had this spreadsheet. I would
notice some trends. I would write a little bit more
about it, and I was like, I should try to
get this published. I would show it to people occasionally
they would seem to like it because the approach, again
was it's a data driven history of popular music. So
I usually just say it's music history, but with some
(10:56):
charts and graphs that illuminate what's going on. And it
took years and years, probably actually took eight years from
the time I initially tried to pitch this book to people.
But yeah, it just sort of accidentally happened. It started
with this weird quest to listen to every number one hit,
and then I just wanted to write about things I
was observing along the way, and it turned into a book.
(11:18):
But that was not the plan initially.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
And you said to yourself, it's too late to turn
back now. Yeah, I believe. Oh sorry, I couldn't help it.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
No, that's I mean. Then, initially I got to a
point where I was like, all right, I have to
I have hundreds of pages here. I need to Someone's
got to read this no matter what. So I was
lucky enough to eventually find a publisher, which is the
story of that is kind of funny. I am pretty
active on TikTok and I would post about these number
(11:48):
one songs sometimes, and I posted about this song want
Ads by Honey Cone, which was a number one in
the seventies for the most part Hot Wax Records, and
this guy who wrote for Billboards saw it. He sent
me an email, and then ultimately he connected me with
this publisher. So my journey through the number ones ended
(12:10):
up helping me get the book published too. But yeah,
I did get to the point where I was like,
I can't go back now. I gotta figure out how
to get this out there.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
But it was being seen on TikTok that kind of
drove that first connection. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, I was pitching agents and publishers on and off
for years, but I didn't only have any connections in
that world. I never really published anything, and it was
just this off the cuff TikTok about an obscure number
one hit that I love that ended up doing the trick.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So I love that. So the book covers the period
from nineteen fifty eight to twenty twenty five. And you
said in your note to me, also in its own way,
this journey, you know, kind of saved your life a
bit when you think about it in terms of you
know how music is important and what it what it
(13:00):
means to us. You know, we have this other podcast
called Music Save Me, and it's you know, often leans
on the healing powers certainly of music, but in general
what music means to us all you know, is a
saving grace for sure. So you found as you were
more immersed into this, you found songs that you knew
(13:23):
that you loved, and it probably made you love those
songs even more. But also it allowed you to discover
a lot of music that you had never heard before.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Totally. Yeah, Like I said, at the time I started
this weird little quest, I wasn't I wasn't particularly happy
with my day to day life, and this was a
nice little musical reprieve at the end of the day,
it was it was a might. When I've described this
to my sister years later, she was like, you know,
it just sounds like a healthy outlet for whatever you
(13:56):
were feeling at the time. But at the same time,
I started doing this with a friend. We would both
listen to the songs and we would text about the song.
But then over the time I started always bringing in
a third person to also listen to the song for
a stretch and everyone would rate the song. I track
all the ratings, and that's also part of the book,
Like at the end of each chapter, I give you
the highest and lowest rated songs of each era that's
(14:18):
covered in the chapter. But it was also a nice
way to bond with other people in my life.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I would occasionally invite friends along to rate a stretch
of song number one hits. I would occasionally invite you know,
my mom and my dad would come on for a
stretch from when they were like in high school. And
it was a nice way to connect with people across
time about music. And it really did, to your point,
show how music is for me. It really is a
(14:44):
social thing. It's meant to bring people together. As much
as we listen to so much music by ourselves these days,
it's a social art form, I think.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
And it's community. I mean, I believe on an episode
somewhere of the podcast, I've told the story, but going
to college at the University of Dayton and Dayton, Ohio
and working that was the first radio work that I
did there out at a college station. WVUD was the
(15:17):
name of it. When one of our favorite bands put
out something new, I'll use Steely Dan as a great example.
The you know, small community group of us, two or
three of us would be so ravenous to hear what
was new off of Steely Dan that you know, we'd
(15:39):
get together and we'd listen from cover to cover and.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
It would allow you know, comments and oh this reminds
me of this from the first album, or oh my god,
what are they doing here? And it was this community,
you know, discourse and connection that was such a memorable
part about first experience in so much music. So I
(16:06):
think you make an excellent point, how as the times
of change music and community other.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Than concerts, certainly, because that's community. It's different based on
people's lifestyle and ways to consume music.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah, totally. I mean, if you go back far enough,
I mean music is a very social thing. Think about
like the eighteen hundreds, you know, people getting around the
piano and singing a song. That was like a form
of entertainment in the pre radio and television world. And
I think we've lost a little bit of that, but
I think it's important to remember that that's ultimately what
(16:42):
music is. It's a community building thing. It's something that
people perform in churches and at funerals, and it still
has that power even though most people their musical experiences
popping in their earbuds and listening as they walked down
the street or at work or whatever.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yeah, it's it's way different. First concert you ever went.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
To, by the way, first concert I went. My first
two concerts I went to were in the same week.
I was very into classic rock growing up as a kid,
and we went to The Who and The Rolling Stones
in like six days, probably around two thousand and five
or two thousand and six. So that was a big
week for Chris growing up. So The Who was first
(17:28):
and the Rolling Stones were second, though my memories of
those shows are not as vivid as you might think.
The strangest thing about that Rolling Stones concert was the
opener was Kanye West. Wow, which I don't like. I'm
always looking back and always like how who set that up?
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Well, but the bills, if you study those, I'm sure
you have of the concert bills way back, you know,
really produced these you know, things that converged and that
didn't converge in terms of the way lineups were and
the Stones over their career, I mean, they were certainly
always known for, you know, just bringing someone out that was,
(18:09):
you know, maybe a little bit different than or vastly different,
you know. I mean I remember Stevie Wonder, you know,
opening for the Rolling Stones on a particular tour as
an example, you know, early on in his career, and
you know, obviously way earlier in their career. Where were
those shows? Were they in New York? Uh?
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, they were?
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Well, the Rolling Stone show was at MetLife Stadium formerly
Giants Stadium in East ruther for New Jersey, and the
Who show was at the P ANDC Arts Center or
it used to be the Garden State Arts Center, which
is a little bit down the Parkway in New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
We'll be right back with more the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
First music that you bought, whether it be album or
you know whatever CD.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
I was talking about. This was someone the other day.
I like the era I grew up in, like pop
punk was a very big thing, and I feel like
they must have had this on like the Disney Channel
or something, because this band's simple, Simple Plan was a
big pop punk band at the time. I actually saw
them in concert a few weeks ago. Coincidentally, that was
(19:26):
probably the their first album was probably the first CD
I bought, and I was like, I felt like this
was my own thing. But right around the same time,
I was also super into a CDC, so it's also
possible that there was an ac DC album purchased as
my first album. But it's either one of those two.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
It gets hazy, I realize, Yeah, yeah, trust me, I know.
So all right, we teased this at the outset. Hit
songs in the nineteen fifties were regularly about gruesome death.
Tell me about this dark story.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Yeah, so this was also sort of what started the book.
I got through about fifty number one hits and I
was like, sort of weird. There's a lot of number
ones about people dying, and they're like war people fighting,
which to me, having grown up in the two thousands,
I'm like, I don't associate the most popular songs in
the land with those topics. But there was this trend
(20:21):
at the time, and they come to be known as
teenage tragedy songs. Quintessential examples would be like Marked Dinning's
Teen Angel, The Shangri Laws, Leader of the Pack, dead
Man's Curve, and the way these songs typically go is
there's a young couple usually teenagers in love and one
(20:41):
of them dies tragically, and then you know, they sometimes
say they'll reunite again in the afterlife or something like that.
The Teen Angel Song by Marked Inning is I think
maybe the most quintessential example. It's super melodramatic. Teen couple
targets caught on the railroad tracks. They get out for
the train hits them, and the girl goes running back
(21:02):
to get the ring that the guy gave or she
ends up dying, and you're like, what the this is
dark stuff? Why was this ever popular? And in the
book I posit a couple of reasons. I mean, songs
of that nature historically have been around for hundreds of years,
and part of that might just be a connection to
the fact that, you know, the world used to be
more violent and people dying young used to be much
(21:26):
more common than it is today, especially in the United States.
But I think there's a lot of things that happened
specifically at the beginning of the twentieth century that influenced it.
Tons of tragedies, World wars, the Holocaust, Great Depression, influenza pandemic.
I mean, there was a lot of tragic death leading
up to this period. At the same time, you have
(21:49):
the teenage demographic emerge for the first time. If you
go back far enough, there is no such thing as teenagers,
and like the fifteen hundreds, it's you're a child and
then you're an adult. But after World War Two, with
an economic boom in the United States, there's more disposable
income going around, the rise of compulsory education, where you're
(22:11):
having people in this mid period of their lives being
forced to spend all day together. Culture starts to emerge
around that, and this is music about teens. It's depressing,
but it is about this emergent demographic at the time.
It's weird to think about as like being a teenager,
such a something that everyone is so aware of, but
(22:33):
it's in the grand scheme of things, sort of a
newish idea.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Well, and there's one other piece probably that was going
on with some of this, at least in the storyline
of this or the background of it, and that is
you know, hormones raging. Yeah, I mean you got to
include that as well. That makes a storyline. Yes, that
always helps, It always helps, all right.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
The next fact, it takes twice as many people to
write a hit today.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
As it did in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, so this is one that you could view this
in many different ways. You could view this as like, oh,
songwriters have gotten less skilled, so they need more help.
I don't think that's the case. But there has been
a huge increase in how songs are written from basically
nineteen sixty to around nineteen ninety. The standards two people,
(23:26):
and when you think of songwriters of that era, usually
you're thinking in duos, even if they always weren't working
in a due Elton John Bernie Taupin, Lenda McCartney, Jagger Richards,
Carol King, Jerry Goffin, you know, it goes on and on,
Burt Bacharach and whoever was writing lyrics with him at
the time. But around nineteen ninety this changes and we
see a pretty sharp uptick in the number of songwriters
(23:50):
credited on number one hits. This happens for a few
different reasons. One of the biggest is basically the way
we credit songs has changed. Whereas historically you were only
getting credited if you wrote melody chords lyrics. You know,
Ringo wasn't getting a songwriting credit even if he came
up with a great drum part on I Feel Fine
(24:12):
or whatever the song happened to be. But these days,
if you produce a beat, you're probably gonna get a
songwriting credit, even though historically that doesn't align with like
what we think of as copyrightable intellectual property. But it
seems like over the years, people have realized that you
make money more money if you have a hit song,
(24:33):
if you're collecting royalties, so people dole out so are
more likely to dole out songwriting credits. I think that's
probably the biggest thing that's led to this increase. But
at the same time, I think the way we write
songs now with computers also influences this. I could work
on a song on my computer, send it off to
someone somewhere else. And you see this with hit songs
or like passed around through a bunch of of many
(24:55):
different people. Songwriting credits are added along the way before
it's released, whereas you go back far enough, like you
could really only write who you were sitting down with.
So we do see this huge increase in songwriters on
hit songs. I don't think it's because songwriters have become
less skilled. I think some of these other factors have
led to an increase, but it certainly has happened.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
And there are some instances certainly where songwriting credits not
being divided the right way to turn into legal battles,
but relationships of band members things of that nature.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
I mean, the people always if you look at like
any of the recent albums by Beyonce, there are an
absurd number of songwriters and producers. And one thing I've
read is that because she's so popular, if anything resembles
something else, she'll probably get sued, so they just dole
out songwriting credits just to avoid lawsuits, which I could
(25:50):
see also being a thing. I feel like music lawsuits
are much more common these days than they were, you know,
forty or fifty years ago.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
All Right, So this next one that we tease is
a I believe it's controversial to this day, but we
can debate that a bit. The pop charts were rigged
in the nineteen seventies, which is pretty well documented in
terms of certainly pale and all of that. But talk
(26:19):
about that.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
The Billboard charts from nineteen ninety one onward, the code
was scanned for a purchase, that data was getting sent
off to Billboard when that happened, overnight, the charts changed
a ton. Suddenly there was more hip hop on the charts,
there was more country on the charts. So it was
clear that the tracking before that was not as accurate,
(26:43):
did not actually line up perfectly with what people were
actually buying. The way it was done before that was
just through surveying record stores, which is a perfectly sound
way to try to do something like this. People at
Billboard would call up a sample of record stores around
the country basically be like, what's selling. You could understand
(27:04):
why something like that could be manipulated on many different sides.
On the record store side, maybe you realize if something's
higher on the charts, people are more likely to buy it,
so you could you know, you lie to Billboards say oh,
this record by Paul Abdul is selling because you've got
a million copies of it and you need to move
them off the shelves. But at the same time, on
the Billboard side, because it was not this super scientific process,
(27:28):
it would be very easy for people to try to
manipulate people at Billboard to put something higher on the
charts because popularity usually begets more popularity, and in the seventies,
something I show in the book is there there is
some anomalist data for how long songs spend at the
top of the charts right around when this guy, bill
(27:49):
Wardlow was the head of Billboard, and you see this
anomalous behavior and then he leaves and then it sort
of goes back to normal. And people have alleged over
the years that he was he wasn't selling placements, but
he was he could be convinced to shuffle things around
the charts for his own benefit in certain ways. Not
(28:11):
to point the finger just completely at him. I mean,
this is a musical tale as old as time. But
basically before ninety one, nineteen ninety one, it was it
would be easier to manipulate the charts in some way.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Well, and now beyond Billboard, there are other industry publications
that include charts. And in fact, in this very room
he spoke with Paul Rappaport and recorded an episode of
Taking a Walk. Paul's a dear friend who ran promotion
(28:44):
for many, many years for Columbia Records, and he tells
a lot of stories in his book about some of
the shenanigans that were involved to get number ones.
Speaker 6 (28:58):
Yeah, and in fact, to this day, still in the
Nashville community. I believe they have on Mondays number one
celebrations for the artists who reach their first number one.
So it's still a competitive at least in those charts.
(29:21):
Those charts have nothing to do really with sales, They
have to do with airplay. So I think to this.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Day the topic of charts still is a bit of
a conundrum based on what's reality and what is fabricated.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Oh yeah, I mean it's this is the music business, right,
you know, people are trying to make money and having
getting your song that sort of publicity to be on
a chart, whether it's real or not, will probably lead
to more people checking it out, more money to be made.
I mean, there's always to your point, there's always ways
people are going to try to manipulate this stuff because
(30:00):
it's how careers are it's how careers are made. I mean,
it's it's it's like an open secret. Especially back in
the seventies and eighties. There's a great book called Hitman
by this guy Frederick Dannin where he talks about a
lot of these shenanigans that went on. It's pretty crazy stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
It's an amazing book, and I will confess I know
some of the characters that are in the book actually
who were represented very honestly, whether it be from the
record label side or from the radio side. So that
is a good one. I'm glad that you brought that
(30:38):
one up because it does tell the story, and it's
a dark story.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
It's it's cited. It's cited in my book. So it's
a great resource if you're interested in that stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
So then lastly, here on your some of your summary points.
And this one's fascinating to me how TikTok has made
artists more anonymous than ever before or talk about God.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Yeah, so this is something that I think is fascinating
if you've ever used TikTok. As you scroll through, I
mean you're seeing hundreds of videos, you know, you could
see over the course of a few minutes. And TikTok
has become really fundamental to breaking hit songs in the
same way that MTV was fundamental to breaking hits in
(31:22):
the eighties. The way it typically happens on TikTok is
there might be some video trend where people do something
specific in a video. There was a song by Sizza
called kill Bill that was a number one hit and
there was a trend where people would look I don't know,
sort of disheveled, and they would move their arm past
their face as if they were I don't know why
(31:43):
I'm picking this is sort of a gruesome trend, as
if they were stabbing someone because the song was called
kill Bill, and when their arm would move past their face,
they would suddenly be like all dolled up, dressed to
the nines. That helped that song become more popular. Sciss
is obviously a big star, but there's tons of stuff
on TikTok where there's a very popular trend that's associated
(32:05):
with a song, but you associate that sound with the
trend more so than you do with the artist. So
we've seen a bunch of hit songs over the last
five or six years where the artist does not it's
not really a launching point for their career that there
is this very popular trend associated with their song, because
(32:25):
no one is associating that song with them. They're associating
it with this trend, this social trend going around on
the app. So it's like TikTok is a double edged
sword in that way, and that it has certainly launched careers,
but at the same time, there are songs that are
very popular on that app that I don't think the
people who wrote them could sell out a hundred person room.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
And isn't it some of it though to that point
that you know, just the disposable nature of content, to
short lived nature of attention and the disposability of it.
I mean, it does speak to the overall trend line
of popular music right totally.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I mean that's the you don't really go back and
rewatch tiktoks. It's all. It's one and done for the
most part. The other interesting thing there is, like I said,
throughout the decades, various forms of content have been used
to promote songs. MTV is a great example. But when
you watched MTV in the eighties and you saw the
like a Virgin video, you of course associated that song
(33:32):
with Madonna because she's in the video and she has
decided how this video is going to look. Another weird
thing about TikTok and the Internet in general is sometimes
a song will become popular but has nothing to do
with the artist. A couple of years ago, Doja Cat
had this hit number one, a song called say So,
and it was not the song that they were promoting
(33:52):
from the record as a single, but then some girl
on tiktoks made a dance up to it. The dance
started going viral and then her team was like, oh,
actually this should be the single. So songs can become
very popular and it's sort of out of the artist's hands.
It's a very strange phenomenon that's unique to not just
TikTok but the Internet in general, because anyone can create content,
(34:13):
anyone can post.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Well, we talk about music history on this podcast. You
have taken us through song history here in a deep way.
Uncharted territory is the name of the book. What numbers
tell us about the biggest hit songs and ourselves. I
love how you blend in sort of the you know,
(34:35):
the psychology of it all based around the stats. So
it's a fascinating look. Congratulations on the book, Chris, and
thanks for being on the Taking a Walk podcast. Chris
Galla Riva.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm an easy guy to
find online, so folks find yea yeah, i am see
Dalla Riva music on most platforms, but if you search
my name you will find me. I'm too easy to
find online, I think, and the book's called Uncharted Territory
as you said, so check it out if you get
a chance.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Thanks for being on Taking a Walk, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
For having me, Thanks for listening to this episode of
the Taking a Walk podcast. Share this and other episodes
with your friends and follow us so you never miss
an episode. Taking a Walk is available on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Taking a Walk.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Well, I'm Buzz Night, the host of the Taking a
Walk podcast, and welcome. We have a special episode here
with Chris della Riva. He's the author of a book
called Uncharted Territory, What Numbers tell Us about the biggest
hit songs and ourselves. And Chris, I'm so excited to
talk to you about this book. I'm kind of a
(00:23):
numbers geek in my own way, so I'm fascinated by
the storyline. You got a few things we're going to
tantalize people about, aren't we. I hope so, Like, for example,
hit songs in the nineteen fifties, they were regularly about
gruesome deaths.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Not the topic you would think for a pop song,
but yes, pretty common.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, you know what, podcasts can kind of uncover this,
so don't worry about it. We're going to get to
the bottom of it, Chris. So let's pay some bills
and come right back with Chris Della Riva Taking a Walk. Well,
thanks for being on Chris on the Take on a
Walk podcast. It's nice to be with you in person
(01:08):
here at the iHeart Studios in Midtown Manhattan, So thanks
for coming on by.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah, I was really happy we could get together in person.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
So before I embark on talking about your book, Uncharted Territory,
what numbers tell us about the biggest hit songs and ourselves?
I do have to subject you to our opening taking
a walk question. Since we call this taking a walk, Chris,
if you could take a walk with someone living or dead,
and I'm gonna really ask you to make it someone
(01:41):
around music, who would that person be and where would
you take that walk with him?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I knew this one was coming, obviously, but I still
a tough question. I feel like, in terms of musicians,
if there's anyone I could take a walk with, my
musical hero has been and remains Bruce Springsteen as a
good Jersey boy. So I feel like a walk with
Bruce Springsteen would be great also because not only do
I like his music, but anytime I listen to him
(02:08):
talk about music, it's very clear that the man is
a student of the game, and his knowledge about music
history and how the music industry works is obviously so
deep if you've ever get a chance. In twenty twelve,
he gave a great keynote address at south By Southwest,
and he sort of covers his career but he's really
talking about the rise and I guess fall sort of
(02:30):
fall of rock music over the decades. And he's just
very astute and very eloquent on the topic. So the
man can not only write music, but he seems like
he'd be a good conversational partner too.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Any particular place in New Jersey, I assume Chris that
you would go with him to take a walk.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I mean you'd have to go to one of the
classic Springsteen spots that he sings about, probably somewhere at
the Jersey Shore, probably in Asbury Park, which is where
the Stone Pony is, which is a club that he
came up at. I actually saw him play at See
Here Now, which is a festival they do in Asbury
Park on the Shore every year for the last couple
of years now, and he headlined it last year and
(03:10):
it was sort of a cool homecoming show. I feel
like it would be fun to go relive a lot
of those spots down where he made his name initially.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Oh and I love that area for sure. The company
I used to work for own some of those radio
stations down there, particularly the Rat Oh yeah, right, And
so we visited The Stone Pony one year at one
of the trips, and I have to prove it that
I made that trip. I've got a T shirt at
(03:40):
Pony T Shirt and a little secret I'll let you
and the audience in on. My wife has essentially banned
me from wearing this T shirt anymore in the future.
She said it needs to be relegated to the T
Shirt Hall of Fame Museum, which I didn't even know
existed in my own house. The reason being there's too
(04:02):
many holes underneath. That's just it's been really worn. It's
one of my favorite shirts, so I'm not getting rid
of it, but it is going to stay for sure
in the closet.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I think I've had a few T shirts inducted into
the Hall of Fame over the years.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
You can't help that. You got to keep them.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Yeah, they also band and music T shirts are classics
in the Hall of Fame because you'll wear them until
they're literally falling apart.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
It's a badge of honor.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So tell me about the first moment that you became
connected with music, because it's obvious you are fascinated by
data analytics. You work for a music streaming service called
audio Mac. But when in your life was the first
person that you first point that you knew you were,
(04:51):
you know, connected and loved music.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
So my current shtick is, and with the book, is
again connecting music with data. How can we quantify certain
things about MU to investigate things we hear in history
see if they're actually hold ups to a scrutiny. But
my initial love for music is that I loved listening
to music. I love playing music. I don't come from
a musical family in the sense that my parents weren't
(05:15):
singing or playing the piano around the house. My parents
love music. It was always in and around the house,
you know. I was always digging through my dad's CD
and cassette collections to find stuff. And probably when I
was in fifth or sixth grade, I started playing taking
guitar lessons, and I was immediately enamored with trying to
write my own song, start bands. And anytime there would be,
(05:36):
you know, a battle of the bands or some event
at the high school or in and around town, I
was sure to rope a bunch of people, whether I
was good friends with them or not, into playing a
set with me. And that's still I think the motivating
factor for me is I still love to sit down,
write music and play music, and later when I got
interested or learned about data analytics, it just became a
(06:00):
natural pairing for me, which I think for a lot
of people's odd I feel like, growing up, you're often
told you like English and history, or you like math
and science. But to me, they've always lived together in
some sort of harmony. So I like to bring these
things together, you know, to illuminate ideas that might otherwise
escape us.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
So were you one of these folks who you know,
knew the A side and the B side of A
forty five when it was released? And who the you
know publishers were or whatever? I mean? Did you were you?
Were you someone who knew that degree of detail besides
the analytics or is that a little different?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
No, I think I think it's all related. If once
you start collecting information about songs, you know who produced
the song and who wrote the song, which label put
it out is just as interesting as what instruments were
played on the track. That certainly came a little bit
later for me, of course, you know the I think
that would be a weird angle to first come to
(07:03):
music for as like who produced this track? I think
Initially it's just like I love this song. I love
it so much. I love these artists that I want
to know more about it. And then you start flipping
over to the B side. Then you start looking, Oh,
this same producer produced all these songs I love. Who
is this guy or gal? So I am into that stuff.
(07:23):
But to me, it was always secondary, so just a
love of music.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Do you ever see the movie Diner? No?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I haven't.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Oh, you got to see it. It's a one of
the classic I would call it. Really, it was a
kind of a cult movie that became a classic movie.
And it's basically, you know, all the guys that grew
up together in the Baltimore area who are all intertwined,
and they go to the Diner after they you know,
(07:54):
have been out hanging out till all hours and just
you know, shoot the breeze. You got to see it.
There's a particular piece of Diner where Daniel Stern, the
character he plays, and he's married in the movie to
Ellen Barkin, and in that particular scene, he explains to
(08:15):
her how important it is for his record collection to
be filed perfectly, and he's actually pretty mean to her
over it, really, and she just says, I just want
to listen to the music, but see the movie. The
scenes remarkable. But it speaks to my question in terms
(08:38):
of the degree of detail. Because Daniel's character knew the
A side, the B side, he knew what it meant
to him the first time he heard it, the first
time he heard a particular song when he met her,
you know, all the things that are emotionally attached to it.
So definitely recommend. So what was the ultimate motivation for
(09:04):
you to write Uncharted Territory?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
It was something I feel like I accidentally fell into
right when I graduated college. I was working in the
exciting world of economic consulting and I was still playing
in bands. But I needed like an outlet from this job.
It was just very long hours. I didn't particularly like it.
I mean, it was a good job out of college.
(09:28):
So I came up with this quest. I was like,
I'm going to listen to every number one hit on
the Billboard Hot one hundred in history. The Hot one
hundred started in August nineteen fifty eight. It has changed
over the years, but it still exists in name till today.
So I would listen to one song per day. I'd
usually play along on my guitar. I track some information
about the songs, and it was just a nice I
(09:51):
don't know reprieve from my job at the end of
the day. Slowly again, but I worked with data in
this job, so I gain and I had a spreadsheet
I would try. I would like rate the songs, and
I would do it with a friend. But slowly I
started adding other things to the spreadsheet, to the things
you're talking about. What label put out the song, who
wrote it? How long is the song? Doesn't have an introduction?
(10:12):
I don't know, is there a saxophone on the song?
You name it? It's probably in this giant spreadsheet, which
I've since put online for anyone to take a look at.
But I got about fifty songs in it felt like
I noticed some trends. I was like, maybe I'll write
something up about this. I sent it off to a
professor I had in college and he was like, yeah,
this is pretty good. You should keep at it. So
at the time I never published, I'd never published anything,
(10:35):
but just over years and years, I would listen to
the number one hits I had this spreadsheet. I would
notice some trends. I would write a little bit more
about it, and I was like, I should try to
get this published. I would show it to people occasionally
they would seem to like it because the approach, again
was it's a data driven history of popular music. So
I usually just say it's music history, but with some
(10:56):
charts and graphs that illuminate what's going on. And it
took years and years, probably actually took eight years from
the time I initially tried to pitch this book to people.
But yeah, it just sort of accidentally happened. It started
with this weird quest to listen to every number one hit,
and then I just wanted to write about things I
was observing along the way, and it turned into a book.
(11:18):
But that was not the plan initially.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
And you said to yourself, it's too late to turn
back now. Yeah, I believe. Oh sorry, I couldn't help it.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
No, that's I mean. Then, initially I got to a
point where I was like, all right, I have to
I have hundreds of pages here. I need to Someone's
got to read this no matter what. So I was
lucky enough to eventually find a publisher, which is the
story of that is kind of funny. I am pretty
active on TikTok and I would post about these number
(11:48):
one songs sometimes, and I posted about this song want
Ads by Honey Cone, which was a number one in
the seventies for the most part Hot Wax Records, and
this guy who wrote for Billboards saw it. He sent
me an email, and then ultimately he connected me with
this publisher. So my journey through the number ones ended
(12:10):
up helping me get the book published too. But yeah,
I did get to the point where I was like,
I can't go back now. I gotta figure out how
to get this out there.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
But it was being seen on TikTok that kind of
drove that first connection. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, I was pitching agents and publishers on and off
for years, but I didn't only have any connections in
that world. I never really published anything, and it was
just this off the cuff TikTok about an obscure number
one hit that I love that ended up doing the trick.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So I love that. So the book covers the period
from nineteen fifty eight to twenty twenty five. And you
said in your note to me, also in its own way,
this journey, you know, kind of saved your life a
bit when you think about it in terms of you
know how music is important and what it what it
(13:00):
means to us. You know, we have this other podcast
called Music Save Me, and it's you know, often leans
on the healing powers certainly of music, but in general
what music means to us all you know, is a
saving grace for sure. So you found as you were
more immersed into this, you found songs that you knew
(13:23):
that you loved, and it probably made you love those
songs even more. But also it allowed you to discover
a lot of music that you had never heard before.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Totally. Yeah, Like I said, at the time I started
this weird little quest, I wasn't I wasn't particularly happy
with my day to day life, and this was a
nice little musical reprieve at the end of the day,
it was it was a might. When I've described this
to my sister years later, she was like, you know,
it just sounds like a healthy outlet for whatever you
(13:56):
were feeling at the time. But at the same time,
I started doing this with a friend. We would both
listen to the songs and we would text about the song.
But then over the time I started always bringing in
a third person to also listen to the song for
a stretch and everyone would rate the song. I track
all the ratings, and that's also part of the book,
Like at the end of each chapter, I give you
the highest and lowest rated songs of each era that's
(14:18):
covered in the chapter. But it was also a nice
way to bond with other people in my life.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I would occasionally invite friends along to rate a stretch
of song number one hits. I would occasionally invite you know,
my mom and my dad would come on for a
stretch from when they were like in high school. And
it was a nice way to connect with people across
time about music. And it really did, to your point,
show how music is for me. It really is a
(14:44):
social thing. It's meant to bring people together. As much
as we listen to so much music by ourselves these days,
it's a social art form, I think.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
And it's community. I mean, I believe on an episode
somewhere of the podcast, I've told the story, but going
to college at the University of Dayton and Dayton, Ohio
and working that was the first radio work that I
did there out at a college station. WVUD was the
(15:17):
name of it. When one of our favorite bands put
out something new, I'll use Steely Dan as a great example.
The you know, small community group of us, two or
three of us would be so ravenous to hear what
was new off of Steely Dan that you know, we'd
(15:39):
get together and we'd listen from cover to cover and.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
It would allow you know, comments and oh this reminds
me of this from the first album, or oh my god,
what are they doing here? And it was this community,
you know, discourse and connection that was such a memorable
part about first experience in so much music. So I
(16:06):
think you make an excellent point, how as the times
of change music and community other.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Than concerts, certainly, because that's community. It's different based on
people's lifestyle and ways to consume music.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah, totally. I mean, if you go back far enough,
I mean music is a very social thing. Think about
like the eighteen hundreds, you know, people getting around the
piano and singing a song. That was like a form
of entertainment in the pre radio and television world. And
I think we've lost a little bit of that, but
I think it's important to remember that that's ultimately what
(16:42):
music is. It's a community building thing. It's something that
people perform in churches and at funerals, and it still
has that power even though most people their musical experiences
popping in their earbuds and listening as they walked down
the street or at work or whatever.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yeah, it's it's way different. First concert you ever went.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
To, by the way, first concert I went. My first
two concerts I went to were in the same week.
I was very into classic rock growing up as a kid,
and we went to The Who and The Rolling Stones
in like six days, probably around two thousand and five
or two thousand and six. So that was a big
week for Chris growing up. So The Who was first
(17:28):
and the Rolling Stones were second, though my memories of
those shows are not as vivid as you might think.
The strangest thing about that Rolling Stones concert was the
opener was Kanye West. Wow, which I don't like. I'm
always looking back and always like how who set that up?
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Well, but the bills, if you study those, I'm sure
you have of the concert bills way back, you know,
really produced these you know, things that converged and that
didn't converge in terms of the way lineups were and
the Stones over their career, I mean, they were certainly
always known for, you know, just bringing someone out that was,
(18:09):
you know, maybe a little bit different than or vastly different,
you know. I mean I remember Stevie Wonder, you know,
opening for the Rolling Stones on a particular tour as
an example, you know, early on in his career, and
you know, obviously way earlier in their career. Where were
those shows? Were they in New York? Uh?
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, they were?
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Well, the Rolling Stone show was at MetLife Stadium formerly
Giants Stadium in East ruther for New Jersey, and the
Who show was at the P ANDC Arts Center or
it used to be the Garden State Arts Center, which
is a little bit down the Parkway in New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
We'll be right back with more the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
First music that you bought, whether it be album or
you know whatever CD.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
I was talking about. This was someone the other day.
I like the era I grew up in, like pop
punk was a very big thing, and I feel like
they must have had this on like the Disney Channel
or something, because this band's simple, Simple Plan was a
big pop punk band at the time. I actually saw
them in concert a few weeks ago. Coincidentally, that was
(19:26):
probably the their first album was probably the first CD
I bought, and I was like, I felt like this
was my own thing. But right around the same time,
I was also super into a CDC, so it's also
possible that there was an ac DC album purchased as
my first album. But it's either one of those two.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
It gets hazy, I realize, Yeah, yeah, trust me, I know.
So all right, we teased this at the outset. Hit
songs in the nineteen fifties were regularly about gruesome death.
Tell me about this dark story.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Yeah, so this was also sort of what started the book.
I got through about fifty number one hits and I
was like, sort of weird. There's a lot of number
ones about people dying, and they're like war people fighting,
which to me, having grown up in the two thousands,
I'm like, I don't associate the most popular songs in
the land with those topics. But there was this trend
(20:21):
at the time, and they come to be known as
teenage tragedy songs. Quintessential examples would be like Marked Dinning's
Teen Angel, The Shangri Laws, Leader of the Pack, dead
Man's Curve, and the way these songs typically go is
there's a young couple usually teenagers in love and one
(20:41):
of them dies tragically, and then you know, they sometimes
say they'll reunite again in the afterlife or something like that.
The Teen Angel Song by Marked Inning is I think
maybe the most quintessential example. It's super melodramatic. Teen couple
targets caught on the railroad tracks. They get out for
the train hits them, and the girl goes running back
(21:02):
to get the ring that the guy gave or she
ends up dying, and you're like, what the this is
dark stuff? Why was this ever popular? And in the
book I posit a couple of reasons. I mean, songs
of that nature historically have been around for hundreds of years,
and part of that might just be a connection to
the fact that, you know, the world used to be
more violent and people dying young used to be much
(21:26):
more common than it is today, especially in the United States.
But I think there's a lot of things that happened
specifically at the beginning of the twentieth century that influenced it.
Tons of tragedies, World wars, the Holocaust, Great Depression, influenza pandemic.
I mean, there was a lot of tragic death leading
up to this period. At the same time, you have
(21:49):
the teenage demographic emerge for the first time. If you
go back far enough, there is no such thing as teenagers,
and like the fifteen hundreds, it's you're a child and
then you're an adult. But after World War Two, with
an economic boom in the United States, there's more disposable
income going around, the rise of compulsory education, where you're
(22:11):
having people in this mid period of their lives being
forced to spend all day together. Culture starts to emerge
around that, and this is music about teens. It's depressing,
but it is about this emergent demographic at the time.
It's weird to think about as like being a teenager,
such a something that everyone is so aware of, but
(22:33):
it's in the grand scheme of things, sort of a
newish idea.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Well, and there's one other piece probably that was going
on with some of this, at least in the storyline
of this or the background of it, and that is
you know, hormones raging. Yeah, I mean you got to
include that as well. That makes a storyline. Yes, that
always helps, It always helps, all right.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
The next fact, it takes twice as many people to
write a hit today.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
As it did in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, so this is one that you could view this
in many different ways. You could view this as like, oh,
songwriters have gotten less skilled, so they need more help.
I don't think that's the case. But there has been
a huge increase in how songs are written from basically
nineteen sixty to around nineteen ninety. The standards two people,
(23:26):
and when you think of songwriters of that era, usually
you're thinking in duos, even if they always weren't working
in a due Elton John Bernie Taupin, Lenda McCartney, Jagger Richards,
Carol King, Jerry Goffin, you know, it goes on and on,
Burt Bacharach and whoever was writing lyrics with him at
the time. But around nineteen ninety this changes and we
see a pretty sharp uptick in the number of songwriters
(23:50):
credited on number one hits. This happens for a few
different reasons. One of the biggest is basically the way
we credit songs has changed. Whereas historically you were only
getting credited if you wrote melody chords lyrics. You know,
Ringo wasn't getting a songwriting credit even if he came
up with a great drum part on I Feel Fine
(24:12):
or whatever the song happened to be. But these days,
if you produce a beat, you're probably gonna get a
songwriting credit, even though historically that doesn't align with like
what we think of as copyrightable intellectual property. But it
seems like over the years, people have realized that you
make money more money if you have a hit song,
(24:33):
if you're collecting royalties, so people dole out so are
more likely to dole out songwriting credits. I think that's
probably the biggest thing that's led to this increase. But
at the same time, I think the way we write
songs now with computers also influences this. I could work
on a song on my computer, send it off to
someone somewhere else. And you see this with hit songs
or like passed around through a bunch of of many
(24:55):
different people. Songwriting credits are added along the way before
it's released, whereas you go back far enough, like you
could really only write who you were sitting down with.
So we do see this huge increase in songwriters on
hit songs. I don't think it's because songwriters have become
less skilled. I think some of these other factors have
led to an increase, but it certainly has happened.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
And there are some instances certainly where songwriting credits not
being divided the right way to turn into legal battles,
but relationships of band members things of that nature.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
I mean, the people always if you look at like
any of the recent albums by Beyonce, there are an
absurd number of songwriters and producers. And one thing I've
read is that because she's so popular, if anything resembles
something else, she'll probably get sued, so they just dole
out songwriting credits just to avoid lawsuits, which I could
(25:50):
see also being a thing. I feel like music lawsuits
are much more common these days than they were, you know,
forty or fifty years ago.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
All Right, So this next one that we tease is
a I believe it's controversial to this day, but we
can debate that a bit. The pop charts were rigged
in the nineteen seventies, which is pretty well documented in
terms of certainly pale and all of that. But talk
(26:19):
about that.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
The Billboard charts from nineteen ninety one onward, the code
was scanned for a purchase, that data was getting sent
off to Billboard when that happened, overnight, the charts changed
a ton. Suddenly there was more hip hop on the charts,
there was more country on the charts. So it was
clear that the tracking before that was not as accurate,
(26:43):
did not actually line up perfectly with what people were
actually buying. The way it was done before that was
just through surveying record stores, which is a perfectly sound
way to try to do something like this. People at
Billboard would call up a sample of record stores around
the country basically be like, what's selling. You could understand
(27:04):
why something like that could be manipulated on many different sides.
On the record store side, maybe you realize if something's
higher on the charts, people are more likely to buy it,
so you could you know, you lie to Billboards say oh,
this record by Paul Abdul is selling because you've got
a million copies of it and you need to move
them off the shelves. But at the same time, on
the Billboard side, because it was not this super scientific process,
(27:28):
it would be very easy for people to try to
manipulate people at Billboard to put something higher on the
charts because popularity usually begets more popularity, and in the seventies,
something I show in the book is there there is
some anomalist data for how long songs spend at the
top of the charts right around when this guy, bill
(27:49):
Wardlow was the head of Billboard, and you see this
anomalous behavior and then he leaves and then it sort
of goes back to normal. And people have alleged over
the years that he was he wasn't selling placements, but
he was he could be convinced to shuffle things around
the charts for his own benefit in certain ways. Not
(28:11):
to point the finger just completely at him. I mean,
this is a musical tale as old as time. But
basically before ninety one, nineteen ninety one, it was it
would be easier to manipulate the charts in some way.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Well, and now beyond Billboard, there are other industry publications
that include charts. And in fact, in this very room
he spoke with Paul Rappaport and recorded an episode of
Taking a Walk. Paul's a dear friend who ran promotion
(28:44):
for many, many years for Columbia Records, and he tells
a lot of stories in his book about some of
the shenanigans that were involved to get number ones.
Speaker 6 (28:58):
Yeah, and in fact, to this day, still in the
Nashville community. I believe they have on Mondays number one
celebrations for the artists who reach their first number one.
So it's still a competitive at least in those charts.
(29:21):
Those charts have nothing to do really with sales, They
have to do with airplay. So I think to this.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Day the topic of charts still is a bit of
a conundrum based on what's reality and what is fabricated.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Oh yeah, I mean it's this is the music business, right,
you know, people are trying to make money and having
getting your song that sort of publicity to be on
a chart, whether it's real or not, will probably lead
to more people checking it out, more money to be made.
I mean, there's always to your point, there's always ways
people are going to try to manipulate this stuff because
(30:00):
it's how careers are it's how careers are made. I mean,
it's it's it's like an open secret. Especially back in
the seventies and eighties. There's a great book called Hitman
by this guy Frederick Dannin where he talks about a
lot of these shenanigans that went on. It's pretty crazy stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
It's an amazing book, and I will confess I know
some of the characters that are in the book actually
who were represented very honestly, whether it be from the
record label side or from the radio side. So that
is a good one. I'm glad that you brought that
(30:38):
one up because it does tell the story, and it's
a dark story.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
It's it's cited. It's cited in my book. So it's
a great resource if you're interested in that stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
So then lastly, here on your some of your summary points.
And this one's fascinating to me how TikTok has made
artists more anonymous than ever before or talk about God.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Yeah, so this is something that I think is fascinating
if you've ever used TikTok. As you scroll through, I
mean you're seeing hundreds of videos, you know, you could
see over the course of a few minutes. And TikTok
has become really fundamental to breaking hit songs in the
same way that MTV was fundamental to breaking hits in
(31:22):
the eighties. The way it typically happens on TikTok is
there might be some video trend where people do something
specific in a video. There was a song by Sizza
called kill Bill that was a number one hit and
there was a trend where people would look I don't know,
sort of disheveled, and they would move their arm past
their face as if they were I don't know why
(31:43):
I'm picking this is sort of a gruesome trend, as
if they were stabbing someone because the song was called
kill Bill, and when their arm would move past their face,
they would suddenly be like all dolled up, dressed to
the nines. That helped that song become more popular. Sciss
is obviously a big star, but there's tons of stuff
on TikTok where there's a very popular trend that's associated
(32:05):
with a song, but you associate that sound with the
trend more so than you do with the artist. So
we've seen a bunch of hit songs over the last
five or six years where the artist does not it's
not really a launching point for their career that there
is this very popular trend associated with their song, because
(32:25):
no one is associating that song with them. They're associating
it with this trend, this social trend going around on
the app. So it's like TikTok is a double edged
sword in that way, and that it has certainly launched careers,
but at the same time, there are songs that are
very popular on that app that I don't think the
people who wrote them could sell out a hundred person room.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
And isn't it some of it though to that point
that you know, just the disposable nature of content, to
short lived nature of attention and the disposability of it.
I mean, it does speak to the overall trend line
of popular music right totally.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I mean that's the you don't really go back and
rewatch tiktoks. It's all. It's one and done for the
most part. The other interesting thing there is, like I said,
throughout the decades, various forms of content have been used
to promote songs. MTV is a great example. But when
you watched MTV in the eighties and you saw the
like a Virgin video, you of course associated that song
(33:32):
with Madonna because she's in the video and she has
decided how this video is going to look. Another weird
thing about TikTok and the Internet in general is sometimes
a song will become popular but has nothing to do
with the artist. A couple of years ago, Doja Cat
had this hit number one, a song called say So,
and it was not the song that they were promoting
(33:52):
from the record as a single, but then some girl
on tiktoks made a dance up to it. The dance
started going viral and then her team was like, oh,
actually this should be the single. So songs can become
very popular and it's sort of out of the artist's hands.
It's a very strange phenomenon that's unique to not just
TikTok but the Internet in general, because anyone can create content,
(34:13):
anyone can post.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Well, we talk about music history on this podcast. You
have taken us through song history here in a deep way.
Uncharted territory is the name of the book. What numbers
tell us about the biggest hit songs and ourselves. I
love how you blend in sort of the you know,
(34:35):
the psychology of it all based around the stats. So
it's a fascinating look. Congratulations on the book, Chris, and
thanks for being on the Taking a Walk podcast. Chris
Galla Riva.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm an easy guy to
find online, so folks find yea yeah, i am see
Dalla Riva music on most platforms, but if you search
my name you will find me. I'm too easy to
find online, I think, and the book's called Uncharted Territory
as you said, so check it out if you get
a chance.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Thanks for being on Taking a Walk, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
For having me, Thanks for listening to this episode of
the Taking a Walk podcast. Share this and other episodes
with your friends and follow us so you never miss
an episode. Taking a Walk is available on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com