August 22, 2025 • 45 mins
An amazing conversation with musician and data analyst Chris Dalla Riva, whose new book "Uncharted Territory-What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hot Songs and Ourselves" breaks down the Billboard Numbers one songs from 1958 to the present. Popular music colllides with analytics in this fascinating book, and delightful conversation. Enjoy!
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Danny Clinkscale Reasonably Irreverent podcast, insightful and
witty commentary, probing interviews and detours from the beaten path.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome to Kansas City Profiles, presented by Easton Roofing in
a truly truly fascinating discussion with Chris della Riva. He
is the author of the new book Uncharted Territory, What
Numbers tell Us about the biggest hit songs and ourselves.
It's the world's first data driven history of popular music.
He listened to all eleven hundred of the number one
(00:37):
songs from nineteen fifty eight to twenty twenty five, a
day at a time, and wrote a book about it.
He lives at the intersection of music and data. Chris
grew up in New Jersey. He's played in bands and
been recording music since his teenage years. He's currently his
full time job as senior product manager at Audio Mac,
which is a streaming service very popularnd the country and
(01:01):
around the world, and he also writes the popular newsletter
Can't Get Much Higher. Has had his work featured by
The Economists, Business Insider, NPR, and many others. He went
to Boston College, moved into the professional world, but still
has had a close connection with music. And his fascinating
breakdown of all the theories and mores and everything else
(01:25):
about the top records in the nation for well over
twenty five years is really, really a fascinating story. I
have read extensive excerpts of the book, but haven't read
the whole thing yet, and I can't wait. It's time
to find out more about it with Chris Della Riva,
the author of Uncharted Territory, What Numbers tell us about
(01:46):
the biggest hit songs and ourselves. It is our Kansas
City Profile presented by Easton Roofing.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
More of Danny's Reasonably Irreverent podcast after this.
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working with you. Chris. You grew up in West Caldwell,
(04:45):
New Jersey. Tell us a little bit about life as
a youngster in New Jersey.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
Yeah. West Caldwell's a suburb. Probably it depends on the traffic,
but I would say like forty minutes outside of New
York City. I was born there and we never moved,
so I lived there my entire life from birth to
about eighteen before I went to college. I was in
sports growing up. I was very into baseball, and then
when I was in middle school, I got interested in me.
(05:15):
I was always interested in music, but I started playing,
taking guitar lessons, and I was immediately enamored by the guitar.
Started playing in bands, writing music, releasing music, and I
still do that to this day. But I guess that
town is where my passion and love for music first emerged.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
So what was the trigger point maybe for you said
you were interested in playing sports like most kids there,
you know, and I can't say most, but many kids.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
And when did what?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Was was there any specific thing that kind of triggered
your interest in guitar and music?
Speaker 6 (05:50):
Yeah? You know, my parents are not musical. They like music.
You know, music was always in and around the house.
But my parents didn't play music, but they were always
very encouraging of sort of anything me or my sisters
wanted to try. And I tried playing the trumpet in
like the elementary school band, and I enjoyed music itself,
(06:12):
but I wasn't super into the trumpet. So I asked
my parents about taking drum lessons and they were like, okay, yeah,
you can do that if you want to. But I
was then talking to my dad's friend who was a
very very good guitar player, and he was like, no,
I don't play the drums. Drums are paying to lug
around everywhere. It's like, you should play the guitar. It's
(06:35):
easier to transport places. And I'm sure he's biased just
because he played the guitar. He loved the guitar, but
it was a stage piece of advice because I still
play the guitar, So you know, I was just I
was always interested in music, and my parents were encouraging
of my hobbies and I ended up just finding the
(06:57):
right teacher and falling in love with making music.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
That is very cool. Teachers can be very inspirational, and
I've dedicated a chapter of my first book, and I'm
writing a sequel now to my sixth grade teacher, who
was very inspirational to me. Teachers can really provide an
important part in a young person's life, to say the least.
So tell me a little bit about some of the
bands and some of the connections that you were making
(07:21):
in your teen years as you explored that area.
Speaker 6 (07:25):
Yeah, I was always a little I never felt like
I was a great guitar player, so I in my head,
I concocted this idea. I was like, well, if I
play other people's songs, I might screw them up, but
if I write my own, I can't mess those up. So,
you know, I started writing my own little songs and
recording them to CDs and giving them out to people
(07:48):
at school and to my guitar teacher, and you know,
would work on them. And then while I had the opportunity,
I would try to get a band together whenever there
was a show, and I would always play a couple
of covers, but I would always sneak in a few
originals too. At the TI As a good New Jersey boy,
I was a huge fan of Bruce Springsteen, so that
(08:10):
was definitely part of the inspiration these bands I played in.
The typical setup was guitar, usually some hoorn, whether that
be a trumpet or a saxophone, keyboards, drums, bass, and
you know, it was just usually stuff in the area,
stuff through the school wherever I could. I definitely started
playing out more when I went to college and formed
(08:33):
another band, but it was, you know, it's rock adjacent music.
And that's why I always say when people ask about
my music, it's indie rock, indie pop, I don't know,
something somewhere along those lines. Definitely influenced by a lot
of the music of the seventies and eighties that I
grew up loving.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
When it came time to make a decision as far
as college is a concern, obviously music was a big
part of your life. But what else was involved in
your eventual decision to go to school in the Boston area.
Speaker 6 (09:06):
Well, I got in to Boston College. That was a
big That was a big factor in the decision. I
knew I didn't want to go super super far from home.
I wanted to go. I didn't want to go very close,
but I wanted to go a distance that you know,
you could drive too if you want to, and Boston
College is a great school, had a great reputation. I
(09:27):
didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with my life.
You know. I knew I wanted to involve music in
some way, but I knew I wasn't going for music.
And Boston College is a liberal arts school, so they
have a million different majors, so that variety was definitely
something that appealed to me, and that's how I ended
up there. I mean, it wasn't I feel like we
(09:48):
try to concoct these grand narratives in our heads for
why certain things occur. But ultimately, like I said, it was,
I got in and I was able to I was
able to go, so that the decision, I guess, wasn't
that hard all things considered.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Also, Boston College has a nice mix of being a
little bit away from Boston but easily accessible by public
transportation quickly, so you kind of get all kinds of
experiences there, don't you.
Speaker 6 (10:19):
Yeah, definitely. And I think at the time, growing up
in the suburbs, I didn't think that I would like
living in an urban area as much as I came
to over the years. Of course, Boston College is in
a suburb, but like you said, it's easy to get
in and out of Boston, which I really came to enjoy.
You know, there's lots of opportunities throughout the city of Boston.
(10:39):
After college, I lived in Cambridge for a few years,
and that was even closer to downtown Boston. So it
was nice to have access to the city, but could
not necessarily have to be within the city if you
didn't want to.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
So what was the music part of your time in college?
Speaker 6 (10:59):
Yeah, same deal. I mean I continued writing songs, roping
people into playing in bands with me. It was usually
a rotating troop of musicians that I played with. The
one consistent thing was this trump I shouldn't say my
trumpet player was a trumpet player named Peter, who I
met when we both took a free improvisational jazz class,
(11:23):
and neither He was more into jazz than I was.
I just took it because I wanted to brush up
on my chops. We became friends there and I was like, hey,
you want to collaborate, So we started playing together. And
like I said, throughout high school because of the music
I was inspired by. I was always playing rock music,
but with some sort of horn or some sort of
soulful influence. And then from there we put a band
(11:46):
together and we would play. We'd play at events on campus,
but I played at most of the small venues in
and around Boston throughout my college years, in the couple
of years I lived in Boston afterwards, so I mean
anywhere that would have us played in dingy basements, but
we played in some cool clubs over the years too,
(12:07):
And it was mostly original material that I was writing.
But we would always sneak in a couple covers to
make sure we were holding your attention.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
And what was the What was the academic route through
Boston College.
Speaker 6 (12:23):
Yeah. The one thing that's I think sort of interesting
about me is I feel like, when you're growing up,
there's this idea that you're either interested in math and
science or you're interested in history and English. And I
never completely understood that dichotomy. I sort of liked both things.
I liked to read and write, but I also enjoyed
(12:43):
math classes. I ended up studying, getting degrees in both
economics and math from Boston College because again, my thought
process was I can read on my own time, and
I definitely have an easier time teaching myself things about
English and things about history. Math I feel like, at
least in my experience, is a hard thing to teach yourself.
(13:07):
So I decided to go down a I decided to
study the thing that I thought would have harder time
learning on my own, which was math and economics, and
that gave me a good foundation for quantitative thinking. That
came to be very important in the rest of my
life so far, because I was able to unite that
(13:29):
with my interest in music.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
So you mentioned that after college, You mentioned you lived
a couple of years in the Boston area at Cambridge
and continued say, this sort of mix of professionalism and
professional passion for music. When did that take a turn
and a return to where your native area.
Speaker 6 (13:52):
So none of my friends that I lived with in Boston,
and none of my friends that I lived with in
college were from the Boston area, which was interesting because
Boston College does it attracts people from all over the
country in the world, but there are a lot of
people from Boston and Massachusetts who go to school there,
and a lot of people moved away. After we graduated.
(14:13):
There were only a couple of us living in Cambridge,
but we knew it wasn't going to be permanent because
like my one friend was going to medical school. We
ended up having one friend stay up there. But basically
everyone was dispersing, and I was also working a job
that I really really hated, so I knew I was
going to leave that job and find something else, and
(14:34):
I knew I wanted to be closer to my family,
So I ended up moving back to my parents in
late twenty nineteen, and then I was going to move
out in early twenty twenty. I was looking at apartments
with a couple friends actually in Hoboken at the end
of February twenty twenty, and then COVID started and I
(14:54):
was like, all right, I guess we're not going to
move out now. There's no point if everything is shut down.
So I was at home for about another year, which
you know, definitely of course bad. There was a pandemic
going on. But my grandmother lived with my parents at
the time, so it was nice. I got to spend
a lot of time with her, which I wouldn't have otherwise.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Now that job was obviously an entry level job after
college show what was it and what was it about
it that you hated?
Speaker 6 (15:24):
Yeah, So I worked in consulting, which sounds really boring,
and it is really boring. I worked specifically in antitrust
consulting or economic consulting. The idea was, if a company
is big enough where the government is going to be
concerned that them getting purchased or them buying someone else
might lead to monopoly power or some other undue power
(15:48):
to the company, they look into the merger and we
would be hired to work for either the government or
for one of these companies to run economic analyzes try
to figure all, right, what might happen if this merger
goes through. For most people listening, I'm sure that sounds
really boring, and in many cases it was. I mean,
(16:08):
there were some interesting things about it, and it set
me up for a lot of things I ended up
doing later, because you get very you get trained in
doing data analytics and applying economic and mathematical thinking to
a bunch of different scenarios. The thing that I didn't
like is it is one of these jobs where it's
like the hours are completely endless. I mean, you know,
(16:30):
you could come in, you come in at the same
time every day, but you didn't know if you were
going to leave at six pm or three in the morning.
You know, the work just had to get done a
lot of it. There were pressing federal government deadlines or
court dates, so there wasn't a lot of flexibility. And
with the other interests that I had, namely playing in bands,
(16:52):
it wasn't conducive for me to still work on these
passion projects that I had, and that sort of made
me pretty sad. But you know, you got to pay
the rent. So it was a good job and made
some good connections there. But I knew it wasn't for
me long term.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
So what allowed you to make the step that you
wanted to make back home?
Speaker 6 (17:15):
Well, I I ended up just I ended up just
quitting this job sort of without a plan. I in
the intra period, I knew I could tutor people again
because I studied math and there are lots of people
need to help with math and statistics. Yes, so I
set up like, you know, a little like independent tutoring thing.
(17:36):
I met some clients online, and I was making enough
money to pay the rent and have a little money
left over for some fun. But I was still applying
to jobs, and I moved back home and take it
takes forever to get a job in this day and age.
And I eventually got an interview with this company called
audio Mac, which is a music streaming service more in
(17:59):
the vein of st cloud and that you can upload
directly to the platform. And they were growing a lot,
especially in Africa and the Caribbean. Currently it's the most
popular streaming service in a lot of African countries. But
they were looking they were because they were growing. They
were generating tons and tons of data about what people
were doing on the platform, what were they listening to,
(18:20):
how they were using our features, But they had no
one to look through all of that. So I was
hired as a data analyst and I would just sift
through music data all day, which was a lot more fun.
The hours were more regular, you know, I would go
into an office where there would be music bumping throughout
(18:41):
the day, which I'm sure sounds like a nightmare for some.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
People, but not for you.
Speaker 6 (18:46):
Yeah, that laid back nature really jibed with who I
was and what I liked. And I've been there for
the past six years. I still do a lot of
stuff related to data and and also personalization. So you
can think like if you use Spotify, they have various
(19:06):
playlists recommended for you or songs and albums recommended for you.
I work on that stuff for Audio Mac, along with
various data tools that we use internally and externally to
figure out what are people listening to and how again,
how are they engaging with our features. So it's a
fun melding of my interests in math and music.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Well, I guess the path to or part of the
journey towards the book that we'll talk about, which is
just a fascinating court of amalgamation of all the things
we're talking about right now. But you also do a
popular newsletter called Can't Get Much Higher? How did you
decide to go down that route?
Speaker 6 (19:48):
Yeah, so it's actually in this weird way, it's all
tied back to this book. Right. So, when I was
still working in consulting again, I wasn't very happy, and
I came up with this weird scheme where I said,
(20:08):
I'm not really scheme, I just a quest. I said.
I decided I'm going to listen to every number one
hit in history. And I was like, I'll listen to
one song a day, And in my head, I was like,
you know, it'll just be like a daily win. I
can sit down once a day for three minutes listen
to a song that I might not know or not
that I might know or not. I could figure it
out on my guitar, you know. I could think about
(20:30):
music as a way to sort of relax and unwind
while I was working this job that I wasn't particularly
satisfied with. But again, this job did influence me. I
worked with data all day and I started tracking various
things about these number one hits. Some of them were
really basic, who wrote the song, what label did it
come out on? But some of them ended up being
(20:52):
more wide ranging, like tracking demographic information about artists or
analytics about lyrics. And I started to notice some trends
and I was like, hmm, I should write something about this.
I wrote something up, sent it off to an old
English professor I had in college, and he was like, oh,
this is pretty good. You should keep at it. So
this started off on this weird circuitous quest where I
(21:14):
was sort of writing a book as I was just
going about my life listening to these that hundreds of
number one hits, and I was like, all right, I
have enough of a book here. Maybe I should try
to see if I get this published. But I never
published them, not only had. I never published a book before,
I'd never published anything right, and it was very hard
to get anyone to take notice. So I got advice
(21:37):
from a writer who I called email that I think
he was at Billboard Magazine at the time, and he's like,
you know, it's a lot easier to get an articles published.
So I set off trying to pitch articles to people,
usually about music and data, and again I wasn't having
much luck. But I finally convinced this cool website called
Tedium to publish what I thought was a niche article
(22:01):
about how there are fewer key changes in popular music
these days, and it ended up going super super viral,
to the point where I appeared on NPR for a segment.
I wrote something in The Economist, and to try to
capitalize on that, I was like, oh, I should start
a newsletter so people, if they enjoy this, can like
(22:23):
find me elsewhere. So I started this newsletter. Again. It's
about broadly music and data, but music more generally. I
write it once or twice a week, and I was
trying to use building a newsletter as leverage to get
this book published, to be like, oh, look, people are
interested in this. Eventually that happened, but it took from
(22:43):
the time I first listened to the first number one
hit till I signed a book deal. It was about
eight years, so it was a long, weird, circuitous journey,
but I guess I got to the end eventually.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
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Speaker 2 (25:19):
Our guest is Chris Della Reva. His book is Uncharted Territory,
What numbers tell us about the biggest hit songs and ourselves?
And we'll talk about all the specifics about the book,
and you've already heard part of the tale of how
it started to develop.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I have a very deep interest in music and do
a music podcast and the like, and I like diving
down rabbit holes and such, and I like to think
about certain aspects of music. Now, listening to every number
one song sounds cool in some regards, and it sounds
really horrible. And in other regards, there's a lot of
number one songs that weren't particularly good, which also might
(25:56):
create some fascination in your head about the mechanics of
a maybe to us or you or you know. Of course,
if it's the number one song, millions of people liked it,
but talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 6 (26:09):
Yeah. The thing I ended up thinking that was most
interesting about the number one hits is that the Billboard
chart is only calculated once a week, So you can
have a song that is literally just popular in a
single week and has never really listened to again after that,
And because of that, you end up getting this cross
(26:29):
section of songs that, to your point, includes songs that
are great. You know, you have tons of number one
hits by the Beatles and the Beach Boys and the Supremes,
but at the same time you also have weird, novelty
songs that were just popular for a single week. Stuff.
Some stuff from the seventies comes to mind, like Disco
DC or the Streak, And I think it ends up
(26:53):
giving you a better picture of what popular music actually
looked like in each of these eras than many other sources,
because if you look at other lists of what music
should I listen to? From the sixties. No one's going
to listen to the bad stuff because it's not good.
That's the reason we don't listen to it anymore. But
if you're going through a list of number one hits,
(27:15):
you get the good, the bad, and the ugly. And
it's a great reminder that sure, maybe some eras of
music are better than others, but there is great music
and there is bad music in every single era. And
it's very easy to listen to music today and be like, wow,
it used to be so much better. But in reality
(27:36):
we just filter out all the bad songs. Decades go by,
and I'm sure in twenty years someone's going to look
back at the twenty twenties and be like, wow, there
was so much great music. What happened? When in reality
you know, you're just not listening to the bad stuff anymore.
But if you listen to every number one hit, you
will listen to the bad stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Too, right, you will? Indeed, now you're real quick. Yes,
your journey he starts in nineteen fifty eight. The thirteen
chapter titles for your book are fascinating and very enjoyable
and clever to say the least, Once upon a time,
the chart was really super important. I mean I remember,
(28:16):
you know, as a teenager or even younger ten twelve
years old, being very excited when a new you know,
Casey casem list would come out and you'd root for
your song and things like that. Obviously, it's been quite
a while since that was the case, although there still
are various ways of calculating what's the number one song
that arc of when would you say, sort of, you know,
(28:37):
the real heyday of the importance of the chart was.
Speaker 6 (28:43):
The charts are definitely still important. I mean I definitely
have a biased perspective because I work in the music
industry and Billboard is still the premier chart. There are
other data sources that people look at, but scoring a
number one hit on the Billboard Charts is still really important,
and if you crawl through certain parts of Twitter or Reddit,
(29:05):
you will still find people who are rooting for certain
songs to get to number one. But when I think
of the height of the power of Billboard, I mean, ultimately,
it is a magazine, and magazines are not as I
don't think they're as powerful as they once were, So
I think the height of Billboard is also tied to
(29:27):
the height of magazine power in the United States specifically,
and I think to your point, it probably goes back
to the nineteen seventies because at the same time that
magazines are really important, Billboard was growing in popularity. You
had this massively popular radio show hosted by Casey Kasem
(29:48):
where he would count down the top forty songs from
the chart. So you had this symbiotic relationship where there
was not only a popular magazine about music, but there
was this radio show that was also popular, and they're
sort of feeding off of each other to create intrigue
about what is this magazine and what are these charts?
(30:09):
And again, Billboard's still very important, but I think in
putting it into the popular consciousness was at its height
during that era.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Well, since you provided such lovely bullet points for a
few things, I guess I will use them as an interviewer.
You can always use a crutch or two. I was
thinking back on the first one, and it is true
that people are always dying in car rex and such,
or you know, dying under mysterious circumstances in the nineteen fifties,
and people would sing about it and say that you know,
(30:43):
Kathy's Gone Away or whatever, and the way you phrase
it has hit songs in the nineteen fifties were regularly
about gruesome death. That's a fairly unique trait for songs
for sure.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
Yeah, that was actually what inspired me to start writing
the book. As I listened to about I don't know
forty or fifty number one hits, which probably takes you
from late nineteen fifty eight to maybe the early sixties,
and I was like, why on earth are there so
many number one songs about like teenagers dying or wars?
You know, examples like teen Angel by Mark Dinning, this
(31:20):
very melodramatic song about a high school couple. The car
stalls out on the railroad tracks. They get out, and
the girl goes running back to get a ring that
the guy gave her and she dies. I'm like, how
is this a topic for a popular For a popular song,
you don't expect millions of people to want to buy
and listen to that. And I explore that in the
(31:43):
first chapter of the book, And that's sort of what
set me down wanting to write about this. And I
think there are many many factors that influence that, some
of which I talk about is the rise of like
the teenage demographic. Really, before that era teen there wasn't
a distinct demographic period noted between childhood and adulthood, and
(32:06):
teenagers sort of grew out of the economic boom after
World War Two. People had more money to spend compulsory education.
You have people in this now teenage age bracket hanging
out all day in high school for years and years.
You end up getting more teenagers making music and teens
(32:28):
singing about other teenagers, which are usually the topics of
these songs. At the same time, you know, there are
a ton of tragedies throughout the first half of the
twentieth century, some of them very big, you know, the
Holocaust of course, the influenza pandemic, the Great Depression, but
some smaller. There are just a ton of musicians who
(32:50):
end up dying young, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper,
Richie Vallen's, Jimmy Rogers, and I think all of these
things sort of smashed together to create this trend where
you have people singing about the term I used gruesome death,
and lots of people buying records to listen to it.
(33:14):
It's an interesting it's one of the most interesting trends
I think in the history of popular music, early twentieth
century popular music, well when.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
You started out. I mean, this has gone through waves
and such, but the way that songs were constructed and
put together and written was a lot different. In the
late fifties early sixties, it would probably be quite unusual
for the person who sang the song to have actually
written it. There were a lot of brill building people
cranking out music. There were bands that didn't even exist,
(33:45):
like the Archies, things like that. Then you had the
singer songwriter era that sort of ushered in the fact
that the people who were singing the songs generally were
the people who wrote them. And then maybe as time
has gone on Nashville and other places, they're all of
collaborations that go on, and now today maybe there's multiple
people who will get together and create music. So that's
(34:06):
kind of taken an arc as well.
Speaker 6 (34:09):
Yeah, definitely, I talk about this trend a lot, and
I feel like not everyone thinks it's interesting, but I
guess I think you might just based on what you're saying,
this idea that to be a serious artist you have
to write your own songs, and we usually think that
emerged in the nineteen sixties with the Beatles and Bob
Dylan writing their own writing and performing their own music.
(34:33):
Something I write about and I think chapter three of
the book is actually how that trend predates them a
little bit. But it is certainly true that up through
the nineteen fifties these were the role of a performer
was very different than the role of a songwriter or
the role of a producer. Everything was separated, and throughout
the sixties, to use an economic term, we see things
(34:54):
become vertically integrated, where you have a band that is
just a creative unit. They're going to write their own music,
they're going to perform their own music, they're going to
produce their own music. And because of that, we now
have this idea that I think still very powerful, that
if you are a serious artist, you have to write
your own music. And I think it's part of the
(35:15):
reason why you still see someone like Taylor Swift, who
has made it very clear over her career that she
writes her own songs, because you are taken more seriously
if you write your own songs. Now, I don't think
that's necessarily the case. I mean, there's tons of great
artists and performers who never wrote a look of music.
One that comes to mind is Frank Sinatra, right. But
(35:37):
it's an attitude that is quite pervasive in music, and
it really emerged in the sixties and.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Even during the times when you know there were that
was the prevailing thought. They were fantastic artists like Linda
Ron's dad or people like that, who seldom wrote their
own music. Barbis Streisansch wrote some, but very little. So
I guess it's just like everything else you talk about.
There's no real set pattern to anything.
Speaker 6 (36:04):
No, there's a great book called it's called Major Labels.
I think the subtitles a History of Music in seven Genres,
and the author's name is Escaping Me. He writes for
The New Yorker. When he talks about this idea, he's like,
you know, that's just one way to make music, the
singer songwriter approach. There's lots of different ways to make music.
(36:26):
And you also see that when you listen to six
decades of number one hits. Is the creative process looks
different for different people, and that's okay.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
And also when you look at the chapters here, it
seems like as the time went on, the chapter's got
a little longer as far as chronology is concerned. Was
that because more songs would become number one songs and
later on songs would stay number one for longer or
what was part of that.
Speaker 6 (36:58):
Yeah, in the nineties, you definitely the song staying at
the top of the charts for longer, and that's just
a function of Billboard changing the chart methodology in the
early nineties. They go from a system that was very imprecise,
which from the sixties through the eighties they're basically just
calling record stores and asking them, hey, what's selling, which was,
(37:19):
like I said, not super precise. It was subject to fraud.
And then in the nineties they switched to a system
called sound scan, which had point of sale data, so
you were getting a more accurate representation of what was
actually popular. And in the short term, what you see
is that songs stay at the top of the charts longer.
So part of the reason that those later chapters cover
(37:40):
more years is that you know, I want to include
I usually tried to include at least fifty number ones
in each chapter. But additionally I would just write. I
would listen to music and write enough until I felt
like I had said what I wanted to say, So
part of it is just a function of I have
more to say about certain things than other things.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
When you were going through this process, was there ever
a point You're like, I don't know if I can
make it to the finish line here? You know, I
started this out and I thought it was a dandy idea,
and now it's you know, I'm at nineteen seventy nine
and I am am I gonna go all the way?
Speaker 6 (38:22):
Yeah, I mean, I funny you bring up seventy nine.
I Actually one thing I came to enjoy during this
process was I wasn't expecting to enjoy disco music so
much right when you But also at the same time,
there are great disco songs, but when you get to
like the height of the disco era and the late seventies,
there are a lot of stinkers that get to the
(38:42):
top of the charts. And there were a couple couple
of weeks where I was like, oh my god, I
don't know if I can can forge on through the
rest of the disco era. So some had some of
those low points. The late eighties is another point where
I was like, oh wow, all right, I gotta press
on to get to get to something better. But I
(39:03):
would only do one song a day, so it wasn't
It was never this big to do. It was like, Okay,
I have three minutes of my life every day that
I can dedicate to this.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Well.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
In your biography, you point out the fact that you
lived with your four guitars and your future wife, Devin,
and so obviously music is still a big part of
your life, not just from your writing life or your
professional life, but obviously as a personal passion as well.
Did you find that listening to all these songs did
anything to change your musical taste.
Speaker 6 (39:38):
One hundred percent. I grew up I was like a
classic rock kid, you know, guitar music from the sixties
to the eighties. Those guys and occasional gals were my
heroes and I still love love that music. But listening
to all of this made me realize that pop music
(40:01):
itself is not necessarily Just because something is popular does
not mean it should be taken less seriously or that
it's bad. At the same time, it doesn't mean we
have to take it seriously or that it is good
because it's popular. And because of that, I came to
at least appreciate different styles of music that were made
differently than the music that I grew up loving. Like,
(40:25):
just because you're playing guitar, it doesn't inherently mean your
music is better or more serious than someone who makes
their music with a drum machine or a sampler. You know,
you have to get in the mindset of those community
where that music came out of to understand it. Like
if you grew up again listening to classic rock. On
(40:46):
the surface, hip hop music might strike you as strange
because it's very, very different, But if you learn about
the history of where that music came out of, it's
like people were making music with the technology that was
available to them, and when when you think about it
that way, you come to appreciate a wider style of music. Disco,
like I said, is something that I came to appreciate more.
(41:09):
There are definitely some really cheesy ballads that I have
a soft spot for, especially from the eighties nice and
some early two thousand's R and B music I came
to like more than I ever thought I would.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
So, what's your musical life like now besides this project,
which now I'm sure you should are and should be
very proud of. But as far as your own music,
what is that journey like for you?
Speaker 6 (41:35):
Yeah, well, I've still put it. I usually put out
a couple songs a year with a studio in West Orange,
New Jersey called Domestic Bliss. I've had a lot of
fun working out of there over the last couple of years.
Making music is still a thing that really I love writing,
but there's still something that picking up the guitar and
(41:56):
playing I'm having I had, honestly every trouble vocalizing. It's
just it gives me a feeling that I don't really
get from anything else. I play frequently with my cousin's
band John, cause he plays punk music. I play bass
in that band. I have a lot of fun with them,
So I'm always looking for whatever musical opportunities come my way.
(42:21):
In a couple of days, I'm playing a cover set
with a different one of my cousins, just like an
acoustic cover set at a bar. So I'm always looking
for ways to continue to scratch that musical itch, whether
that's through recording my own stuff or just getting out
there and playing. It's a compulsion. You can't completely turn
it off.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
No matter what that's very cool, and that big pause
said more than words would have right then, I think
in that particular spot. So this project is done. Why
don't you tell us a little bit about the usual
ways that you can access your wonderful book.
Speaker 6 (43:00):
Yeah, the book is available on basically anywhere online. The
publisher Bloomsbury will have it at the cheapest price, but
you can get it on Amazon, Walmart, Barnes and Noble, whatever.
A book's a million I don't know. I couldn't even
listen all the places right you can find it. If
you find me on social media, you'll also find the book.
(43:24):
My name is Chris Dallaiva. I'm seen Dalerriva music on
most platforms, A pretty easy guy to follow find online.
So I don't think people should have difficulty finding the book.
But if you can't find it, reach out to me
and I will point you in the right direction.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
The book is called Uncharted Territory. What Numbers tell us
about the biggest hit songs in Ourselves? Christella Riva has
taken us through this fascinating journey of his own musical journey,
and this really really interesting book. I can't wait. I've
read many excerpts of it and I can't wait to
sort of read it in full. And now that this
is over and you do this, and you got your music,
(44:02):
and you get your guitars, and you got your future
wife all lined up, what's the near future have in
store for a very still young Chris della Riva.
Speaker 6 (44:17):
I mean, I would like to keep writing about music.
I am very active in my newsletter. I would like
to make that an even bigger part of my life
if I can. I have still have a ton of
fun working at Audio Mac. I like being in the
music business. I like being in the weeds with all
that stuff, and I'm just hoping that I can keep
(44:38):
that passion that I have for music alive and share
it with as many people as possible, whether that's through
my writing or through my playing.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
We hope you enjoyed the latest Dann Klinkscale Reasonably Irreverent podcast.
Come back soon for something fresh and new. This podcast
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Welcome to the Danny Clinkscale Reasonably Irreverent podcast, insightful and
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome to Kansas City Profiles, presented by Easton Roofing in
a truly truly fascinating discussion with Chris della Riva. He
is the author of the new book Uncharted Territory, What
Numbers tell Us about the biggest hit songs and ourselves.
It's the world's first data driven history of popular music.
He listened to all eleven hundred of the number one
(00:37):
songs from nineteen fifty eight to twenty twenty five, a
day at a time, and wrote a book about it.
He lives at the intersection of music and data. Chris
grew up in New Jersey. He's played in bands and
been recording music since his teenage years. He's currently his
full time job as senior product manager at Audio Mac,
which is a streaming service very popularnd the country and
(01:01):
around the world, and he also writes the popular newsletter
Can't Get Much Higher. Has had his work featured by
The Economists, Business Insider, NPR, and many others. He went
to Boston College, moved into the professional world, but still
has had a close connection with music. And his fascinating
breakdown of all the theories and mores and everything else
(01:25):
about the top records in the nation for well over
twenty five years is really, really a fascinating story. I
have read extensive excerpts of the book, but haven't read
the whole thing yet, and I can't wait. It's time
to find out more about it with Chris Della Riva,
the author of Uncharted Territory, What Numbers tell us about
(01:46):
the biggest hit songs and ourselves. It is our Kansas
City Profile presented by Easton Roofing.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
More of Danny's Reasonably Irreverent podcast after this.
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working with you. Chris. You grew up in West Caldwell,
(04:45):
New Jersey. Tell us a little bit about life as
a youngster in New Jersey.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
Yeah. West Caldwell's a suburb. Probably it depends on the traffic,
but I would say like forty minutes outside of New
York City. I was born there and we never moved,
so I lived there my entire life from birth to
about eighteen before I went to college. I was in
sports growing up. I was very into baseball, and then
when I was in middle school, I got interested in me.
(05:15):
I was always interested in music, but I started playing,
taking guitar lessons, and I was immediately enamored by the guitar.
Started playing in bands, writing music, releasing music, and I
still do that to this day. But I guess that
town is where my passion and love for music first emerged.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
So what was the trigger point maybe for you said
you were interested in playing sports like most kids there,
you know, and I can't say most, but many kids.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
And when did what?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Was was there any specific thing that kind of triggered
your interest in guitar and music?
Speaker 6 (05:50):
Yeah? You know, my parents are not musical. They like music.
You know, music was always in and around the house.
But my parents didn't play music, but they were always
very encouraging of sort of anything me or my sisters
wanted to try. And I tried playing the trumpet in
like the elementary school band, and I enjoyed music itself,
(06:12):
but I wasn't super into the trumpet. So I asked
my parents about taking drum lessons and they were like, okay, yeah,
you can do that if you want to. But I
was then talking to my dad's friend who was a
very very good guitar player, and he was like, no,
I don't play the drums. Drums are paying to lug
around everywhere. It's like, you should play the guitar. It's
(06:35):
easier to transport places. And I'm sure he's biased just
because he played the guitar. He loved the guitar, but
it was a stage piece of advice because I still
play the guitar, So you know, I was just I
was always interested in music, and my parents were encouraging
of my hobbies and I ended up just finding the
(06:57):
right teacher and falling in love with making music.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
That is very cool. Teachers can be very inspirational, and
I've dedicated a chapter of my first book, and I'm
writing a sequel now to my sixth grade teacher, who
was very inspirational to me. Teachers can really provide an
important part in a young person's life, to say the least.
So tell me a little bit about some of the
bands and some of the connections that you were making
(07:21):
in your teen years as you explored that area.
Speaker 6 (07:25):
Yeah, I was always a little I never felt like
I was a great guitar player, so I in my head,
I concocted this idea. I was like, well, if I
play other people's songs, I might screw them up, but
if I write my own, I can't mess those up. So,
you know, I started writing my own little songs and
recording them to CDs and giving them out to people
(07:48):
at school and to my guitar teacher, and you know,
would work on them. And then while I had the opportunity,
I would try to get a band together whenever there
was a show, and I would always play a couple
of covers, but I would always sneak in a few
originals too. At the TI As a good New Jersey boy,
I was a huge fan of Bruce Springsteen, so that
(08:10):
was definitely part of the inspiration these bands I played in.
The typical setup was guitar, usually some hoorn, whether that
be a trumpet or a saxophone, keyboards, drums, bass, and
you know, it was just usually stuff in the area,
stuff through the school wherever I could. I definitely started
playing out more when I went to college and formed
(08:33):
another band, but it was, you know, it's rock adjacent music.
And that's why I always say when people ask about
my music, it's indie rock, indie pop, I don't know,
something somewhere along those lines. Definitely influenced by a lot
of the music of the seventies and eighties that I
grew up loving.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
When it came time to make a decision as far
as college is a concern, obviously music was a big
part of your life. But what else was involved in
your eventual decision to go to school in the Boston area.
Speaker 6 (09:06):
Well, I got in to Boston College. That was a
big That was a big factor in the decision. I
knew I didn't want to go super super far from home.
I wanted to go. I didn't want to go very close,
but I wanted to go a distance that you know,
you could drive too if you want to, and Boston
College is a great school, had a great reputation. I
(09:27):
didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with my life.
You know. I knew I wanted to involve music in
some way, but I knew I wasn't going for music.
And Boston College is a liberal arts school, so they
have a million different majors, so that variety was definitely
something that appealed to me, and that's how I ended
up there. I mean, it wasn't I feel like we
(09:48):
try to concoct these grand narratives in our heads for
why certain things occur. But ultimately, like I said, it was,
I got in and I was able to I was
able to go, so that the decision, I guess, wasn't
that hard all things considered.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Also, Boston College has a nice mix of being a
little bit away from Boston but easily accessible by public
transportation quickly, so you kind of get all kinds of
experiences there, don't you.
Speaker 6 (10:19):
Yeah, definitely. And I think at the time, growing up
in the suburbs, I didn't think that I would like
living in an urban area as much as I came
to over the years. Of course, Boston College is in
a suburb, but like you said, it's easy to get
in and out of Boston, which I really came to enjoy.
You know, there's lots of opportunities throughout the city of Boston.
(10:39):
After college, I lived in Cambridge for a few years,
and that was even closer to downtown Boston. So it
was nice to have access to the city, but could
not necessarily have to be within the city if you
didn't want to.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
So what was the music part of your time in college?
Speaker 6 (10:59):
Yeah, same deal. I mean I continued writing songs, roping
people into playing in bands with me. It was usually
a rotating troop of musicians that I played with. The
one consistent thing was this trump I shouldn't say my
trumpet player was a trumpet player named Peter, who I
met when we both took a free improvisational jazz class,
(11:23):
and neither He was more into jazz than I was.
I just took it because I wanted to brush up
on my chops. We became friends there and I was like, hey,
you want to collaborate, So we started playing together. And
like I said, throughout high school because of the music
I was inspired by. I was always playing rock music,
but with some sort of horn or some sort of
soulful influence. And then from there we put a band
(11:46):
together and we would play. We'd play at events on campus,
but I played at most of the small venues in
and around Boston throughout my college years, in the couple
of years I lived in Boston afterwards, so I mean
anywhere that would have us played in dingy basements, but
we played in some cool clubs over the years too,
(12:07):
And it was mostly original material that I was writing.
But we would always sneak in a couple covers to
make sure we were holding your attention.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
And what was the What was the academic route through
Boston College.
Speaker 6 (12:23):
Yeah. The one thing that's I think sort of interesting
about me is I feel like, when you're growing up,
there's this idea that you're either interested in math and
science or you're interested in history and English. And I
never completely understood that dichotomy. I sort of liked both things.
I liked to read and write, but I also enjoyed
(12:43):
math classes. I ended up studying, getting degrees in both
economics and math from Boston College because again, my thought
process was I can read on my own time, and
I definitely have an easier time teaching myself things about
English and things about history. Math I feel like, at
least in my experience, is a hard thing to teach yourself.
(13:07):
So I decided to go down a I decided to
study the thing that I thought would have harder time
learning on my own, which was math and economics, and
that gave me a good foundation for quantitative thinking. That
came to be very important in the rest of my
life so far, because I was able to unite that
(13:29):
with my interest in music.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
So you mentioned that after college, You mentioned you lived
a couple of years in the Boston area at Cambridge
and continued say, this sort of mix of professionalism and
professional passion for music. When did that take a turn
and a return to where your native area.
Speaker 6 (13:52):
So none of my friends that I lived with in Boston,
and none of my friends that I lived with in
college were from the Boston area, which was interesting because
Boston College does it attracts people from all over the
country in the world, but there are a lot of
people from Boston and Massachusetts who go to school there,
and a lot of people moved away. After we graduated.
(14:13):
There were only a couple of us living in Cambridge,
but we knew it wasn't going to be permanent because
like my one friend was going to medical school. We
ended up having one friend stay up there. But basically
everyone was dispersing, and I was also working a job
that I really really hated, so I knew I was
going to leave that job and find something else, and
(14:34):
I knew I wanted to be closer to my family,
So I ended up moving back to my parents in
late twenty nineteen, and then I was going to move
out in early twenty twenty. I was looking at apartments
with a couple friends actually in Hoboken at the end
of February twenty twenty, and then COVID started and I
(14:54):
was like, all right, I guess we're not going to
move out now. There's no point if everything is shut down.
So I was at home for about another year, which
you know, definitely of course bad. There was a pandemic
going on. But my grandmother lived with my parents at
the time, so it was nice. I got to spend
a lot of time with her, which I wouldn't have otherwise.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Now that job was obviously an entry level job after
college show what was it and what was it about
it that you hated?
Speaker 6 (15:24):
Yeah, So I worked in consulting, which sounds really boring,
and it is really boring. I worked specifically in antitrust
consulting or economic consulting. The idea was, if a company
is big enough where the government is going to be
concerned that them getting purchased or them buying someone else
might lead to monopoly power or some other undue power
(15:48):
to the company, they look into the merger and we
would be hired to work for either the government or
for one of these companies to run economic analyzes try
to figure all, right, what might happen if this merger
goes through. For most people listening, I'm sure that sounds
really boring, and in many cases it was. I mean,
(16:08):
there were some interesting things about it, and it set
me up for a lot of things I ended up
doing later, because you get very you get trained in
doing data analytics and applying economic and mathematical thinking to
a bunch of different scenarios. The thing that I didn't
like is it is one of these jobs where it's
like the hours are completely endless. I mean, you know,
(16:30):
you could come in, you come in at the same
time every day, but you didn't know if you were
going to leave at six pm or three in the morning.
You know, the work just had to get done a
lot of it. There were pressing federal government deadlines or
court dates, so there wasn't a lot of flexibility. And
with the other interests that I had, namely playing in bands,
(16:52):
it wasn't conducive for me to still work on these
passion projects that I had, and that sort of made
me pretty sad. But you know, you got to pay
the rent. So it was a good job and made
some good connections there. But I knew it wasn't for
me long term.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
So what allowed you to make the step that you
wanted to make back home?
Speaker 6 (17:15):
Well, I I ended up just I ended up just
quitting this job sort of without a plan. I in
the intra period, I knew I could tutor people again
because I studied math and there are lots of people
need to help with math and statistics. Yes, so I
set up like, you know, a little like independent tutoring thing.
(17:36):
I met some clients online, and I was making enough
money to pay the rent and have a little money
left over for some fun. But I was still applying
to jobs, and I moved back home and take it
takes forever to get a job in this day and age.
And I eventually got an interview with this company called
audio Mac, which is a music streaming service more in
(17:59):
the vein of st cloud and that you can upload
directly to the platform. And they were growing a lot,
especially in Africa and the Caribbean. Currently it's the most
popular streaming service in a lot of African countries. But
they were looking they were because they were growing. They
were generating tons and tons of data about what people
were doing on the platform, what were they listening to,
(18:20):
how they were using our features, But they had no
one to look through all of that. So I was
hired as a data analyst and I would just sift
through music data all day, which was a lot more fun.
The hours were more regular, you know, I would go
into an office where there would be music bumping throughout
(18:41):
the day, which I'm sure sounds like a nightmare for some.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
People, but not for you.
Speaker 6 (18:46):
Yeah, that laid back nature really jibed with who I
was and what I liked. And I've been there for
the past six years. I still do a lot of
stuff related to data and and also personalization. So you
can think like if you use Spotify, they have various
(19:06):
playlists recommended for you or songs and albums recommended for you.
I work on that stuff for Audio Mac, along with
various data tools that we use internally and externally to
figure out what are people listening to and how again,
how are they engaging with our features. So it's a
fun melding of my interests in math and music.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Well, I guess the path to or part of the
journey towards the book that we'll talk about, which is
just a fascinating court of amalgamation of all the things
we're talking about right now. But you also do a
popular newsletter called Can't Get Much Higher? How did you
decide to go down that route?
Speaker 6 (19:48):
Yeah, so it's actually in this weird way, it's all
tied back to this book. Right. So, when I was
still working in consulting again, I wasn't very happy, and
I came up with this weird scheme where I said,
(20:08):
I'm not really scheme, I just a quest. I said.
I decided I'm going to listen to every number one
hit in history. And I was like, I'll listen to
one song a day, And in my head, I was like,
you know, it'll just be like a daily win. I
can sit down once a day for three minutes listen
to a song that I might not know or not
that I might know or not. I could figure it
out on my guitar, you know. I could think about
(20:30):
music as a way to sort of relax and unwind
while I was working this job that I wasn't particularly
satisfied with. But again, this job did influence me. I
worked with data all day and I started tracking various
things about these number one hits. Some of them were
really basic, who wrote the song, what label did it
come out on? But some of them ended up being
(20:52):
more wide ranging, like tracking demographic information about artists or
analytics about lyrics. And I started to notice some trends
and I was like, hmm, I should write something about this.
I wrote something up, sent it off to an old
English professor I had in college, and he was like, oh,
this is pretty good. You should keep at it. So
this started off on this weird circuitous quest where I
(21:14):
was sort of writing a book as I was just
going about my life listening to these that hundreds of
number one hits, and I was like, all right, I
have enough of a book here. Maybe I should try
to see if I get this published. But I never
published them, not only had. I never published a book before,
I'd never published anything right, and it was very hard
to get anyone to take notice. So I got advice
(21:37):
from a writer who I called email that I think
he was at Billboard Magazine at the time, and he's like,
you know, it's a lot easier to get an articles published.
So I set off trying to pitch articles to people,
usually about music and data, and again I wasn't having
much luck. But I finally convinced this cool website called
Tedium to publish what I thought was a niche article
(22:01):
about how there are fewer key changes in popular music
these days, and it ended up going super super viral,
to the point where I appeared on NPR for a segment.
I wrote something in The Economist, and to try to
capitalize on that, I was like, oh, I should start
a newsletter so people, if they enjoy this, can like
(22:23):
find me elsewhere. So I started this newsletter. Again. It's
about broadly music and data, but music more generally. I
write it once or twice a week, and I was
trying to use building a newsletter as leverage to get
this book published, to be like, oh, look, people are
interested in this. Eventually that happened, but it took from
(22:43):
the time I first listened to the first number one
hit till I signed a book deal. It was about
eight years, so it was a long, weird, circuitous journey,
but I guess I got to the end eventually.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
More of Danny's Reasonably Irreverend podcast after this.
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Well, it is back.
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Speaker 2 (25:19):
Our guest is Chris Della Reva. His book is Uncharted Territory,
What numbers tell us about the biggest hit songs and ourselves?
And we'll talk about all the specifics about the book,
and you've already heard part of the tale of how
it started to develop.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I have a very deep interest in music and do
a music podcast and the like, and I like diving
down rabbit holes and such, and I like to think
about certain aspects of music. Now, listening to every number
one song sounds cool in some regards, and it sounds
really horrible. And in other regards, there's a lot of
number one songs that weren't particularly good, which also might
(25:56):
create some fascination in your head about the mechanics of
a maybe to us or you or you know. Of course,
if it's the number one song, millions of people liked it,
but talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 6 (26:09):
Yeah. The thing I ended up thinking that was most
interesting about the number one hits is that the Billboard
chart is only calculated once a week, So you can
have a song that is literally just popular in a
single week and has never really listened to again after that,
And because of that, you end up getting this cross
(26:29):
section of songs that, to your point, includes songs that
are great. You know, you have tons of number one
hits by the Beatles and the Beach Boys and the Supremes,
but at the same time you also have weird, novelty
songs that were just popular for a single week. Stuff.
Some stuff from the seventies comes to mind, like Disco
DC or the Streak, And I think it ends up
(26:53):
giving you a better picture of what popular music actually
looked like in each of these eras than many other sources,
because if you look at other lists of what music
should I listen to? From the sixties. No one's going
to listen to the bad stuff because it's not good.
That's the reason we don't listen to it anymore. But
if you're going through a list of number one hits,
(27:15):
you get the good, the bad, and the ugly. And
it's a great reminder that sure, maybe some eras of
music are better than others, but there is great music
and there is bad music in every single era. And
it's very easy to listen to music today and be like, wow,
it used to be so much better. But in reality
(27:36):
we just filter out all the bad songs. Decades go by,
and I'm sure in twenty years someone's going to look
back at the twenty twenties and be like, wow, there
was so much great music. What happened? When in reality
you know, you're just not listening to the bad stuff anymore.
But if you listen to every number one hit, you
will listen to the bad stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Too, right, you will? Indeed, now you're real quick. Yes,
your journey he starts in nineteen fifty eight. The thirteen
chapter titles for your book are fascinating and very enjoyable
and clever to say the least, Once upon a time,
the chart was really super important. I mean I remember,
(28:16):
you know, as a teenager or even younger ten twelve
years old, being very excited when a new you know,
Casey casem list would come out and you'd root for
your song and things like that. Obviously, it's been quite
a while since that was the case, although there still
are various ways of calculating what's the number one song
that arc of when would you say, sort of, you know,
(28:37):
the real heyday of the importance of the chart was.
Speaker 6 (28:43):
The charts are definitely still important. I mean I definitely
have a biased perspective because I work in the music
industry and Billboard is still the premier chart. There are
other data sources that people look at, but scoring a
number one hit on the Billboard Charts is still really important,
and if you crawl through certain parts of Twitter or Reddit,
(29:05):
you will still find people who are rooting for certain
songs to get to number one. But when I think
of the height of the power of Billboard, I mean, ultimately,
it is a magazine, and magazines are not as I
don't think they're as powerful as they once were, So
I think the height of Billboard is also tied to
(29:27):
the height of magazine power in the United States specifically,
and I think to your point, it probably goes back
to the nineteen seventies because at the same time that
magazines are really important, Billboard was growing in popularity. You
had this massively popular radio show hosted by Casey Kasem
(29:48):
where he would count down the top forty songs from
the chart. So you had this symbiotic relationship where there
was not only a popular magazine about music, but there
was this radio show that was also popular, and they're
sort of feeding off of each other to create intrigue
about what is this magazine and what are these charts?
(30:09):
And again, Billboard's still very important, but I think in
putting it into the popular consciousness was at its height
during that era.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Well, since you provided such lovely bullet points for a
few things, I guess I will use them as an interviewer.
You can always use a crutch or two. I was
thinking back on the first one, and it is true
that people are always dying in car rex and such,
or you know, dying under mysterious circumstances in the nineteen fifties,
and people would sing about it and say that you know,
(30:43):
Kathy's Gone Away or whatever, and the way you phrase
it has hit songs in the nineteen fifties were regularly
about gruesome death. That's a fairly unique trait for songs
for sure.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
Yeah, that was actually what inspired me to start writing
the book. As I listened to about I don't know
forty or fifty number one hits, which probably takes you
from late nineteen fifty eight to maybe the early sixties,
and I was like, why on earth are there so
many number one songs about like teenagers dying or wars?
You know, examples like teen Angel by Mark Dinning, this
(31:20):
very melodramatic song about a high school couple. The car
stalls out on the railroad tracks. They get out, and
the girl goes running back to get a ring that
the guy gave her and she dies. I'm like, how
is this a topic for a popular For a popular song,
you don't expect millions of people to want to buy
and listen to that. And I explore that in the
(31:43):
first chapter of the book, And that's sort of what
set me down wanting to write about this. And I
think there are many many factors that influence that, some
of which I talk about is the rise of like
the teenage demographic. Really, before that era teen there wasn't
a distinct demographic period noted between childhood and adulthood, and
(32:06):
teenagers sort of grew out of the economic boom after
World War Two. People had more money to spend compulsory education.
You have people in this now teenage age bracket hanging
out all day in high school for years and years.
You end up getting more teenagers making music and teens
(32:28):
singing about other teenagers, which are usually the topics of
these songs. At the same time, you know, there are
a ton of tragedies throughout the first half of the
twentieth century, some of them very big, you know, the
Holocaust of course, the influenza pandemic, the Great Depression, but
some smaller. There are just a ton of musicians who
(32:50):
end up dying young, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper,
Richie Vallen's, Jimmy Rogers, and I think all of these
things sort of smashed together to create this trend where
you have people singing about the term I used gruesome death,
and lots of people buying records to listen to it.
(33:14):
It's an interesting it's one of the most interesting trends
I think in the history of popular music, early twentieth
century popular music, well when.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
You started out. I mean, this has gone through waves
and such, but the way that songs were constructed and
put together and written was a lot different. In the
late fifties early sixties, it would probably be quite unusual
for the person who sang the song to have actually
written it. There were a lot of brill building people
cranking out music. There were bands that didn't even exist,
(33:45):
like the Archies, things like that. Then you had the
singer songwriter era that sort of ushered in the fact
that the people who were singing the songs generally were
the people who wrote them. And then maybe as time
has gone on Nashville and other places, they're all of
collaborations that go on, and now today maybe there's multiple
people who will get together and create music. So that's
(34:06):
kind of taken an arc as well.
Speaker 6 (34:09):
Yeah, definitely, I talk about this trend a lot, and
I feel like not everyone thinks it's interesting, but I
guess I think you might just based on what you're saying,
this idea that to be a serious artist you have
to write your own songs, and we usually think that
emerged in the nineteen sixties with the Beatles and Bob
Dylan writing their own writing and performing their own music.
(34:33):
Something I write about and I think chapter three of
the book is actually how that trend predates them a
little bit. But it is certainly true that up through
the nineteen fifties these were the role of a performer
was very different than the role of a songwriter or
the role of a producer. Everything was separated, and throughout
the sixties, to use an economic term, we see things
(34:54):
become vertically integrated, where you have a band that is
just a creative unit. They're going to write their own music,
they're going to perform their own music, they're going to
produce their own music. And because of that, we now
have this idea that I think still very powerful, that
if you are a serious artist, you have to write
your own music. And I think it's part of the
(35:15):
reason why you still see someone like Taylor Swift, who
has made it very clear over her career that she
writes her own songs, because you are taken more seriously
if you write your own songs. Now, I don't think
that's necessarily the case. I mean, there's tons of great
artists and performers who never wrote a look of music.
One that comes to mind is Frank Sinatra, right. But
(35:37):
it's an attitude that is quite pervasive in music, and
it really emerged in the sixties and.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Even during the times when you know there were that
was the prevailing thought. They were fantastic artists like Linda
Ron's dad or people like that, who seldom wrote their
own music. Barbis Streisansch wrote some, but very little. So
I guess it's just like everything else you talk about.
There's no real set pattern to anything.
Speaker 6 (36:04):
No, there's a great book called it's called Major Labels.
I think the subtitles a History of Music in seven Genres,
and the author's name is Escaping Me. He writes for
The New Yorker. When he talks about this idea, he's like,
you know, that's just one way to make music, the
singer songwriter approach. There's lots of different ways to make music.
(36:26):
And you also see that when you listen to six
decades of number one hits. Is the creative process looks
different for different people, and that's okay.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
And also when you look at the chapters here, it
seems like as the time went on, the chapter's got
a little longer as far as chronology is concerned. Was
that because more songs would become number one songs and
later on songs would stay number one for longer or
what was part of that.
Speaker 6 (36:58):
Yeah, in the nineties, you definitely the song staying at
the top of the charts for longer, and that's just
a function of Billboard changing the chart methodology in the
early nineties. They go from a system that was very imprecise,
which from the sixties through the eighties they're basically just
calling record stores and asking them, hey, what's selling, which was,
(37:19):
like I said, not super precise. It was subject to fraud.
And then in the nineties they switched to a system
called sound scan, which had point of sale data, so
you were getting a more accurate representation of what was
actually popular. And in the short term, what you see
is that songs stay at the top of the charts longer.
So part of the reason that those later chapters cover
(37:40):
more years is that you know, I want to include
I usually tried to include at least fifty number ones
in each chapter. But additionally I would just write. I
would listen to music and write enough until I felt
like I had said what I wanted to say, So
part of it is just a function of I have
more to say about certain things than other things.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
When you were going through this process, was there ever
a point You're like, I don't know if I can
make it to the finish line here? You know, I
started this out and I thought it was a dandy idea,
and now it's you know, I'm at nineteen seventy nine
and I am am I gonna go all the way?
Speaker 6 (38:22):
Yeah, I mean, I funny you bring up seventy nine.
I Actually one thing I came to enjoy during this
process was I wasn't expecting to enjoy disco music so
much right when you But also at the same time,
there are great disco songs, but when you get to
like the height of the disco era and the late seventies,
there are a lot of stinkers that get to the
(38:42):
top of the charts. And there were a couple couple
of weeks where I was like, oh my god, I
don't know if I can can forge on through the
rest of the disco era. So some had some of
those low points. The late eighties is another point where
I was like, oh wow, all right, I gotta press
on to get to get to something better. But I
(39:03):
would only do one song a day, so it wasn't
It was never this big to do. It was like, Okay,
I have three minutes of my life every day that
I can dedicate to this.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Well.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
In your biography, you point out the fact that you
lived with your four guitars and your future wife, Devin,
and so obviously music is still a big part of
your life, not just from your writing life or your
professional life, but obviously as a personal passion as well.
Did you find that listening to all these songs did
anything to change your musical taste.
Speaker 6 (39:38):
One hundred percent. I grew up I was like a
classic rock kid, you know, guitar music from the sixties
to the eighties. Those guys and occasional gals were my
heroes and I still love love that music. But listening
to all of this made me realize that pop music
(40:01):
itself is not necessarily Just because something is popular does
not mean it should be taken less seriously or that
it's bad. At the same time, it doesn't mean we
have to take it seriously or that it is good
because it's popular. And because of that, I came to
at least appreciate different styles of music that were made
differently than the music that I grew up loving. Like,
(40:25):
just because you're playing guitar, it doesn't inherently mean your
music is better or more serious than someone who makes
their music with a drum machine or a sampler. You know,
you have to get in the mindset of those community
where that music came out of to understand it. Like
if you grew up again listening to classic rock. On
(40:46):
the surface, hip hop music might strike you as strange
because it's very, very different, But if you learn about
the history of where that music came out of, it's
like people were making music with the technology that was
available to them, and when when you think about it
that way, you come to appreciate a wider style of music. Disco,
like I said, is something that I came to appreciate more.
(41:09):
There are definitely some really cheesy ballads that I have
a soft spot for, especially from the eighties nice and
some early two thousand's R and B music I came
to like more than I ever thought I would.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
So, what's your musical life like now besides this project,
which now I'm sure you should are and should be
very proud of. But as far as your own music,
what is that journey like for you?
Speaker 6 (41:35):
Yeah, well, I've still put it. I usually put out
a couple songs a year with a studio in West Orange,
New Jersey called Domestic Bliss. I've had a lot of
fun working out of there over the last couple of years.
Making music is still a thing that really I love writing,
but there's still something that picking up the guitar and
(41:56):
playing I'm having I had, honestly every trouble vocalizing. It's
just it gives me a feeling that I don't really
get from anything else. I play frequently with my cousin's
band John, cause he plays punk music. I play bass
in that band. I have a lot of fun with them,
So I'm always looking for whatever musical opportunities come my way.
(42:21):
In a couple of days, I'm playing a cover set
with a different one of my cousins, just like an
acoustic cover set at a bar. So I'm always looking
for ways to continue to scratch that musical itch, whether
that's through recording my own stuff or just getting out
there and playing. It's a compulsion. You can't completely turn
it off.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
No matter what that's very cool, and that big pause
said more than words would have right then, I think
in that particular spot. So this project is done. Why
don't you tell us a little bit about the usual
ways that you can access your wonderful book.
Speaker 6 (43:00):
Yeah, the book is available on basically anywhere online. The
publisher Bloomsbury will have it at the cheapest price, but
you can get it on Amazon, Walmart, Barnes and Noble, whatever.
A book's a million I don't know. I couldn't even
listen all the places right you can find it. If
you find me on social media, you'll also find the book.
(43:24):
My name is Chris Dallaiva. I'm seen Dalerriva music on
most platforms, A pretty easy guy to follow find online.
So I don't think people should have difficulty finding the book.
But if you can't find it, reach out to me
and I will point you in the right direction.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
The book is called Uncharted Territory. What Numbers tell us
about the biggest hit songs in Ourselves? Christella Riva has
taken us through this fascinating journey of his own musical journey,
and this really really interesting book. I can't wait. I've
read many excerpts of it and I can't wait to
sort of read it in full. And now that this
is over and you do this, and you got your music,
(44:02):
and you get your guitars, and you got your future
wife all lined up, what's the near future have in
store for a very still young Chris della Riva.
Speaker 6 (44:17):
I mean, I would like to keep writing about music.
I am very active in my newsletter. I would like
to make that an even bigger part of my life
if I can. I have still have a ton of
fun working at Audio Mac. I like being in the
music business. I like being in the weeds with all
that stuff, and I'm just hoping that I can keep
(44:38):
that passion that I have for music alive and share
it with as many people as possible, whether that's through
my writing or through my playing.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
We hope you enjoyed the latest Dann Klinkscale Reasonably Irreverent podcast.
Come back soon for something fresh and new. This podcast
was made possible by our great sponsors like Eastern Roofing,
where integrity matters. Joe Spiker and his team are the
best in the business for all your roofing needs. Handle
(45:07):
with honesty and craftsmanship. Visit them at Easternroofing dot com.
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