Every Noise at Once is an ongoing attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 5,996 genre-shaped distinctions by Spotify as of 2022-12-31. The calibration is fuzzy, but in general down is more organic, up is more mechanical and electric; left is denser and more atmospheric, right is spikier and bouncier.
Well, if you are a music geek like me, this is a terribly useful gadget. There is a search box at the top that facilitates artist look-ups. This little website may be the most useful tool to-date for creating playlists.
Just exploring the “Power pop” genre, I was able to find a number of artists of which I’d been previously unaware. They will surely end up on my Power Pop playlist on Spotify.
At some point today, I had a fairly innocuous idea. It went a little like this…
I’m going to fashion a playlist based off of the much vaunted “MTV Top 20 Video Countdown”—GODAMMIT!
Blake Charles Donley
More accurately, my playlist will be based off of the much vaunted “MTV Top 20 Video Countdown” and wrap on or about 1/1/90 (for obvious reasons). You see, after entering college in the fall of 1990, MTV was not really on my radar. Neither were charts and lists. It was mostly getting drunk, getting laid, and getting a degree. I still loved music, but I got less geeky about it (and everything) for a spell.
But fear naught! Now that I’m (officially) old, I’ve been in the throes of a wicked case of nostalgia for a long spell. I’m back in full-on music geek mode big-time! It has something to do with me getting so goddam old or current music getting so goddam decrepit or both.
Being the clueless dolt I generally tend to be, I assumed crafting such a playlist would be no fat task.
I was wrong.
Waaaay wrong…
Inexplicably, there is no archive anywhere on the Interwebz that chronicles the weekly top 20 charts from the channel previously known as “Music Television”, not even on their own dizzying website. In fact, it appears that the channel previously known as “Music Television” has morphed into another streaming service like Netflix, Prime, or Hulu—what the actual?
This bummed me out, and shocked me, immensely. But then I stumbled upon a discussion thread on the UKMIX discussion board—you likely know them by their tagline: “FOR THE MUSIC // BY THE FANS”. I know I didn’t.
On 8/8/2010, user: azul120 (who is the runaway superstar of this thread, BTW) suggests the following…
“Hi all. I found this forum via a web search for the MTV Top 20 Countdown, and considered starting up this thread for discussion about and posting of old charts anyone might have lying about. (Grybop said he had a few from late ’89.) For the latter, would ascending (20-1) or descending (1-20) be preferable?”
azul120
What follows is a 54 page thread that continues to this day. It’s nothing short of staggering in both depth and breadth. With a profound sense of awe and jealousy, all I could do was sit back and bask in it’s utter glory.
The determined participants on this thread have mined hours of YouTube vids, newspaper articles, and arcvive.org minutia in an effort to reconstruct the various weekly MTV Top 20 Video Countdowns from its inception in 1984 through some point the mid 2010s. The effort that has gone into this thread cannot be understated. It likely represents tens of thousands of collective hours of research followed with endless typing. The result is the chronicling of the weekly charts for this once great show on this once great channel.
Anyway, you are probably wondering why in the hell I’m blathering on and on about this colossal achievement. Well, it all gets back to that playlist idea.
Currently, the only way to amass the necessary intel to craft my playlist is to read through all 54 pages of posts. I figured if I’m going to do that, I may as well summarize (a.k.a. recreate) the charts in a straight chronological list. I’ve already read through 80% of this thread to ensure no one had done this. As far as I can tell, to-date, no one has.
Enter yours truly…
I started a post that will simply display the charts on a week-by-week basis for the decade that was the ’80s. I’m nearly to 1986.
Essentially, I’m doing a metanalysis of the painstaking research that has been done to-date by the intrepid contributors to this epic thread. Frankly, as far as grassroots research goes, this might be the best example in the history of ever—the gold standard, if you will. The work that went into this is jaw-dropping, truly.
I cannot thank the wonderous souls who contributed enough!
Ever!!
Bless all of you!!!
I’m going to keep chipping away at my metanalysis until I can publish it on this very site. Then the playlist will come henceforth. In the meantime, rock on! Cheers!
Waxing Phonographic 