Credit: Matt Daniels/Used by permission
Matt Daniels created a brilliant data visualization that presented 26 years of hip-hop history in a scrolling timeline. I ended an article on the hip-hop timeline with a recommendation that listeners who can’t handle hip hop hang in there and wait because Daniels was working on a timeline covering the Billboard Top 100. The wait is over. “How Pop Music Evolved” is live.
Like the hip-hop visualization, Evolved uses a scrolling timeline to cover 60 years of hits. A sample from a song plays for as long as it held down the number one slot on the Billboard chart. The top five tracks move up and down the scrolling timeline although only tracks that reached number one have playable samples.
The decades covered by Evolved are listed below the timeline. Clicking on the heading for a decade brings up a list of its years and clicking on a year brings up a list of months. Clicking on a month starts the timeline scrolling at that point in time. This is a much easier way to navigate through Evolved than the slider that accompanied the hip-hop timeline. Use All Five, a design and technology studio, contributed to the design of Evolved.
At 22,000 songs, Evolved tracks more than 10 times as many singles as the hip-hop timeline but that increase in coverage comes with a loss in functionality. The hip-hop timeline included samples of every song that appeared on the chart whether or not the track reached number one. Clicking on the icon for a song brought up a second screen that listed a number of tracks by the artist that you could listen to as you pleased. This allowed the viewer to explore the world of hip hop at a deeper level than simply listening to a mix of number one hits. Although Evolved doesn’t allow you to dig deeper into 60 years of hit music, it does allow you to listen to a continuous mix of the hits that topped the charts.
If you’ve been into popular music at any time during the past 60 years, Evolved offers a delicious opportunity to take a trip down memory lane. You’ll hear songs you loved and still listen to, songs you loved and forgot, and songs you forgot for good reason.
The ability of music to evoke personal or emotional memories is well known and Evolved is virtually guaranteed to bring you back to moments in your past as if they had happened yesterday. I hadn’t heard or thought about Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” in decades, but when it hit number one in January 1973 I was suddenly transported into a car crammed with people that picked me up hitchhiking on Martha’s Vineyard. One of Simon’s songs came on the sound system, the whole car burst into gorgeous multi-part harmony, and I realized I was riding with the James Taylor/Carly Simon crew. An infographic that can do that for you is definitely worth your time.
