JL, a Longtime Loyal Follower of These Musings, asks the question1: “I know Taylor Swift isn’t your fav but wondered if you’ve listened and had thoughts on her new album that’s all songs collaborating with Max Martin and Shellback. I’ve heard people say it’s very pop Sweden..which means little to me but made me think... Continue Reading →
JL, a Longtime Loyal Follower of These Musings, asks the question: “I know Taylor Swift isn’t your fav but wondered if you’ve listened and had thoughts on her new album that’s all songs collaborating with Max Martin and Shellback. I’ve heard people say it’s very pop Sweden..which means little to me but made me think... Continue Reading →
Recently, I watched a 2022 video1 that cited 16 songs that are 30+ years old and have over 1 billion plays on Spotify. Intrigued and curious, I wondered if that list had grown since then. Much has been made of the dominance of “catalog” songs, defined as tracks that are three years or older, in... Continue Reading →
Back in 2013, in my Idol Musings blog devoted to the TV show, I wrote about the Beach Boys song Good Vibrations. The context was Final 6 Week, and the Idolists had two themes to perform: the Burt Bacharach-Hal David Song Book and Songs You Wish You Wrote. Here’s what I wrote about the latter.... Continue Reading →
Gotta love Eurovision. Where else can you have a song contest featuring loving odes to saunas, espresso, and, uh, the joys of sex? And the song about sex got the fewest votes of the three? What the Hell Just Happened, as the U.K. entry may have sung (they did). Apparently, unrequited love is better than... Continue Reading →
Who’s going to win Eurovision? I don’t know, but I do have some idea. I’ve learned that there are strong clues in the betting markets. I’m fascinated by the intensity of Eurovision betting, and because I’m obsessed with analyzing numbers, I set myself to study how close the betting markets were to the Final results.... Continue Reading →
You’re welcome. Once again, I spent the month of March eagerly consuming and evaluating the release of each country’s Official Music Videos - all 37 of them. This year, I took the additional step of watching videos of many of the winning performances in each country’s national contest to get a sense of what the... Continue Reading →
Ray's Musings 