So you think you know everything about The Beatles already? You’ve listened to every song at least 50 times and have first issues of all of the vinyl releases. You’ve read all of the books, watched all of the videos, and listened to all of the interviews. You scoff at anyone who says their favorite Beatles song is Yellow Submarine. You truly are the number one fan…but what Beatles data do you have?
With the growth and ubiquity of Spotify and the easy access to listen data it provides, we can see things we’ve never seen before and definitively answer questions that remained unanswerable until now. What are the best and worst albums? What are the best and worst songs? John or Paul? Early Beatles or late Beatles? Do that many people really like Here Comes the Sun? Did the Beatles properly sequence their albums? Are there some songs that just don’t belong on certain albums? Which album was the biggest let down in the arc of their career? Do the rock critics get it right? What does the Love album tell us about some of the untapped potential of a few Beatles songs? What is the role of data in music now and in the future? I had a lot of fun digging into this data, and I hope you enjoy!
1…Billion
In 2000, The Beatles released the 1 album, a collection of the 27 songs that reached #1 on the charts. It serves as a great introduction to The Beatles for newbies and a good place for die-hard fans to hear a mix of favorites. In just about two-and-a-half years, fans new and old have listened to these 27 songs over 1.2 billion times! Not bad for a group of songs about a half century old. That quantity of listens is typically reserved for a handful of more recent releases (e.g. Drake, Adele, Kanye, etc.).
Some artists’ listens on Spotify are pretty much limited to their couple of hits, but that is definitely not the case for The Beatles. In fact, they are nearing 4 billion listens for songs on their major studio albums. In Spotify’s First 100 Days summary, The Beatles had 6.5M monthly listeners with over 2,793 years of listening. They are now up to 13.5M monthly listeners and what I estimate to be 20,000+ years of listening. This speaks to both the growth of Spotify as well as the staying power of the group.
Abbey Road by a Mile
What’s the best Beatles album? This is a question any self-respecting fan wrestles with on a regular basis. What criteria do we use to decide? Level of experimentation and growth? What we revisit the most? The album with the most songs you force your family and friends to listen to? Well, even if you are still unsure for yourself, the people have voted…and Abbey Road blows them all away. The album has an average of 34M listens per track, more than 50% higher than the next closest two albums, Let It Be and Magical Mystery Tour, with about 20M listens per track each.
The album is solid all the way through, but Here Comes the Sun and Come Together are what really put it over the top with 191M listens and 135M listens, respectively. In total, the album has 570M listens. The next closest album is The Beatles (White Album), in part because there are so many tracks. So what if you stick to the standard listens per track and remove the outliers? If Here Comes the Sun and Come Together are removed from consideration, then Abbey Road has an average of 19M listens per track. That’s still higher than Help! and on par with Let it Be and Magical Mystery Tour at the top of the list. Lastly, if you look at other sources, like iTunes, I bet context clues can help you guess which studio album you’ll see at the top.
First Impressions Count
Another thing becomes clear looking at this data: first impressions count! Definitively, the later work of The Beatles is much more popular (more listens) than the early work of The Beatles. Their top three albums come from 1969, 1970, and 1967. Songs on their first six albums average 12M listens per track, while songs on their last six albums average 19M listens per track. The four most popular songs are all from the last couple years they were together. However, when most people think of The Beatles, a local group holds a “Fab Four”-themed event, or you just Google “Beatles”, what images appear? It’s always those lovable mop tops in nice suits. First impressions count.
On a related note, Track #1 for each album is critical. On average, a Beatles album sees spikes around track #s 6, 7, and 11, but none as big as track #1. Come Together, Help!, and A Hard Day’s Night are the three lead off tracks with the highest number of listens (well done John). In addition to the primacy effect (cognitive bias for better remembering that which comes first), we should also acknowledge a two structural factors within Spotify. First, the most recent album is listed at the top. For many, this means it’s easier to start listening to the later albums (e.g. Let it Be and Abbey Road), and it’s natural to start with track #1. This is in part is why Come Together surfaced as the most popular song in the first few days. Second, Spotify lists songs with the most recent listens at the top of the artist’s page in the “Popular” section. Combine this with the proliferation of voice technology and the current assumption that you are most likely to want what is popular, and a virtuous cycle is created for those songs already at the top. Songs at the top are typically dethroned only after a new, original release from the artist, and I’m not expecting that anytime soon…but if you know something I don’t, please reach out!
The People vs. the Rock Critics
Ok, so it’s settled…Abbey Road is the winner. Right? Well, there seems to be no end to opinions here, especially among the rock critics. For many, Revolver is the best, as it marks the beginning of significant experimentation in The Beatles cannon (think Tomorrow Never Knows). Some really like the variety on The Beatles (White Album). A lot of critics cite the growing maturity in The Beatle’s songwriting on Rubber Soul. Frequently, rock critics point to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and how it redefined the concept of the album.
Very publicly, Rolling Stone ranks the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (updated in 2012) and includes ten Beatles albums, four of which make their top ten, but not in the order you might expect after seeing Spotify listen data. For example, the four in the top ten are the 6th(Sgt. Pepper), 7th(Revolver), 8th(Rubber Soul) and 10th (White Album) ranked albums in terms of average Spotify listens per track. Maybe this makes sense to the rock critics for the previously mentioned reasons, but sometimes, people just want to revisit some of their favorite songs, regardless of how innovative they are.
The Most Popular Songs
Overall, the list of the most popular Beatles songs remains pretty much the same over time , but some of the slight variations suggest a few interesting influences. From Spotify’s First 100 Days analysis to now, Here Comes the Sun, Come Together, Let it Be, and Yesterday remain at the top of this list. More recently, Hey Jude has jumped into the top four. This later rise can most likely be attributed to the tendency of Beatles fans to listen to full albums. As Hey Jude was released as a single and not part of any major studio album (no track #1 advantage or recent release advantage) it got a later start, but the cream always eventually rises to the top.
Perhaps more interesting is the subtle variance in what people are streaming vs. what people are buying. Right now, you will still see four of the same songs in the top five on iTunes; however, Let it Be takes first place, and Blackbird flies into second. Yes, this could just be random variation, but I have a theory. If you’ve ever taken a college guitar course, then this will make sense. Beginners want to learn a simple, recognizable song with some basic chords. Let it Be fits the bill better than most Beatles songs with C, G, Am, and F chords for much of the song. Slightly more advanced students are all trying to learn Blackbird…yes, all of them. At least that was my experience. The portability and availability offline offered with a purchase may be a factor here. I could be wrong, but one thing is clear, there’s a lot of Paul at the top of these lists.
John vs. Paul
Are you more of a John fan or a Paul fan? Do you prefer the inspired experimentation of “Elvis Beatle” or the consistently beautiful work of “the songbird”? Whoever your favorite is, Spotify data allows us to see who has been the most popular…and the result…George!
For the 40 most popular John songs, there are an average of 22M listens per track (Come Together, In My Life, and All You Need is Love topping the list). For the 40 most popular Paul songs, there are an average of 28M listens per track (Hey Jude, Let it Be, and Yesterday topping the list). For the ten most popular George songs, there are an average of 29M listens per track (Here Comes the Sun, Something, and While My Guitar Gently Weeps topping the list). Ok, so George has fewer hit songs than John and Paul, but it seems he just got a later start. As the youngest member of The Beatles, he really started to peak late in the life of the band (1968 – 1969). I imagine that George would have started to secure more tracks per album if The Beatles continued past into the 1970’s. It’s no wonder that his 1970 solo release All Things Must Pass is given such universal praise.
Carry That Weight
Inevitably, there will always be songs that pull an album up or weigh an album down. For example, Beatles for Sale is by far the least popular Beatles album in terms of total listens and average listens per track. However, it is home to, and saved by, the early classic, Eight Days a Week. The song is listened to 6x more frequently than the other tracks on the album. In some cases, the outlier is so much more or less popular than the other songs on the album, it almost doesn’t seem to fit. In other cases, the song fits, but it just happens to be one of the most popular songs from the band.
The most volatile album is appropriately titled Help! On one hand, you have masterpieces like Help! and Yesterday. On the other hand, they squeeze in forgotten songs like You Like Me Too Much and Tell Me What You See. On average, Beatles albums see spikes in track #s 1, 6, and 7. With Help!, you still see this but with a slow down before the penultimate track, a more popular close than even Twist and Shout and All You Need is Love.
Give John Some Love
In 2006, producer George Martin, often referred to as the “Fifth Beatle”, pulled together the Love album to serve as the soundtrack to the popular Cirque du Sole show of the same name. It proved one of the best and most interesting uses of the mashup. Martin manages to pull just about every Beatles classic into the album in some way, but some songs have been getting disproportionately more listens than their original versions. In fact, six of the seven songs that over-index the most on this album are John songs. Some of this can be attributed to the early sequencing of some of these John songs, as many listeners just start from track #1. However, more experimental tracks like Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows and Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!/I Want You (She’s So Heavy) stand out, as they offer something a little different for the Beatles catalog.
“Love” is All You Need
In a joint interview promoting the opening of the Beatles Love show, Paul and Yoko agreed that love was the primary theme that inspired the music of The Beatles. If you look at their song titles that is also literally the case. Nineteen songs in The Beatles cannon contain “love” in the title in some form or another. More impressive is how much people like these songs compared to other songs. On average, these 19 songs have 28M listens vs. 15M listens for all other tracks. In other words, “love” = 2 x no “love”. This is no trivial increase. While checking several other titular themes, nothing else of significance emerged. With the many characters in Beatles music (Miss Lizzy, Mr. Kite, Lucy, Michelle, Rocky Raccoon, Jude, Rita, Mr. Mustard Seed, etc.), this was a natural theme to check. However, there was virtually no difference between the listens of character songs and non-character songs. On the other end, songs with “I”, “Me”, “Mine”, or “You” in the title tend to be less popular. These songs average 11M listens vs. the average of 16M listens per Beatles track. But what if you combine one of these songs with the lift from a “l0ve” song? P.S. I Love You has 6M listens.
With a Little Help from My Friends
Just for fun, we can use the listens data on Spotify to find doppelgangers of specific Beatles songs. So, with a mix of this quantitative information and some qualitative information, below I have found an example for each year of The Beatles’ career. These examples are particularly symbolic of each stage of The Beatles’ career as well as trends in music. Most music in the early sixties is playful and care-free. It’s not until 1965 that we start to see some trouble brewing (Help! and My Generation). In 1966 and 1967 the psychedelic influence emerges. This gives way to more guitar-driven experimentation in 1968, foreshadowing what would become the “classic rock” era. Peace and love make a comeback in 1969, but with much more adventurous instrumental backup. Finally, we start to get hints of what’s on everyone’s mind – space and expanding to new frontiers. Over time, we will see if these songs continue to accumulate listens at the same pace, but it’s fun to think about these songs in a broader context. Also, Spotify can use additional data to better model associated songs and predict other music you might want to hear.
Getting Better All the Time
The real-time nature of the Spotify data used in this analysis means that the number of listens keeps increasing as more people enjoy. So all of the data you’ve seen so far comes from a snapshot from mid-July 2018. It has been interesting to watch how much change occurred in the course of just a week. In the top spot, Here Comes the Sun added on the equivalent in listens of a What You’re Doing or Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby in the course of this analysis. In general, the increases of the most popular songs are perpetuated by their position in the “Popular” section. As I argue earlier, I believe this to be amplified by the rise of voice technology. Looking closely, you can get a sense of the listener attrition rate. For every 100 listeners of Here Comes the Sun, 69 make it to Come Together, 53 listen to Let it Be, 42 listen to Hey Jude, 33 listent to Twist and Shout, 28 listen to Blackbird, etc. It would be interesting to see how results would change if Spotify removed the “Popular” section, and its inherent perpetuation of the songs at the top of this list, especially for artists no longer releasing new albums. Instead, the default through a virtual assistant like Google Home or Alexa could be shuffle. They could also use listener data to predict what song by the artist you would prefer to hear. Some songs to watch would be Let it Be, Blackbird, and Yesterday, as they have been increasing at a faster rate than their current position would suggest.
Tomorrow Never Knows
So what? Why did I dig into all of this data? Why have you read so much of this? Hopefully, you have found this interesting and remembered a few conversational nuggets to help enlighten your friends and family the next time you get together. What if I told you that using some propensity modeling with Spotify data and natural language processing, we have created a new “Beatles” song? It’s true. Based on the insights above, there’s a new George song called, “Love, Love, Love, Love”. It’s the first track on a new album, and Spotify will be temporarily placing it in the top spot of the “Popular” section. Here’s a sneak peek at the chorus:
Hey, c’mon people, understand
Shake it together in the sun
Make it better in times of trouble
All your life, love for everyone
Love, love, love, love
Nah nah, ooh ooh
I hope that after reading those few lines, it is clear that I’m kidding, but I’m doing so to make a a broader point. Those of you who are true Beatles fans may have been excited at the prospect of hearing some new material, even if just an extrapolation of existing content. The fact is, there’s a lot of room for data and even artificial intelligence in creative fields like music. Predictive modeling and uncovering previously hidden patterns can be a useful tools for artists…blasphemy right? There’s no way a formula or few lines of code are going to determine the music people enjoy! In a way, that’s kind of already the case (think of all of the four-chorded, 4/4 songs with some new sound effect at the top of the charts right now), but we don’t have to be cynical about it. In fact, this is just another tool in the toolkit for artists truly open to new ideas. Just as in other domains (scientific discovery, integrated retail, chess), it is actually the mix of human intelligence and artificial intelligence that yield the best results. Creative fields need human creativity just as much as ever, but the resources today can inspire and amplify that creativity more than ever. I just wish we had the opportunity to hear what John, Paul, George, and Ringo would come up with together if they had access to some of the resources we have today.