The Most Influential Rock Band
U2? The Who? Herman's Hermits?
Before we talk about using data to measure the influence of rock artists, there’s some book-keeping to attend to.
In last week’s newsletter, I crunched some numbers to figure out if Thanksgiving music exists. Spoiler: It does. One of my readers was kind enough to add all of the most popular Thanksgiving songs to a playlist. You can check it out here.
I spent the last six months researching this piece about ringtones for Sherwood News. Take a look if you get a chance. Though you might remember the ringtone as musical ephemera from the 2000s, it still lurks in odd corners of the internet.
My friends over at The Pudding just put out fantastic piece about the evolution of the love song. You should check it out.
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Now, onto rock bands.
The Most Influential Rock Band
By Chris Dalla Riva
Arguing about rock music might be as old as rock music itself. And I’ve spent so much time partaking in that pastime that I’ve had the time to flip-flop my position on certain debates. Take the age-old Beatles-Rolling Stones discourse as an example. In my youth, I was firmly on The Beatles’ side. “The Rolling Stones would be nothing without The Beatles,” I remember saying. “Their first single to crack the top 20 in the United Kingdom was written by The Beatles.”
When I dove deep into Exile on Mainstreet in college, I started to second guess my sureness. The Beatles, I began to think, could never pull off a loose, bluesy mess like this album. And that’s probably true. But then in the last ten years I’ve slid back to my youth. The Beatles are better than The Rolling Stones. I’m sure of it.
Of course, this is an unsolvable debate. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones both made fantastic music. And luckily you don’t have to choose between the two. You can enjoy both Beggars Banquet and Abbey Road without paying anyone much mind. Nevertheless, there is a debate that we might be able to solve, namely which band is more influential.
In an ideal world, if we wanted to figure out if The Beatles or The Rolling Stones were more influential, we’d send a survey out to every professional rock musician and ask them to list who inspired them to pick up their instrument. Then we’d count each time either The Rolling Stones or The Beatles were listed and see who got mentioned more often. While this approach is somewhere between impossible and infeasible, there might be a tool that can help us get at the idea: Wikipedia.
On the Wikipedia page for the band the Stone Temple Pilots, there’s an interesting passage near the end of the article about their performance on VH1 Storytellers:
During the taping of their VH1 Storytellers performance, [Scott] Weiland acknowledged artists such as the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and Robert Plant as their musical heroes.
In short, according to lead singer Scott Weiland, the Stone Temple Pilots were most influenced by The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant. If this were the fictional survey I just discussed, then each of those artists would get one point of influence. Maybe if we could scan the Wikipedia pages of every rock band, we could not only proxy if The Beatles or The Rolling Stones were more influential but which rock band was the most influential generally. Luckily, we can do this.
Using Wikipedia’s API, I grabbed all 479 artists found on the site’s “List of mainstream rock performers.” Then for each of those performers, I aggregated a list of every musical artist their page linked to. I then cross-referenced that list of artists to the initial list of rock performers. Then voila, we had a way to try to answer our debate.
According to this methodology, The Beatles are not only more influential than The Rolling Stones, they are the most influential rock band of all-time. If you’ve read anything about rock music in the last six decades, this shouldn’t come as a shock. The Beatles are probably the most popular and critically acclaimed act to ever record a song.
If that’s the case, then was this entire exercise a waste of time? No. If you crunch some numbers and they reinforce your preconceived notions, that’s not a bad thing. It means that your gut was onto something. Additionally, there have been many times in my career where I’ve run an analysis that I think is a waste of time and find that the results go against everything I thought. As long as your process is sound, an analysis is generally worthwhile irrespective of the results.
Leave a comment if you’d like me to run this same analysis for another genre. Wikipedia has lists of thrash metal bands, ska musicians, G-funk rappers, and so much more. It only takes a couple minutes to compute influence scores for anything as long as there’s a page for it.
A New One
"Psalm 1" by Fat Trel
2024 - Melodic Rap
Given that I typically recommend music related to the bulk of the newsletter, you might expect that I’d recommend a rocker in this edition. Not today. I recommend so much rock-related music that I wanted to switch it up and tell you about Fat Trel.
Fat Trel has been at it for a while. Over the last 15 years, the Virginia rapper has collaborated with everyone from Wale to Chief Keef to Rick Ross. But the honesty on his latest single “Psalm 1” makes it feel he is just finding his own voice.
An Old One
"La Fiesta" by Woody Herman
1973 - Jazz Fusion
Last week, I spent some time listening to 1940s jazz hits. One of the artists that was very popular at that time was bandleader Woody Herman. But as I perused Herman’s discography, I realized that though the hits dried up, he made music for decades. And a lot of that later music was enthralling. In the 1970s, Herman explored fusion on his album Giant Steps. The opening track to that album — aptly named “La Fiesta” — is an absolute riot.
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I was in high school jazz band in the 1970s. Herman's La Fiesta was a big hit among that crowd and we played that arrangement. Thanks for reminding me; I've only listened since to the Chick Corea original.
If it’s between The Beatles and The Stones, I will always argue for the Fab Four. I also admit a bias since I met Lennon as a wee girl.
But if we look at influence through a worldwide social lens, I think the longevity, songwriting, outreach, and unconventional business approach of the Grateful Dead is unparalleled in overall rock influence. The Dead created a subculture that spans generations and genres, they embrace new technology— AOL’s Dead forums coordinated nationwide vigils when Jerry died in ‘95. Dead & Co (the remaining members and new ones) just announced 18 additional shows at The Sphere because “technology has finally caught up” with their music and vibe. They ushered in 1-800 ticket sales, tape trading, parking lot merchandising, and hundreds of cover/tribute bands. Not to mention being the progenitors of the Jam Band genre and the thousands of musicians and millions of fans who are part of it.
Some argue that they aren’t the best musicians or singers, but the music, influence, and scene they’ve created over the past 60 years is unparalleled. Maybe Taylor Swift will match it in a few decades… 😉