What's your strongest letter for your desert island playlist

Cafe Society
1

Yes, I have another ridiculous implausible what if? … You need to prepare a playlist for your indefinite stay on a deserted island. But you have to limit your music to artists or song titles beginning with the same letter.

So you can sort, by artist or by song title, and take all the music that sorts under one letter. Let’s say this sort like iTunes, so George Harrison is under “G”, The Beatles is under “B”, The Rolling Stones are under “R”, etc. Likewise for titles, The Sound of Silence is under “S”, A Taste of Honey is under “T”.

Do you sort by artist or song title, and which letter do you pick? Tell me something about what music you end up with.

For me, I decided to count my music by letter for both sorts, and I have to say I was kind of surprised by the results (though maybe I shouldn’t have been if I gave it any degree of thought in the first place).

Sorting by artist, I have nearly 1500 tunes under “B”, which is the longest playlist I could make under the rules. All my Beatles, a bunch of Bobs/Bobbies (Curnow, Dylan, Florence, Marley, Seger, Darin), a lot of Bon Jovi and Booker T., and the Bruces – Hornsby and Springfield. A sprinkling of less pop-y music from the Boston Symphony, Buckwheat Zydeco and several Bossa Nova bands.

My second largest list is “S” sorted by title, which gets a list of about 1250. Maybe the most appealing thing about it is that it has almost all my symphonies and string quartets by almost all my classical composers. Also, it’s obviously a considerably more diverse list made up of a larger pool of artists. Quite a number of songs beginning with Saturday, Say, Sea, See, Send, Sex, Shake, She, Since, Sing, Sleep, So, Someday, Someone, Something, Soon, Soul, Star, Stay, Stop, etc.

So, I’m going with “S” by title because it’s considerably more diverse. FYI, the next largest possible list is only a bit more than half this size. “J” sorted by artist is a bit more than 700 tunes, performed mostly by platoons of Jims, Joes, Johns and Johnnies.

2

I’d have to take “Artists with S”, it has the strongest concentration of my must-have bands, and a lot of others I could live with on a desert island. Strongly Indie/Alternative stuff, basically. I’ve bolded the must-haves that decided it.

Swans, Smiths, Shelleyan Orphan, Swing Out Sister, Sundays, Sugarcubes, Stone Roses, Sisters of Mercy, Sigur Rós, Siouxsie, Skinny Puppy, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, Southern Death Cult, Specials, St Etienne, Stereolab

3

I haven’t sorted through S yet, but M is the current leader with 71 desert island albums. Followed by B with 43. I sort by artist name.

When considering all genres of music, the graph of “bands/performers starting with…” B, S and M are usually the top three letters, followed by C, G and H. However the “itunes” model is decidedly different. In a standard reference library, George Harrison would be under H.

4

I would go with B. Beethoven, all the Bachs and the Beatles seems like more than enough on their own without thinking about anyone else ho starts with B.

5

I’d be cool with “D”.

The artists are pretty decent. I have Daft Punk, Danny Brown, Datsik, Deadmau5, DJ Premier, DJ Shadow, Doctor P, Doctor John, Domo Gensis, Doug Benson, Doug Stanhope, and then my Drum and Bass and Dubstep collections.

Songs are even better though. I could spend some desert island time with “Do You Realize???,” “Dust Bowl Dance,” “Dutch Flowerz,” “The Dreamer,” the whole “The Rescue” album from Explosions in the Sky, “Dani California” and Kid Cudi’s “Day n Nite.”

EDIT: I am thoroughly convinced a lot of EDM names are “D” names. Its the longest list of names on my iPod.

6

I’d certainly take ‘K’ because of Ke$ha, even though I have very few other songs by other artists beginning with K. I have four Kanye West songs, and maybe five or ten others from non-Ke$ha ‘K’ artists

7

That’s ultimately why I went with “S”, by title. It includes all my “Symphony No. X” music, and so has most of my Bach and Beethoven music as well. All these would be crossovers, on both my lists.

8

Hey, not to mention all the sonatas! :smiley:

9

Not to mention all the “Song(s)” songs, either. I have about 20 tunes with titles starting with the word.

10

Not to mention all the “Song(s)” songs, either. I have about 20 tunes with titles starting with the word. And 130 “Symphony” tunes, either complete symphonies or movements, and another 30 “String Quartet No. X”.

Oddly enough, I don’t have a single one starting with “Sonata”. I do have sonatas, but it seems the word is always buried somewhere else with the title, eg., “Moonlight Sonata”. And I have nearly 40 “Piano Sonatas” which I would only have on my island if I chose “P”.

11

I don’t even have to look. Amongst my most favorite bands are The Beatles, Ben Folds Five, Beastie Boys, Barenaked Ladies and Belle and Sebastian.

12

I’m learning quite a few lessons during my alphabetic analysis. For instance, I had never realized how apparently self-centered so many songwriters are. I have 453 songs beginning with “I”, “I’m”, “I’ve”, etc. Compare this to only 33 songs beginning with some variation of “We”, though to be fair there are 199 songs starting with variations of “You”. But many of them seem to be about how bothersome “You” are – You Talk Too Much, You’ll Never Surf in This Town Again, You’re Going To Miss Me, You’re No Good, etc.