Which Artist Has The Largest Number Of Perfect Songs? - Music

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

PurpleHazel wrote:

Those count in my book. Don't know why some on here claim that Who's Next is an inconsistent album. Most albums would kill to have four songs of that caliber.

Nobody in this thread's tried to define what a "perfect song" is, so it's been interpreted pretty subjectively (which it ultimately is anyway).

In b4 “a perfect song is emotionally and conceptually astounding, on such a level as to be among the best works of art ever created”
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craola
crayon master

Location: pdx

how can perfect even be defined in art? i find songs from totally different musical philosophies that are absolutely at odds with each other equally perfect, and i couldn't possibly come up with something quantifiable. works by beethoven and liszt vs works by radiohead and talk talk vs works by spalding and mingus vs panabrite and burial vs bjork vs guillemots vs haydenwho vs cloud cult vs daniel johnston -- all artists who have created "perfect" compositions in their own rights, but what metric could possibly be used to evaluate them on the same plateau?
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RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Yes!

I love data gathering wastes of time! (I mean this both as a joke and seriously).

According to what I've rated on this site, here are the artists with the most 100 songs...

U2 and Beatles are officially overrated (but what's sad is I really do love their songs this much)... data/facts can be reflective and this probably means my teenage years really still shape my musical identity (revisited in 2016 most likely). At times I'm embarrassed by it. Other times proud.

For me sometimes, especially when rating pop music, rating as 100 is a "hit". It's that song that I feel was spot on in it's ability to go past a song and explode me emotionally or mentally. Sometimes it's weighted more for artists that don't have many - meaning they only have a fantastic song or two per album. Sometimes I gave a 100 when I felt the song strongly made the album flow, but perhaps by itself in play list or something, perhaps wouldn't have been as solid (and probably why U2 and Beatles have so many, I feel they were great album makers). 100 rated songs get me outside of myself. I don't only give 100s to "perfect" songs. I really don't think such a thing exists. It also means not what I could possibly objectively rate to align myself with Pitchfork, rather what I truly dig as music I want to list to almost at any given time.

Also if you want to extract this data for yourself, you can download the CSV from this site of the songs you've rated and then use this formula to extract the name of the artist from the track title, then pivot the data: =RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-FIND("by",A2)-1)

I think I'm impressed mostly by Nirvana actually, given their short catalog. Paul Simon (given both Simon and Garfunkel and his solo work, rightfully so is at #3, with 75 tracks).

U2 201 (no wonder this guy is an idiot... no, but really, have you listened to their discography? I think everything up to 2000 is pretty damn good). Apparently I rated some best of stuff or something cause this almost doesn't jive mathematically.
The Beatles 115
R.E.M. 70
Red Hot Chili Peppers 65
Radiohead 54
Nirvana 49
Beck 43
The Rolling Stones 43
Foo Fighters 42
Paul Simon 42
The Smashing Pumpkins 39
Muse 36
Simon And Garfunkel 36
Sly & The Family Stone 33
Elvis Presley 32
Pearl Jam 31
Bob Dylan 28
Weezer 28
Coldplay 25
John Lennon 25
The Cure 23
Thrice 23
Creedence Clearwater Revival 22
Johnny Cash 22
The Beach Boys 21
The Doors 21
Bob Marley And The Wailers 20
Talking Heads 20
Arcade Fire 19
Steve Miller Band 19
The Jimi Hendrix Experience 18
Elbow 17
Green Day 17
The Black Keys 17
Aretha Franklin 16
Rage Against The Machine 16
Led Zeppelin 15
Igor Markevitch / Vienna Philharmonic 14
The White Stripes 14
Donovan 14
Modest Mouse 13
Pink Floyd 13
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers 13
Itzhak Perlman / London Philharmonic Orchestra" 12
La Grande Ecurie Et La Chambre Du Roy 12
Little Richard 12
Michael Jackson 12
Phish 12

Last edited by RoundTheBend on 10/16/2018 05:04; edited 1 time in total

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

craola wrote:

how can perfect even be defined in art? i find songs from totally different musical philosophies that are absolutely at odds with each other equally perfect, and i couldn't possibly come up with something quantifiable. works by beethoven and liszt vs works by radiohead and talk talk vs works by spalding and mingus vs panabrite and burial vs bjork vs guillemots vs haydenwho vs cloud cult vs daniel johnston -- all artists who have created "perfect" compositions in their own rights, but what metric could possibly be used to evaluate them on the same plateau?

If they have flair.

Kind of kidding.

No but for reals. It's not easy.

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

AfterHours wrote:

Bach

(More than all of the above combined)

I'm curious if I'll be able to pull the same data somehow once I've re-assessed/listed to first time Baroque/Classical/Romantic period artists. The data on this site would need to come from tracks and then from album titles somehow... dunno how to pull that one off. Also some records count "songs" differently... some break them up and some keep them as a single track... Interesting argument comes up with this... is this measured in movements or what parts of opera are considered a "song".

Bach's single work of a Well-Tempered Clavier... is this 1 piece, 48 parts, or 96 since it's a prelude then a fugue?

I'm nearly done with a first draft of 500 classical albums from antiquity until today (kinda halfway through Classical)... one for each major period I guess (Antiquity to Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, 20th century/etc.). I've probably listened to about 200 of them before and listened to about 50 of them live, but have never really taken the time to assess. That's one thing I miss about being a student in LA - LA Phil for $10. Or Pasadena Symphony for cheap too. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. LA Phil in the summer time at Hollywood Bowl (had a fantastic experience on July 4th watching them perform Beethoven's 9th).

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

sethmadsen wrote:

AfterHours wrote:

Bach

(More than all of the above combined)

I'm curious if I'll be able to pull the same data somehow once I've re-assessed/listed to first time Baroque/Classical/Romantic period artists. The data on this site would need to come from tracks and then from album titles somehow... dunno how to pull that one off. Also some records count "songs" differently... some break them up and some keep them as a single track... Interesting argument comes up with this... is this measured in movements or what parts of opera are considered a "song".

Bach's single work of a Well-Tempered Clavier... is this 1 piece, 48 parts, or 96 since it's a prelude then a fugue?

I'm nearly done with a first draft of 500 classical albums from antiquity until today (kinda halfway through Classical)... one for each major period I guess (Antiquity to Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, 20th century/etc.). I've probably listened to about 200 of them before and listened to about 50 of them live, but have never really taken the time to assess. That's one thing I miss about being a student in LA - LA Phil for $10. Or Pasadena Symphony for cheap too. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. LA Phil in the summer time at Hollywood Bowl (had a fantastic experience on July 4th watching them perform Beethoven's 9th).

Sounds like a great time!

In regards to putting all his work together and how to count them, gosh, once you start thinking with all the WTC parts etc, it gets ridiculous. His Cantatas alone feature a far more considerable number of "perfect" songs than probably all the artists featured here combined. His Mass in B Minor is probably the greatest set of perfect songs ever produced for a single work/album.

But I was more just having a little fun with my selection than anything else. None of these artists even approach comparison to the best composers in history so it was totally unfair and knowingly stepping a wee bit outside the bounds of the OPs intent.

That all said, "perfect" can be a pretty misleading ideal in selecting the best art.

My criteria page touches on why:

"A 10/10 does not necessarily mean "100% flawless", though probably approaches this in many regards. One could probably conceive of flaws in anything being qualitatively judged, so this is not the claim. "Flawless" can also be quite relative to the task or ambition undertaken. One could view a flawless painting of a bowl of fruit, and there are many of these. Alongside this, one could view Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and yet perhaps conceive of some minor flaws in the work. So is the bowl of fruit the greater work of art because it's more "flawless"? Or should we take much stronger consideration of the creativity, expressive impact and significance of each work when comparing them?"

This is also kind of an indirect reply to discussing the criteria of a "perfect" song.
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Johnnyo

Gender: Male
Age: 65
Location: London Town

It's generally going to be artists who have been around for a long time so Bob Dylan & Neil Young would be in there for me but I was thinking about artists who produced more perfect songs as a %age of their total output.

On that criteria, Credence Clearwater Revival would be hard to beat. So many perfect songs.

theblueboy

baystateoftheart wrote:

rkm wrote:

Neil Finn said something along the lines of, “you can spend a long time in the studio trying to make an average song work, but with a great song, you can do just about anything with it and it will still be great”.

I’d agree with that. With that in mind, I’d suggest a good test of “artists with the largest number of perfect songs” would be to see how many times those songs have been covered by other artists. A perfect song will be almost indestructible, and will transcend things like genre and generation.

According to that metric "Yesterday" by The Beatles would be the best song of all time. Does that ring true for you?

Number of covers is a great indicator of a songs calibre. But then there are those songs so perfect in their original form that no one dares touch them.

God only knows springs to mind.

theblueboy

I believe the phrase "perfect pop" was invented for Brian Wilson with good reason. He is the only possible answer here Cool

bobbyb5

Gender: Male
Location: New York

Up at the top of the list the number would be starting at over 50 for the Beatles, toward the bottom of the list somewhere around 20.
And everything else ranging somewhere in between.

Beatles
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Joni Mitchell
Rolling Stones
Elton John
David Bowie.
Moody Blues
Doors
Led Zeppelin
James Taylor