What is the Writing Center Listening To?

Matthew Flyr

    As a music major, I find myself wearing AirPods almost constantly. Music has become such an integral part of our society and culture and there's almost always at least one consultant with a pair of headphones during my shifts. This got me thinking: What music is playing underneath those headphones? The Coe Writing Center is a very niche group of people with a very wide variety of different interests; does the music they listen to reflect that?

    To answer these questions I asked as many consultants as I could what their favorite song was. Some consultants were able to answer right away. Some had to throughly scavenge their playlists to pick. The results were just as diverse as any other interest of the Writing Center.

    This is a graph of all of the genres represented in the Writing Center. 34 consultants responded to my question and their 34 favorite songs represented over 50 different genres. Pop is the most common genre with 5 songs, while POV: Indie took second with 4 and Rock rounded out the top three with 3. Some of the most interesting genres included Meme Rap, Sea Shanties, Mellow Gold, and Dark Cabaret. The genres of these songs where identified using Chosic's music genre finder, which also provided some interesting characteristics based on the song's tempo, key, camelot, and genre. 

    

• Abby Dvorak has the most popular favorite song with False God by Taylor Swift, which has a popularity rating of 88/100. 
• Popularity is determined (from Chosic using Spotify data) by streaming numbers, user interactions, and inclusions within popular playlists.
• Meanwhile, Gabby had the least popular song with JIN-EYE by Jhariah, which came in with a 32/100 on the popularity scale. 
• The happiest music taste goes to Jenna Rieder, whose favorite song is Cheeseburger in Paradise by Jimmy Buffet, which has an almost perfect happiness score of 97/100. 
• Happiness is determined through the song's characteristics, mainly key signature and BPM.
• Tumla has the most depressing music taste, as their song Fade Into You by Mazzy Star only scored 18/100 in happiness. 
• Avalynn gets the award for most acoustic song, with If We Were Vampires by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit getting an 82/100. 
• Acousticness is determined by the instrumental arrangement and the vocal style, and you can expect the lower rated songs to be full of electronic instruments or distorted guitar tones.
• If you hate acoustic songs, talk to Shan, whose favorite song A Human's Touch by TWRP only rated a 4/100 in acousticness.
• Rowan loves to dance, because her favorite song scored the highest in danceability, being Too Much To Ask by Arctic Monkeys with a 75/100. 
• Danceability is based on BPM, rhythm stability, beat strength and regularity.
• DO NOT ask Katie Kerlik to dance, as My Demons by STARSET obtained the lowest dance score of 27/100. 
• Finally, my favorite song Plug In Baby by Muse ended up being the most energetic track with a rating of 97/100. I must have a lot of energy. 
• Energy is determined by tempo, loudness, and overall rhythmic complexity.
• The least energetic favorite song was given to Avalynn, as If We Were Vampires scored only 21/100 in energy. 

    This social experiment ended up being quite insightful. Throughout all 34 responses, only two people reported the same artist. Those two people were Lincoln and Katie, whose favorite songs both belong to the band STARSET. Interestingly, both songs fall under the genre of future rock. 

    Speaking of time, the Writing Center's favorite songs cover over 150 years of music. The earliest track; the Liebeslieder Waltzes by Brahms, Jane Nesmith's jam; dates back to 1868 while the most recent; TokSik by STARSET, courtesy of Lincoln; was released August 16th, 2024. The most common decade is the 2010s, which made up 29.4% of responses. 

    The most common key signature was D Major, but the key signatures were very diverse, as D Major only made up 14.7% of songs. 

    In terms of tempo, the most common song speed sat at 130 BPM, represented by eight songs. The average tempo of the Writing Center is 118 BPM with the fastest song clocking in at 173 BPM: My Demons by STARSET, Katie's song. The slowest song crawled by at 74 BPM: Get You (feat. Kali Uchis) by Daniel Ceasar, Jacob's favorite tune.

    

    Lastly, I asked all of the responders what their preferred music platform was. Unlike almost every other aspect of their answers, the response was predominantly Spotify. In fact, all but three consultants use Spotify. For those three, two of them use YouTube Music and the other headbangs to the classical radio station. 

    This experiment gives a peek into what the Writing Center is listening to. If you're still curious, I did compile all of these favorite songs into a Spotify playlist which can be found here. Thank you to everyone who participated and happy listening!