Well, what do I know. Idly relaxing around the home, in my first weekend at the new apartment… I came up with the perfect kind of dull task that I enjoy with my morning coffee… What are the most popular bands, according to plays registered on that favorite site of mine, last.fm? It seems to scarily give away the “average” last.fm user. While this is far from scientific, as I just guessed which bands to look up and sometimes followed those band’s “similar artists” links if I’d heard of who was on it and I ended up listing the bands with over 40 million plays. I imagine that unless I am even more disconnected than I thought, this should be somewhat accurate…
1. The Beatles: 107m plays. This is no surprise, but being a “Stones man” it was a bit shocking to see The B’s with 4 times the action of the Stones.
2. Radiohead: 103m plays. What? I still don’t get this. Yeah, I bought their first album when Creep came out, and I remember some video with someone on fire in the street, but I haven’t heard much else and it just doesn’t seem too interesting to me.
3. Red Hot Chili Peppers: 73m plays. These guys? Still? I was into them up until Mother’s Milk, but I never would have imagined they would be the third most played band anywhere.
4. Pink Floyd: 58m plays. Some may think it’s played out, but I thought that finding them up here was a welcome surprise. While I don’t listen to them much, I think very highly of their “Dark Side of the Moon” to “The Wall” era, having heard little else by them.
5. Linkin Park: 56m plays. I just don’t know. Are they Nu-Metal? I’ve never actually heard them, but I’m still a bit surprised as to their ranking.
6. Coldplay: 56m plays. Same as above, except I’m pretty sure that Coldplay aren’t nu-metal, and I did suspect they were pretty popular.
7. Death Cab for Cutie: 54m plays. Exactly the same as above. Never heard them, their name is irritating, and somehow my pal Jon has logged some 4,800 songs plays for these guys on his last.fm account.
8. Metallica: 53m plays. No surprise here. I like their cover of “I am Evil”, I liked “Ride the Lightning” and I used to listen to “Master of Puppets” a lot, but they really lost me when that boring ass “One” song from “… and Justice For All” came out. And recently I saw their movie and realized just how lost they were.
9. Nirvana: 42m plays. I’m halfway surprised about this, I know they got pretty big (and Bleach and their unplugged album are both quite good), but I would have thought that they would be a bit more forgotten by now.
10. Green Day: 42m plays. Whatever.
12. Fall Out Boy: 42m plays. Huh? Who?
13. My Chemical Romance: 40m plays. I don’t know, but the name scares me… I picture boring “industrial”/punk/ballads for teens and some really bad fashions.