Can't Get Much Higher

Chris Dalla Riva

5.0 (3)
MUSIC COMMENTARY
UPDATED WEEKLY

The intersection of music and data www.cantgetmuchhigher.com

08/05/2025

A bottle of Chris a bottle of Mike...

Last week, I went on Substack Live to chat with Mike Pesca about the new Billy Joel documentary, And So It Goes. Check out our conversation if you missed it. And, if you haven’t watched the documentary, yet I recommend that too. It’s fantastic. I’ll be back on Thursday with more standard Can’t Get Much Higher fare. If you enjoy this newsletter, consider ordering a copy of my debut book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music covering 1958 to 2025. All three of Billy Joel’s number one hits are mentioned. Can you name them? (Hint: None of them are from the 1970s.) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cantgetmuchhigher.com/subscribe

1h 2m
12/05/2024

The Most Influential Rock Band

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 podcast, 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. * Today is the last day of our 50% Black Friday discount for a yearlong premium subscription to this podcast. Premium subscribers get four additional newsletters each month, biweekly interviews, roundups of the most important stores in music, and so much more. As a reminder, this is the podcast version of the newsletter Can’t Get Much Higher. Click here to read the newsletter. It contains charts, graphs, and pictures that will color your listening. For a playlist of every new song that I’ve recommended, click here. For a playlist of every old song that I’ve recommended, click here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cantgetmuchhigher.com/subscribe

16 min
11/07/2024

Immortality in 7-Seconds

Every few days, I scroll through the top music apps on my iPhone. Usually, things are fairly status quo. Spotify. Shazam. YouTube Music. All the stuff you’d expect. But occasionally an app catches my eye that had previously eluded me. That happened this week with a somewhat peculiar app reaching the upper echelons of Apple’s paid music app chart. It’s called “Amen Break Generator (Revived).” In many ways, it signifies both the past and future of music. As a reminder, this is the podcast version of the newsletter Can’t Get Much Higher. Click here to read the newsletter. It contains charts, graphs, and pictures that will color your listening. For a playlist of every new song that I’ve recommended, click here. For a playlist of every old song that I’ve recommended, click here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cantgetmuchhigher.com/subscribe

19 min
10/31/2024

We'll Have Halloween on Christmas

I’ve never been a huge fan of Halloween or purposefully subjecting myself to ghostly fear, but today is October 31, so I thought it would only be appropriate if we spoke about what constitutes the ghoulish musical canon, why it is different than the Christmas carols that flood our airwaves at the end of each year, and how it might be growing more popular than ever before. As a reminder, this is the podcast version of the newsletter Can’t Get Much Higher. Click here to read the newsletter. It contains charts, graphs, and pictures that will color your listening. For a playlist of every new song that I’ve recommended, click here. For a playlist of every old song that I’ve recommended, click here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cantgetmuchhigher.com/subscribe

20 min
10/17/2024

The Death of Mechanical Socialism

Being a songwriter is hard. And I’m not just talking about the fact that writing great songs is no easy task. I’m talking about how the economics around songwriting have made turning it into a career a near impossibility. As I mentioned a few months ago, songwriters don’t get paid upfront for their work. They only get paid via the royalties their songs generate after they come out. In other words, if your song doesn’t sell, you don’t get paid. While this labor arrangement makes things harder for songwriters, it’s nothing new. It’s how songwriters have been paid for a long time. That said, something has died in the streaming age that has made it even harder to survive as a songwriter. That something is mechanical socialism. And I don’t think it’s being discussed enough. As a reminder, this is the podcast version of the newsletter Can’t Get Much Higher. Click here to read the newsletter. It contains charts, graphs, and pictures that will color your listening. For a playlist of every new song that I’ve recommended, click here. For a playlist of every old song that I’ve recommended, click here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cantgetmuchhigher.com/subscribe

19 min
10/03/2024

Needles in Haystacks: The Lostwave Story

Earlier this year, I spoke with Paula Toledo about her whirlwind 15 minutes of fame. Toledo made music in the 2000s that never got too big, and then moved on with her life. The problem? Nobody on the internet could move on. Unbeknownst to Toledo, people online had accidentally stumbled upon her songs and had spent a decade trying to find her. Catherine Sinow, a frequent contributor to this newsletter, first told me about the Paula Toledo saga while working on a different story about how Jessica Simpson released 500 versions of her song “A Public Affair”. Toledo was just the tip of the iceberg, though. This week Sinow brings another story about how people online have been searching and finding lost songs at a quicker rate than ever before. As a reminder, this is the podcast version of the newsletter Can’t Get Much Higher. Click here to read the newsletter. It contains charts, graphs, and pictures that will color your listening. Click here to listen on Apple or Spotify. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cantgetmuchhigher.com/subscribe

23 min
09/26/2024

The Hardest Thing for A Musician to Do

In a 2011 piece for the AV Club, music critic Steven Hyden defined a new metric for musical greatness: the five-albums test. An artist passes this test if they release at least five consecutive masterful albums. According to Hyden, very few artists pass this test. The Beatles do. So do Queen. That said, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones come up short. Inspired by Mr. Hyden, I want to propose a test of musical greatness that is even more stringent: the 40-year test. As a reminder, this is the podcast version of the newsletter Can’t Get Much Higher. Click here to read the newsletter. It contains charts, graphs, and pictures that will color your listening. Click here to listen on Apple or Spotify. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cantgetmuchhigher.com/subscribe

17 min
09/12/2024

Hey Jude, Are Song Titles Showing Up Later?

A few weeks ago, an upcoming writer named Chris Gunther reached out to me with an interesting theory. He claimed that song titles were appearing later in songs. Here’s an example he gave me. The Rolling Stones’ classic “Angie”, released in 1973, starts with Mick Jagger intoning the title. Compare that to Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire”, a piano ballad from 2023. It takes 132 words before Rodrigo reaches her title. Of course, those are just examples. Gunther claims that’s part of a larger trend, though. I’ll let him explain. As a reminder, this is the podcast version of the newsletter Can’t Get Much Higher. Click here to read the newsletter. It contains charts, graphs, and pictures that will color your listening. Click here to listen on Apple or Spotify. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.cantgetmuchhigher.com/subscribe

15 min

5

out of 5

3 Ratings

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03/15/2024

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The intersection of music and data www.cantgetmuchhigher.com

Creator

Chris Dalla Riva
Years Active

2024 - 2025
Episodes

31
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© Chris Dalla Riva
Show Website

Can't Get Much Higher