Outline of an evolutionary history of the title track on popular music albums 1966-1990

Abstract

I counted the proportion of popular music albums per year that have a title track between 1966 and 1990 (inclusively). A title track is a piece of music that has exactly the same title as the album on which it is found.  I compared the change in frequency of albums with title tracks between best-selling albums (reached #1 on Billboard 200) and the most enduring albums (top 10 on besteveralbums.com). For top selling albums, the proportion of title tracks rises steadily through the study period from 0.27 in 1966 to 0.60 in 1990. For the most enduring albums, the proportion varies between 0.20 and 0.60, but is approximately the same in 1966 as it is in 1990. Years in which albums with title tracks dominated the charts tended to see increases in the frequency of title tracks for that year and the next. This suggests that commercial success favours an increase in the frequency of title tracks over time, but that this is unrelated to the long-term fitness of an album.

Introduction

There has been relatively little study of the history of the title track on popular music albums. In fact, I have found no literature whatsoever specifically on the history of the title track. Not. One. Thing. If anyone has links, please send them my way.

A title track is a song that has exactly the same title as the album from which it is drawn. Those who follow popular music will be familiar with the concept, and may even be under the impression that the title track is ubiquitous. But just how prevalent is it, and how has its frequency changed over time? What are the forces that drive its evolution? Here, we show that the proportion of title tracks increases steadily on the most commercially successful albums between 1966 and 1990, while the proportion seems to vary more randomly for albums that have stood the test of time. This suggest that 1) commercial success selects for albums with a title track, and 2) staying power, which can be seen as a proxy for musical quality, is poorly correlated with commercial success.

Methods

I surveyed every album that reached #1 on the Billboard 200 for the years 1966 to 1990 inclusively (260 albums in total) according to billboard.com. I also surveyed the top 10 albums for each year from 1966 to 1990 (250 albums in total) according to besteveralbums.com (as of mid-december 2017).

I started with 1966 because, honestly, the music I enjoy most is all post-1965. I had to stop in 1990 because I really wanted to post this before the holidays. I could probably have pushed on to 93 or so, but 1990 seemed like a round number. Someone really should do the years after 1990.

Besteveralbums.com is a crowdsourced album ranking website which assigns a rank to each album based on the number of user generated top album lists it appears on. There are currently over 30 000 user submitted charts in their database.

For each album, I looked up the track list as it appears on Wikipedia and recorded whether the title of one of the tracks matched exactly the title of the album. If there was an exact match, I recorded the album as a 1. If there was no match, I recorded it as a 0.

I was quite strict about the match and did not count near misses, although sometimes I really wanted to. For example, the 1966 Monks album Black Monk Time has a track called Monk Time, which some may interpret as showing the intent to have a title track, but I was ruthless. Tom Waits’ 1983 Swordfishtrombones album has a track called Swordfishtrombone. Despite listening to the album for years, I had never even noticed that the album title is plural, while the song title is singular. I get it now, and have one more dimension to appreciate about the album, but the difference is so subtle I almost missed it this time also. No matter, I ruled it out.

For each year, I calculated the proportion of albums with a title track, both for the Billboard list and for the Besteveralbums list. For each year, I calculated the number of weeks during which the #1 spot in the Billboard 200 was occupied by an album with a title track.

I must note that I was recovering from surgery and on codeine for most of the data gathering and analysis phases, so there may be a few issues with accuracy. But I am almost certain that everything is at least 95% accurate, if not more. On the plus side, I may even have developed some insights which might have escaped me under different circumstances (like coming up with this topic, for example). During the writing up phase, I was mostly grumpy from having run out of codeine, so bear with me.

Plus it was all very time consuming because I kept getting distracted reading all the Wikipedia pages for the albums. And then listening to the albums on youtube. But I learned a lot and discovered some real gems.

Results

The lists combined contain 471 unique albums, with 39 appearing on both lists. Overall, the proportion of albums with title track is 0.42 for the Billboard list and 0.40 for the Besteveralbums list. The Besteveralbum list is noiser, with a standard deviation of 0.2, than the Billboard list with a standard deviation of 0.14.

However, the change in frequency in title track proportion over time varies markedly between the two lists (Figure 1). The proportion of title tracks steadily rises for the most commercially successful albums (Billboard list) and varies up and down for the albums with staying power (Besteveralbums list).

Figure 1

Interestingly, only one album in the dataset contains a title track hat trick: The album Bad Company, by the band Bad Company, whose title track is Bad Company. I did not pursue the hat trick phenomenon for now because of low N, although it would be cool to look into it at some point if more can be uncovered.

Figure 2

For years in which albums with title tracks were at #1 for more weeks, there tended to be a year on year increase in the overall frequency of title tracks (Figure 2). This relationship held when a one year lag was applied (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Discussion

The fact that only 39 of 471 (8%) of albums appear on both lists suggests that initial commercial success and staying power, which is a proxy for musical quality, are fairly independent traits. Since frequency of title track increases steadily for commercially successful albums but varies stochastically for albums with staying power, we can suggest that there is pressure for the inclusion of a title track in the population of commercially successful albums. This may even reflect an ongoing speciation event between commercially successful albums on the one hand, and quality albums on the other.

All years during which the #1 position was occupied by an album with a title track for more than 25 weeks saw increases in frequency of title tracks compared to the previous year. This remains true if a one year lag is applied. This means that overall frequency of title tracks was increased during years when title track albums were the most successful, as well as the following year.

Conversely, all years during which the top spot was occupied by a title track album for fewer than 12 weeks saw decreases from the previous year or no change in the frequency of title tracks. The numbers are the same with a one year lag. This strongly suggests that years in which title track albums did especially badly reduced the frequency of title tracks for that year and the next.

As is always the case with evolutionary phenomena, it is difficult to identify specific events which seem to drive the processes. It is also not very helpful or relevant in the end, but so, so tempting. The selection for title track seems to really get a kick-start in 1970-71, and I must note that those two years saw the release of The Beatles Let It Be, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, and John Lennon’s Imagine, all of which are major early title track albums.

Conclusion

I have shown that there is a relationship between commercial success of albums with title tracks and the overall frequency of title tracks between 1966 and 1990. Throughout the period, there is an increase in the frequency of title tracks, likely driven by the commercial success of title track albums.

I have also shown that there is little correlation between an album’s commercial success and its staying power in the musical landscape and that title track is therefore a poor predictor of album quality.

There are a number of issues to explore from here. For example, one could look into changes in placement of title tracks over time. Do they open the album? Do they close it? Are they randomly distributed? Is the title track the first single from the album? Is it any sort of single at all?

It would be helpful to compare the Billboard and Besteveralbums lists for variation in title track phenotype. One could also explore better proxies of commercial success, such as actual sales figures and track them over the long term to get a different measure of staying power.