Ten years of scrobbling

Back in September, I reached my 10-year anniversary of using the Last.fm scrobbler to record statistics on my music listening habits. At the beginning, it imported my iTunes history, so the statistics actually go back a bit farther than 10 years, and it also includes my Spotify activity. It's an irresistible thing for those of us who have the chart disease — I think people with a certain amount of OCD are predisposed to an unhealthy interest in the ebb and flow of popular music up and down the charts, and there's an added allure when it's limited to your own musical tastes. 

A few statistical highlights:

Number of songs played: 58,866
#1 artist: Pet Shop Boys (4,046 plays, about twice the number of second place)
#1 album: Yes by Pet Shop Boys
#1 song: "A&E" by Goldfrapp
#2 song: "Dancing On My Own" by Robyn. It's a crime against music that neither of these songs even cracked the Hot 100.
Highest-ranked '80s song: (tie) "One on One" by Hall & Oates and "This Is the Time" by Billy Joel at #8. I'm a little surprised to find that the two most-played from that decade are ballads, because when I think of my love for '80s music, I think of upbeat, synthy stuff. 
Highest-ranked '90s song: "I've Tried Everything" by the Eurythmics at #6
Highest ranked instrumental track: "Crockett's Theme" by Jan Hammer at #14. I've listened to a lot of Hammer's scoring for Miami Vice in recent years.
Most songs in the top 50: Pet Shop Boys, with eight. Next is Goldfrapp with five.
Most played '80s album: Autumnal Park by Pseudo Echo at #6. Ironically, I didn't own this synth pop classic until 2011.

View my Last.fm profile here.

RIP John Hillerman

"Ohhhh, myyyyyyy God!"

In the last few years, I've enjoyed switching the tube onto Magnum, P.I. on The Starz Encore Classic channel in the late afternoons when I get home from work early enough to catch it. It's not a great show, but what it lacks in sophistication is made up for with style and a killer '80s theme. It has a noir-ish charm, particularly Magnum's narration (I know what you're thinking …), and a fine cast highlighted by John Hillerman as Jonathan Quayle Higgins III, the stuffy and suave caretaker of the Robin's Nest, the estate of potboiler novelist Robin Masters. Hillerman, who died Thursday (Nov. 9), was a Texan, but he played British flawlessly, and the ongoing tease of whether Higgins was actually Robin Masters was bloody good fun.

It was a fine turn, and Hillerman will always be Higgins to me.

"I say, Magnum …"